'More than half of UK households fear losing savings in Covid crisis.'

[Tuchel127]

www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jan/23/uk-savings-covid-crisis-bills

I think a lot more can relate to this article. Rather than saving for the future I have known a lot more who have had to dip to their savings (if they have any) or credit cards due to: loss of income, redundancies and illness. Not to mention that the UK sick pay system is very poor only entitled to £95 a week.

Have you had to dip into you savings?

@Tuchel127

www.theguardian.com/money/2021/jan/23/uk-savings-covid-crisis-bills

I think a lot more can relate to this article. Rather than saving for the future I have known a lot more who have had to dip to their savings (if they have any) or credit cards due to: loss of income, redundancies and illness. Not to mention that the UK sick pay system is very poor only entitled to £95 a week.

Have you had to dip into you savings?

your savings

We have never saved so much. Professional job unaffected by COVID, all kids activities cancelled gym membership on hold, nowhere to go and nothing to spend it on...

All savings gone. Overdraft and credit card in use.
I’m self employed and excluded from government support when this time last year I was tipping into the point of being the higher wage earner.

I think there's a stark divide between people that will have lost their savings and people that will have hugely added to them.

No, but I can see lockdown causing a bigger divide between the haves and have nots, and a lot more people joining the latter group.

Yes we had to live on the savings we had set aside for my husbands tax bill as he is self employed. Luckily we were able to defer the June "on account" payment and just scraped the money together to pay in full in January. Not much fun though and we are now trying to pull together cash for the next June payment as I'm not sure they will defer again. His work is picking up a bit now, but we still need to make sure we have the money

Thankfully not in my case but I am surprised given the numbers on furlough or with higher heating bills that it is only' more than half".

No savings here, DH was unemployed for over a year. We had to borrow from DHs parents to buy a car when ours broke down. Luckily he is working again now but at a greatly reduced salary so no chance to save.

I agree.

We are spending hardly anything. Dh is working from home so no travel costs, no new suits, shirts, shoes.

No after school activities for the teenagers. No cinema, school lunches or trips. No driving them all over. Hardly any new clothes at all in the last year. No haircuts.

I didn't work or get furlough in the summer lockdown and I'm working part time now so our income has reduced but out outgoings have reduced even more.

No, we are some of the lucky ones who have saved money. I don't really know anyone who is (openly) struggling financially but we work in the public sector and so do most people we know. Obviously not to say public sector is safe in the long term but atm we've been protected.

Luckily not affected, been able to work. First lock down though I had no childcare due to nursery closing, as a single parent I was topped up with universal credit thankfully. But I know others in a similar position that wasn't entitled to anything as they were a couple or had a mortgage.

No, we’ve hugely added to our savings as both still working & not spending on holidays etc. I appreciate lots of people are not in this situation though.

We're both employed vv lucky compared to many people out there.

We used to spend tons of eating out, pubs, days out with DD, weekends away...so we've saved A LOT. We have neglected our flat a bit so we are using our savings to do it up bit by bit. We have bought a new sofa.

Before we'd wonder where our wages went each month, now we can save up for the things we've been putting off.

Yes. DP is self employed and hasn’t been allowed to work for about 6 months out of the last year. We were planning to buy a house this year but have wiped out the majority of his savings on living expenses.
On the flip side, I work from home and have been saving as normal but I’m not prepared to fund all of our deposit so we’ll have to wait another year or two to buy somewhere

Nope, I’m saving half my salary at the moment. Between us, we have 100k saved.

We are saving about the same as before.

No commuting costs /swimming lessons /eating out.

But school have been rubbish so we have paid for a tutor (2 hours a week each for 2 children), Jolie Ronde, and loads of excellent Outschool classes for science / arts/geography etc. ( Try a free class with my link
outschool.com/?signup=true&usid=oJXLafjD&utm_campaign=share_invite_link )
I have also bought things like craft activities. And we have had to sort proper desks and IT for everyone. And actually a lot of their activities are running online still (dance, drama, cubs, music)

(I realise it is a total privilege to be able to pay to improve their education but it is also frustrating knowing many state primaries are providing decent live education now, so we are only topping up to what we should be getting really)

We've saved quite a bit fortunately due to lower outgoings. I feel it compensates as I had a pay freeze and worked many, many hours of unpaid overtime over the last year.

Grateful to keep my job and be able to WFH but it has been an incredibly tough year nonetheless.

We haven't been able to save as much but still some. We're really lucky. We are both key workers though my hours have been reduced.

I could save more but as I'm stuck in with a toddler, I'm wasting money on toys all the bloody time.

I had really meagre savings at the start of all this (a month's worth), blew through them in the 6 weeks I had no income because the business couldn't afford to pay us for 2 weeks then we needed to wait the standard 4 for furlough after we closed.
I still ended up in debt too, which I'm now paying back. Got laid off (not there long enough to get redundancy which is probably why I was one of the ones chosen) and got a new job (luckily I had the experience to enable me to do so) and have worked my arse off through cover being needed for other colleagues self isolating/having covid.
I had come to agreements with everyone about catching up on things that I'd got behind with, and so I've stuck to them, and again have a very modest amount (about a fortnight's worth in reality) which at least means the washer dying won't be a disaster or something.
I didn't really have anything to save on furlough, I pay £20 a week travel, and got fed at work, so that balanced itself out, but the extra utilities from having DD home 24/7 was something that just needed to be absorbed. I used to give her the £20 a week child benefit, that had to stop unfortunately, she used it to feed herself at school and trips out etc so it was just repurposed to feed her at home!
Winter lockdown has been harder, I'm struggling a bit with this cold snap and DD doing her college work at home and so gas and electric consumption has shot up compared to what it's like normally when she's at college/school and I'm at work. I dread how it would have been had I been furloughed this time around though, I suspect the savings would be gone already and we'd be cold!
I really feel for people in that scenario and do feel really lucky that I'm earning, and able to earn a bit more right when I need it most. It was terrifying to see the bills mounting up and have no way of earning at all, never mind more to do overtime, to sort it out.