How long would it take you to save this amount?

[Nobulling]

A friend of mine had done work done in her house (a new house purchase) I could really do with similar. So I asked how much it cost out of interest. The total price was 8k…she then said but it’s not too bad as we paid the first half when we ordered in August and by Oct when they were booking fitting we had saved the other half’s anyway. So that’s 3 months pay MAX depending on how dates fall. I was thinking ok…well I’m not getting this job done it would take me FOREVER to save 4k not 3months! Surely this is unrealistic! How long would it take you to get 4k together?

We have it available if needed now.

To save now, a few months if we really tightened our belts.

We could get it together in 3-4 months if we stopped everything else, no mortgage overpayments, no holidays, no meals out etc. if it was regular saving alongside our usual spending it would probably take a couple of years.

We have done it before when hit with a big unexpected cost like a new boiler or car written off. We are low-average earners.

I have it already…but it would take 2 months to save ( 2 pay dates)

I have it already but if I had to start from scratch then I could do it in three months if I spent not a single penny on anything other than bills. Realistically it would be more like five months comfortably.

Just a couple of years ago it would have taken us probably a year so save that, a couple of years before that we wouldn’t have been able to save at all. We are now in a very fortunate position that we save £1k a month from my salary and £100pw from DHs salary. So probable similar time to your friend. We are currently renting though with the intention to buy early next year, I imagine once we have the mortgage it will reduce to £500pm from mine and still £100pw from DHs.

13 weeks at our normal rate of saving, but could do it quicker if necessary and no other big expenses.

Four years. Maybe two or three without a holiday in that time and also diverting the council tax holiday months (usually go into holiday fund or other savings).

Changed job recently and am now on a higher salary, so saving properly (but still only max. £300/month) for the first time in years. But as a single parent to two teens, I'm saving everything spare towards supporting them at uni (won't be much, but better than nothing). So I'd have to choose not to do that if I wanted £8k for something else.

My house needs work but I won't be doing any of it until the youngest graduates. So it had better not crumble in the next ten years (well, 15 to 20, if you factor in then saving up after that!)

Edited for punctuation.

We are retired now but there was a time we could save 4k a month when the mortgage was paid off.

We could pay that out from savings, to actually replace our income is too variable to give an exact timeframe as it’s a mixture of pensions and investments.

We were in top 5% household income for last 15 years until retirement last year. I do however have mismatching furniture which I have discovered on another thread is a source of embarrassment to some, who knew.

Because this is Mumsnet and unless you're on £400k you're considered poor.

We manage to save about 5k a year but that pays for our summer holiday. Since I had to stop working it's really hard even though DH earns 70k. We live in an expensive area.

£80k between 2 isn’t high earners.

It's depended over time how long.
When we had dd1 saving £8k would have sounded like a pie in the sky dream that would never happen. We wouldn't have considered something at that price. It was about half the take home pay for the year.

Last year, maybe 3-4 months?
This year longer again as we've two at uni, perhaps double that.

Two people earning circa 80k gross in the SE with the childcare, commute, mortgage etc is not a high earning household. Without kids we would be laughing. We are definitely middle earners nost kikely the top end of middle but middle none the less. I'm not saying we are struggling as we are able to save money but we don't live extravagant lifestyles.

I don't see the need for all the rage and shade you're throwing.

I could do it comfortably in 4 months. I can usually save about 1k a month but then I often spend it on holidays and the house etc. My DC are independent adults though and my outgoings are pretty low. I couldn’t have done it while I was still financially responsible for them.

Same here. Minimum wage with every penny accounted for each month.

We wouldn’t need to save to pay for something that cost £4K. But, if we did, it would take one month.

We currently save £2k a month. So 4 months to save 8k.

You earn less than the tax free allowance each year… why would you be shocked that most people are earning more than you?

It would take us about 2 years to save that. If neither of the bastarding cars needed repairs in that time. Which they totally would. So basically never. Realistically, if it had to be done it would go on a 0% credit card and join the other Emergency Stuff being moved from one 0% deal to the next. None of which was ever for anything fun, I might add. Holidays never, ever happen. We save £500 towards one and then something breaks down and bang. Square one.

6 weeks. Or 3 fortnight's savings, but I'm a decent earner with low expenses.

Roughly a year. Maybe less.

Another single parent here.... at a push, if nothing else went wrong and I really cut back i could save it in just under 7 years. More realistically maybe 10 to 15 years as long as nothing else went wrong in that time.

I dont think she's shocked people earn more than her. I think she's saying she's shocked that people on 50k plus dont think that they are high earners

Because in large swathes of the south 50%+ of that a year would go on rent alone. So 50k isn’t that high.

I currently save 8k per month between pensions and standard savings so an additional 4k would take a fortnight to save.

If you’d asked me the same question about 15 years ago the answer would have been never.