To think most people could save a small amount regularly if they prioritised it?

[BoldRubyShaker]

Obviously there are people in genuinely difficult situations who simply don’t have anything left to save and that’s not who I’m talking about. But for many workers, I do wonder whether saving even a small amount regularly is more achievable than it’s sometimes made out to be. Even something like £50 a month builds up over time - around £3,000 over 5 years (plus interest) and much more over the long term.

AIBU? I think that for a lot of people it’s more about prioritising than possibility.

yes i think you are right about that.

I think there's probably a thing with cost of living now, that people feel they should have nicer (not sure if that's the right word but more glamorous/fancy) lives on their income than they can afford. People hit certain salary points and feel it should mean they can buy certain clothes, holiday more, drive a certain car - it means people end up spending more I think. Things like insta etc, mean people are always bombarded with the nice things out there and the stuff that's available, they can immediately order it on credit online. I think in the 90s (as an example) more people had slightly crap cars bought 2nd hand in cash, people went away less, interior decor wasn't really all that great, we didn't have to buy tech because it was basically just a bigger tv or not.
It's hard to save when all of these things are marketed 24/7 to you and you're encouraged to think it's normal to have it when you work hard. Debt is also normalised, SiL built up 13000 of debt just on holidays - that she continued to go on whilst the debt built up, and she viewed it as all normal.

We do save really hard, and I think if people knew what we earned they'd be shocked because we drive a 2nd hand car with 112k miles on the clock, and shop at Aldi/Tesco and buy clothes on Vinted, but it's so we can save for the kids and retirement (and nice holidays that we pay upfront for tbf). I think ours is fairly unusual in approach.
It's also the cost of housing - if to save a deposit you need £100k, setting aside £25 a month is basically pointless- so I can see that being tricky for young people.

I think the concept of financial resilience has been lost and I think this is a much bigger motivator for setting aside a small amount each month. Savings and debt are two sides of the same coin - with saving you put aside each month to (hopefully pay for something in one go) or you can use debt and pay for it in one go but have to put the money aside each month afterwards often for longer. £50 gives you £600 a year plus a bit of interest. I have just needed to spend £80 for a tyre for my car after managing to drive over a nail and our fridge is on the edge of dying. We do have the income where we can pay for these things straight away but not every one is.

It's a reason I think the savings accounts the government offered ( possibly still off) for people on certain benefits were a really good product. You could/can save £50 a month and at the end of year 1 you get 50% of the maximum amount you have saved in interest even if you have had to withdraw the money before the end of the year. It builds in the idea of putting aside a small amount on the months where you have a little extra to make the months where you have extra costs less problematic. (Or at least this is close to how the accounts worked to the best of my recall!)

When my grandparents were starting their family my gran rounded up her rent so that it was paid over 11 months instead of 12 months. The "rent" money in the 12th month was then used for Christmas.

My great grandparents and the two generations before them were poor-house poor and the concept of buying extra storable foods in weeks that you can has stuck. This has come in handy a few times where for whatever reason we have been unable to get to the shops and we have been able to survive a week beyond our normal shopping frequency. They used when rather than not being able to get to the shops they couldn't afford to go to the shops.

My great grandad collected 20p and had a homemade tube to put the in which held £10 worth of 20p.

For those talking about treats and experiences - this can absolutely be used in the same way. £50 a month could give you a £600 a year treat and experience budget if you were on a tight budget.

I agree with the OP, if you actually read the first line where they state some people can't do it and that's alright. I think there will be a lot of people who have money they could save up, but not necessarily blow it, but certainly spend it when not really not needed. But as mentioned there is a balance between being a spend thrift and profligate.

There's a thing going on in this thread where £3,000 saved up is either a pittance or a lot of money, which makes no sense, same goes for the people trying to make it work out that spending £600 saved up on an emergency is a bad thing, because it means you don't have the £600 anymore?!? I'd love to see the mental gymnastics in action to an explain how that's not worse than going into £600 of credit card debt for the same emergency?

I used to be in a lot of debt, and have clawed my way out over the years, and now in a phase of trying to save for things and not spend unnecessarily on credit cards, and buy everything on debit card instead. I send money into a savings account each month, and some of the things I'm saving for I'm only saving small amounts, two of them are holidays I hope to go on in about 10/12 years time, so yes over time the small amounts will add up.

