How much do you have in savings?

[Mum8929]

Husband and I have a small emergency pot but need new cars and worried we’ll be left with almost no savings. How much do you have in savings?

How did you do it?

@Caffeineneedednow I knew as soon as I read your post it was academia, it’s bloody hard especially now. Seriously well done on your permanent post, it’s like trying to gather the tears of a unicorn especially these days.

We have substantial savings due to investing. I had my first job at 13, working all weekend, you cant do this now, it was in a hotel. When I was taking my A levels I worked Thursday and Friday night in Tesco from 5 till 10 and then all day Saturday. I had about 2k by the time I finished my A levels, this was the mid 1980’s. Started dabbling in investments then. Unbeknownst to me DH was doing the same as a teenager, I didn’t know him till I was in my late twenties. He took his A levels 2 years early at 16 so worked FT in a lab for 2 years and used this to invest. It was a really decent multinational company.

We bought a house in the 190’s which we paid off in 3 years due to our investments, no penalty. That’s 25 years of no mortgage. For people that both worked in higher education and had no fancy city jobs we have done far better than our decent but not amazing salaries, investing changed our lives.

Obviously 1990’s, it wasn’t a wattle and daub house:) My crazy work ethic is from an immigrant heritage via my Dad whose family fled the Japanese in the 1930’s, lost everything and had already been subjected to hardship because of the civil war between the KMT and Communists.

Depends on how you define savings, but I currently have:

£11k as an emergency fund (for job loss emergencies) - nearly 6 months living expenses
£2.5k being drip-fed into a pension at about £500 a month
£5k in a pot to do things to the house (decorating, boiler is old etc)
£3.5k ready to overpay the mortgage next year when the fixed rate ends

All of this is either stored in easy access savings accounts (4.75%) or about 4k is stored in premium bonds

7-8 months’ worth of my gross salary. Mostly earmarked as a supplement for my workplace pension for retirement (so not much to last me for 20-30 years).

250k. Using it to also pay our mortgage off, and will have some left over to get the house done up. This is due to inheritance and personal savings.

I have £14.86, no joke! I haven’t got any debts, apart from my mortgage, though!

£3k but I'm on disability benefits so that's a huge amount really.

If the economy collapses to the point where people's money becomes worthless, who do you think is going to want your shiny yellow block?

It's not like if the financial systems go down you'll be able to smugly walk into Tescos and pay for the food shop with an ingot.

Fair enough if you think gold is a better savings investment than an alternative like stocks and shares, or an isa or whatever. It very well could be. But as an alternative to emergency cash savings?

If things got to the point where people couldn't access cash, or the pound became worthless we'd be so fucked generally that having savings in gold would be as useless as having a fancy car or watch - what things are "worth" in a functioning economy doesn't mean anything - things are only "worth" what people are willing to pay for them and in an emergency situation things like petrol or food would be "worth" more than gold.
Not to mention if things did degenerate to that degree people would be more likely to just rob it off you than politely shake hands and do a gentleman's deal!

Years worth of take home pay for us both. But we are old and kids grown up.

I forgot to mention that I’ve got almost £8k in my S&S ISA (extra pension pot) and I have a workplace pension too.

I am unemployed now due to ill health, so my Emergency Fund has been eaten up, hence the £14.86. I am hoping to save £50 per month of my disability benefit in my Emergency Fund. It’ll be challenging though, since the cost of living is so high 😞

Big fat zero! Both earn reasonable salaries but nothing spare at the end of the month.

Enough to cover 1 year with no jobs, spending as we do now, bar holidays.