No motivation to save because I’ll always be poor

[Fallguyshotdog]

I’m quite bad with money because I just have no motivation whatsoever to save. I know how to keep costs down and be frugal, but what’s the point of making sacrifices just to have a meagre few thousand in the bank?

I’d love advice or inspiration to help me change this negative mindset that I’ve fallen in to. I’m a single mum so I’ll never be able to afford to buy my dream house, and I’m really late in starting a career after many personal and health issues over the years so I don’t think I’ll ever manage much over £30k salary wise.

How do people keep up the motivation? I’m not comfortable relying on the idea of a future partner, as my DS won’t be his so finances would never be truly equal and there’s no guarantee I’d find ‘the one’ anyway. It just feels like it’s not possibly to ever make it to a position where I’m comfortable and well off.

Anyone else feel like this?

I have found the saving pots attached to my Starling Bank current account really helpful. Every month I manually put money into each named account and love to see it grow. You can set targets and it’ll tell you how far away you are.

You could try saving a percentage OP. We had no idea about savings as nobody ever really talked to us about things like that when we were younger so I guess for years as we got career progression and associated pay rises we just improved our standard of living when in fact I know now that we should have saved at least some of the rises. Eventually the penny dropped and we started by saving 5% of our total income. We increased that percentage by 5% every 6 months thereafter until we were saving 30% of income which is about right for us. We found it astonishing how quickly the savings increased and we adapted our lifestyle and began to find ways to cut back on expenditure without really affecting our quality of life whilst all the time watching our savings pot grow, Please give it a try OP you might surprise yourself at how good it feels.

Op what I find inspiring is to listen to minimalism videos on you tube. It helps me to not waste money. I too am a single parent and doubt I will ever have much earnings owing to my health limits but somehow watching these minimalism talks helps me gain perspective.

No problem is so bad that you can't make it worse.

There are good reasons to try to be sensible & frugal.

What is your housing situation OP? As that would very much influence my answer! You say you'll never have your dream house but do you own a place at all or are you renting? If you own then there's plenty of reasons to have some money set aside. If renting, is it private or SH? I ask because if private renting I would save all the money you can as you won't know if you might need to move one day at short notice.

SH changes my answer. Because if it is and you couldn't work for some reason, UC will pay your rent but you can have up to £6000 saved and still get that. But over £6000 it would affect what benefits you could get.

So I suppose my answer is it's still worth saving something for emergencies but how much is debatable. And should you cut down on quality of life now to do so? Again debatable.

I have a friend who earns less than 30k, recently bought an ex council semi, yes might not be most people’s dream house but they appreciate they’re in a much better position than many people and who knows where they’ll be in a few years. We save a bit each month and although we are constantly having to borrow out of it, it certainly makes life a lot less stressful than having to panic when an unexpected bill comes in or borrow from friends/family

I save for various things I have managed a new TV new sofa house decor fridge freezer washing machine I'm now saving for moving to a new house smaller then I'm in as I don't need it social housing by October I'll br able to afford to downsize and have money to pay removals and paint and doctorate new home

I am also a lone parent and have always saved as much as I can. As others have said, having savings gives you lots of options and means that you have one less thing to worry about.

Being able to afford private school fees or private medical appointments is something very few can afford, and you can be very much not poor (as per your headline), without being able to afford these.

If your issue is more "as I'll never be really wealthy" - well, aiming to be really wealthy is admirable and worthy ambition, but it's very far from worrying you'll always be poor. It might be that to get the right advice and inspiration, you need to reframe how you're looking at this, from "I'll always be poor" (when actually, I'm glad to see you seem to have quite a lot of disposable income) to "How can I start to build wealth".

I started saving as soon as I got a job. I was renting and living away from home and earning almost nothing. I wanted to buy a house. I researched which banks would give me the most options in borrowings. I squirrelled away money. As my experience increased I could save more money. I met my husband who had no money. I told him that if he wanted to buy with me he needed to save money towards a deposit. He started saving then too.

I do have a professional job with a degree qualification. Before he retired my husband was a scientist and they aren't generally very well paid.

We scraped up enough for a deposit and started house hunting. We bought our first house and paid off the mortgage as fast as we could. There were a few issues with the house such as it being up lots of steps. We had a baby and it was hard work with the steps and prams. We sold the house and bought another bigger nicer house with better access. We paid that one off as well quite quickly. We scrimped. The children wore secondhand clothes and so did I. Most of their toys were secondhand. We kept our old but reliable cars for a long time. Our house became mortgage free a long time ago now and we have a lot invested ready for retirement.

Nothing beats the security of owning your own house. It meant when my husband had some health issues he could retire a bit early. We could finance one of our children through med school in another city and help the other one through university living at home. I could retire now if I really wanted to.