And people saying cutting back on things to save for a house deposit isn't worth it, that's literally what me and my partner did, and that should be like the bare minimum you have to do unless you're loaded, we're living in an age of instant gratification, where people want the newest and fanciest things instantly, in total disregard of any negatives, and that's how so many people are in debt problems nowadays.

So are you speaking from experience? I mean have you saved without being able to buy so much as a latte or is it just what you imagine other people should do?

Some can some cant some dont want to.
I save for holidays my next one will cost me £3k almost finished paying.

I would assume that most people do save unless they absolutely cannot. I have always saved even when I started my weekend job. I think people will if they can

Recently my DD ( aged 34) told me she had £27k in savings. I am beyond impressed! She does things like not run a car, as she lives close to the city centre, can easily get a train/bus & happily rides a bike everywhere. For a long time she was a spender, but shifted her attitude a few years ago. Any extra money (work bonus, the odd gift from her DF) goes straight into a high earning savings account/ISA. She & her partner have well-paid jobs, but pick up extra money pet & house-sitting & a few other side-gigs. There are a few things she learned from home: do not value status symbols, always make a sandwich & take a flask, never buy new, and just generally be financially literate. We were always open about money as a family, & we’re not ashamed to look for bargains (and we were relatively high earners).
For myself in the run up to retirement, I studied my options carefully & worked a full 7 years past my retirement date to maximise my state pension. I did not enjoy this, to say the least, but now that I am retired, I am comfortably off, which I wouldn’t have been had I retired at the first opportunity. I “saved” in the sense that I put every pence I could spare into my pension, which is also very tax efficient.
I think the key is to be financially literate & evaluate your spending/budget regularly. And deduct your savings first from your earnings, not last.

I have always “saved” but until fairly recent it was always for things. There were no savings that were just savings just to have and not intended for anything else.

now I technically save £850 a month. But only £50 is not to be touched.

The rest is split between £450 for holidays and fun things in life.

£200 money to help dd2 through uni.

£150 emergency money for car repairs, replacement of household appliances if they break etc.

it’s only really in the last 5 years or so that I have been able to split my savings up in this way. Before that I had to just save what I could and if something went wrong with the car then that would be most of it gone.

Things also get cheaper when you are able to 'borrow' from yourself instead of credit or have the cash for a really good secondhand bargain instead of having to finance a brand new washing machine. That first boost of saving over a year made an amazing difference to my peace of mind too.
As you say wantmorenow its the option or freedom to choose that is truly life changing when the chips are down.

Definitely OP. I have a relative that complained they never had a holiday away ever, not even overnight. I suggested she save $5 a week for two years. That would almost be $500.00 - sure not a luxury vacation but enough for a long weekend if cost cutting measures were used. But it fell on deaf ears.

Concern as quarter of young adults have two or more takeaways a week - BBC News
This is timely for the thread!
Not to go all "stop eating avocado toast and save a deposit within a year" but there is some overlap between people moaning about being priced out of "big" spends like a house/affording kids etc. and spending on luxuries, without seeming to correlate the two.

Two takeaways a week at about £20 each equals over 2 grand a year, and somehow I highly doubt the people buying them don't also buy a few other 'little treats' every week as well - whether that's false nails/eyelash extensions/botox/season football ticket/subs to multiple different streaming services/few pints/starbucks every morning/pret for lunch, cheap ryanair weekend away twice a year, concert tickets, new phone, etc.

Nobody is suggesting you should cut out everything that makes life pleasurable but cutting down to one takeaway a week is hardly living on the breadline.

If someone can save £2k a year in a LISA the govt adds 25%, plus the normal interest = in five years time they'll have about £13k. If they are buying with a partner that's £26k which is more than enough for a decent house deposit in most of the country. If they could both save £4k (the maximum), they'd have £52k between them!

There's a reason why 'every little helps' is a saying!

I think this is the exact mindset shift that is needed to kick-start people though.

So maybe it's just saving £50 a month and that might get swallowed up buying a new washing machine or car repairs. But if someone hadn't been putting that £50 aside they'd be in debt of £600 potentially. Then having to spend an extra £55 a month to service the debt. It starts small and then the mindset shifts when you start to see that you aren't so reliant on debt. Maybe the 2nd year someone can afford £60 a month and only needs to use half that so a buffer remains and it all keeps adding up. Then people can start to think of things like "I'd love a new carpet or to go on a weekend break" and have a target amount of savings required and decide to tighten the belt a bit more if possible to achieve it.

