To be shocked when adults have absolutely no savings at all?

[ThisJollyReader]

I’m going to be honest, I find it quite hard to understand when adults have no savings at all. Not even £100 put away. I’m not talking about people going through a temporary rough patch but just having nothing set aside whatsoever. Personally, I try to keep around £10k as a buffer (I know everyone’s situation is different), but even putting that aside, I would still feel uncomfortable having nothing at all.

AIBU to feel like having at least something put away is important or am I being too harsh?

Lol

I think it's obviously different for those who literally couldn't save due to incredibly low incomes, BUT, I see a lot of people on relatively high incomes who also live month to month and spend like there's no tomorrow, and never save anything at all.

One case in particular is a client of mine who's a dentist who earns over £100k per year. He doesn't even have a savings account - just his current account and a credit card account - and is regularly in overdraft. His bank statements show several random payments out every single day - wine, clothes, meals out, expensive gym membership, ridiculously expensive mobile phone contract, lots of other random subscriptions/direct debits. It's not as if he has anything to show for it - he has a relatively modest mortgage, a relatively old "normal" car, no fancy expensive foreign holidays (just the odd week in the Med) - so not living the expensive life style - just hundreds/thousands of pounds of waste. When it comes to his twice yearly tax bills, he acts surprised he has tax to pay (even though it's been the same for the 20 years he's been my client), and has to work extra hours to earn the money he needs to pay the tax (he usually only works 4 days per week, so works an extra day in the weeks leading up to tax payment dates!). He doesn't have a pension and doesn't have any other investments/savings. He's just relying on the NHS pension and basically hoping that his tax free lump sum will pay off his mortgage and his NHS pension (along with continuing to work part time) will fund his lifestyle needs until he fully retires at 67!

For some, it's just "easy come, easy go" with no actual appreciation of the money they earn and spend. Ironically, it's often the lowest of earners who have far better control of their spending and manage to save something, if very low amounts, as they often don't have the ability to earn extra by working extra shifts/days when an unexpected bill appears so they're more cautious.

Far too many people lack any financial awareness. There is a reason that there is a very high correlation of low incomes areas with the number of betting shops for example.

I'm an adult with a good job and salary but I'm also a single parent with no support or family around. I'm doing better now but for a while I relied on credit cards to survive, so paying them off is a priority atm. I used to have over 60k savings but I had to pay for deposit on my place, and basically survive when my DC were little.

How is it "shocking" that I have no savings? You are a bit dim, OP - sorry.

I always had a wee buffer for car/washing machine etc. I felt lucky to be able to have this but with rising costs so many are just lucky to survive. Most people would love to have a little something put by but just can't
Life is tough for lots of people so I am not shocked that they don't have but feel terrible that life is so hard

I think we all know that debt and savings ebb and flow over the adult lifetime as circumstances change etc. Eg everyone with a mortgage must have had some savings at some time to finance the deposit required and fees/costs etc. I think this thread is more about the people who never have any savings from decade to decade, which is completely different to the cyclic ebb and flow that lots of people will have as they move through various life stages.

We spent all of our savings on buying our house, fitting it out, furniture etc and on stuff we needed for dc.
Since then the prices of practically everything have gone through the roof.
There’s been no chance for us to build any savings back up.
Is that hard to understand?
We put quite a lot of earnings into life assurance, pension, health insurance etc. so it’s not like we’re not thinking about the future.

Yes, you’re being unreasonable. We are struggling to pay bills and put food on the table so saving is impossible. I’m glad you have no idea what this feels like but many many people do

Not necessarily. When we bought our first flat, we got. 100% mortgage and borrowed £500 from my dad for a bed, cooker, and sofa. When we moved, the value of our flat had doubled, which was the deposit for the house we bought. While we could never have afforded to save easily, we never thought it was necessary because credit was always easy to get.

No this doesn't suprise me at all, many people struggle to pay their bills so saving is not an option. I've certainly been in this position & when things went wrong e.g our boiler broke we bought a new one on a credit card & scraped some cash together to pay the fitter. It's only the last 5/6 year's that w've been in the position to have some savings as a buffer & even then it's not a huge amount. I think it's a great privilege to be able to have 'spare' money & I never, ever take it for granted.

It’s not hard to understand at all.

Some people can barely scrape together enough for the absolute essentials. Some people are in debt. Some people spend their entire life completely broke.

how on earth they would be expected to build up savings when in those situations is surely harder to understand.

Are you Rishi Sunak?

”Times are hard, but just hang there.” And then, privately: “I can’t understand why people don’t have a billion or two stashed away, like I do.”

Yeah bought our house and used all
savings and basically live pay cheque to pay cheque cus we pay 2.5k nursery fees monthly and there’s mortgage is crazy high right now and there’s not a penny free to save. 🤷‍♀️ we have credit cards for emergencies! This is reality for loads of people op.

Is this goady bollocks - which is surely designed to make a good percentage of the readership feel like shit - really in the spirit of the site?

I don't think so.

You should be shocked that you live in such an unequal society.

You should be shocked that some people are billionaires whilst others are living hand-to-mouth.

You should be shocked that the government are not doing anything to address this.

Those are the things I’m shocked about.

It’s rather like a landlord being surprised that there are tenants in the world who work full time yet have nothing, nothing but the clothes they stand up in.

Successive governments of the last 40 years have created this problem. They care no more for the poorest working people than did the Victorian empire before them.

know everyone’s situation is different

you don’t sound like you know this. Which bills should I stop paying so that I can save up?

If that's how people feel maybe we should just ditch the billions we pay to the low income families in benefits. Just like Victorians times.

What an arrogant and sheltered life you’ve lead OP.

How old are you? Yes this is goady, maybe a bit of brag of how much money you have. But I will bite.

You can be shocked, people have different lives, incomes, priorities etc.

TBH I am shocked you only have £10k, that would'nt even cover the cost of my new boiler.

We are all different and have access to varying levels of wealth.

Goady and privileged. Good for you, I guess.

I must admit that I'm shocked when people buy large, expensive unnecessary items, then complain that they're short of money, but that's not the same thing. I personally think they'd be better off saving the money, but it's up to them if they want to get into unnecessary debt.

Quite!

You mean pensioners?

If you mean in-work benefits perhaps you should actually pay a wage that pays the cost of housing here. I’d suggest a good start for that might be restricting the number of houses one person or company can buy up.

Of course if you’d prefer civil unrest worse than the miners strikes then please do go ahead with your plans.

Have you ever considered that some people have no money left after rent, bills, transport and food each month