Eventually someone can have lots of different savings funds... emergency, holidays, Christmas or whatever. But ut starts small with a mindset shift.

"Just hang in there," quoth Rishi Sunak, protected by his billions.

The billionaires, who have a steady income simply by being billionaires, simply don't understand how less wealthy folk live. Those who have the most to pontificate say on this often have no experience of living hand to mouth.

Quite. We are so used to the idea that a few people are billionaires, we have lost sight of how fucking weird it is to hoard resources on a scale no human could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, like a greedy dragon in a fairy tale. If an animal was stockpiling thousands of years’ worth of food while the rest of its herd starved and fought over scraps, we would think something was horribly wrong with it. Yet here we are. Fighting over scraps.

That article is nothing to do with money though, and more about unhealthy eating habits.

a) just because the primary focus of an article is one thing doesn't mean you can't take additional meaning from it.
b) if it's nothing to do with money why are words like 'afford' (twice) 'cheaper' 'discount' 'price' 'expensive' etc. used throughout it?

Erm, no. It is not an article about the CoL. It is about unhealthy eating.

Saving is a habit that is hard to start, if you weren't encouraged to do it from childhood. It's clear from a lot of the responses that many people think saving for future events equals depriving yourself of something better right now. It needn't be one or the other, and I don't see anywhere that the OP suggested it should be. You can save some and spend some too.

I've been at both ends of the scale, both in debt with no savings and no way to repay it, and being able to salt away £500+ per month. Right now I'm somewhere in between, and despite a dwindling income, I still save every month, as it's no fun not knowing how you're going to pay for something and I don't want to go back to that place again. However, I also allow myself pocket money for the month and spend it on whatever I fancy, so get the best of both worlds. But once it's gone, it's gone. No dipping in to the pot unless it's for an essential.

Might not work for everyone, but I think at least trying to save is a good discipline, as we never know when we're suddenly going to have to live on a restricted budget.

But there is no indication that the people buying takeaways (which includes supermarket sandwiches, by the looks of it) are the same people financially struggling - and towards the end of the article, it says

She said the cost of living crisis was also having an impact, as concerns grow about the cost of everyday essentials such as milk, bread and eggs.
Barnett suggested people were seeing less difference in price between a takeaway and ingredients than they did before.
"It is more expensive, but people think that it's already costing me so much to buy the individual ingredients.

None of that gives enough information to reach a conclusion that people are unable to save because they're spending on takeaways.

I used to save work expenses payments towards a holiday when DC were younger
Round ups also help
I stock up food on yellow stickers which reduces food bill and helps me save
Lots of small steps can mount up

I think it depends to some extent on whether or not you have a mortgage. If you lose your job at 50 and still have a mortgage, then 30k in the bank could be a lifeline in terms of allowing you time to find another job. Same if you have a big, urgent repair.

Personally, I think that building up savings in your 20s, 30s and 40s is really important, as things will be much tougher in your 50s and if you are made redundant and have no buffer. Plus, lots of people don’t have the same earning capacity in their 50s for a variety of reasons.

If you are someone who intends to rent for life, then maybe it’s less important.

Spoken as someone who's never been on the breadline. Judgemental bellend.

Except the part you quoted was £3k over 5 years, not £30k, which is very out of reach for many people. Actually I’ve been able to save much more in my 50s than earlier decades. A combination of higher salary, no childcare costs and a mortgage nearly paid off. It’s very hard in younger years when you’re starting your mortgage, have mat leave, early years childcare, reduced working hours.

FFS, the OP clearly stated she was not talking about people on the breadline.

And some of us are talking from experience. My childhood was Victorian by MN standards. I've had significant periods of financial hardship as an adult.

But I've been brought up to not instantly blow every bit of spare money that comes my way. To think more than 5 minutes ahead and not be surprised when Christmas comes around, the washing machine breaks or the insurance is due.

Spend less than you earn.
Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves
Also that Dickens? quote that's again 'Spend less than you earn'

Be aware of how regular small spends can add up hugely over time. Cutting out a single daily coffee could free up enough money to completely pay for the price of a very decent second hand car.

Budget and know what you can afford
Financial flow chart

Etc etc etc