What is a normal amount of money to have in savings?

[Cherry85]

Literally what it says on the tin. How much is a normal amount for a couple to have in savings?

We got given some money for our wedding and have been spending a lot doing house uo/ holidays etc with the aim to keep 10k for savings.... but should we keep more? We have zero at the moment.

I don't know but I keep £20k. Ideally you would have 3 months salary I think?

General advice is to have equivalent of 3 months' expenses as a minimum put aside for emergencies, E.g. unexpected job loss. Other than that - whatever you want depending on your short/long term plans, e.g. holidays or house renovations

3-6months of regular outgoings (add up all your monthly bills and divide irregular payments like car tax to get a monthly amount) in easily accessible funds. That will be different for everyone, so there is no ‘normal amount’. Then savings for the longer-term including pension, stocks & shares etc.

I think three months' worth of living expenses is the usually cited recommendation.

In terms of the norm, it depends also at your stage of life and circumstances. Someone who's bought a flat or a house is likely to have less in savings than someone who's working and renting, because the first person will have just used the bulk of their savings for a deposit.

3 months salary minimum.

There's no such thing as a normal amount of savings, totally deoends on individual circumstances I assume thats obvious, you need to work out what youd be saving for, how much you can afford etc to find the answer that works for you. How long is a normal price of atring?

Depends on your lifestyle. If you overpay your mortgage, for example, then if hard times hit you could recalculate it and reduce repayments or take a payment break (bank permitting). So you might not need as much as you think? I like to have enough to buy a small 2nd hand car if ours died, so somewhere between 5-10K easily accessible. Other than that, I’d rather put anything extra I could into the mortgage.

www.money.co.uk/savings-accounts/savings-statistics

I think they say 6mths salary for emergencies . There's no right or wrong though , it just depends how much people are able to save .

We are newly retired, but when we were working we always had six months money behind us.

Do you have any debt ?

My DH are recently retired and most of our married life we had less than 5k in savings. We always spent any spare money on holidays
and also paid into pensions as then we couldn’t get hold of the money. We have high amounts of savings each now,

We have at least 6 months of salary easily accessible, and then more put aside for the dc as they get older, just general savings and investments. We’ve been very lucky that we’ve been able to prioritise saving throughout our lives together.

I was just about to link this.

It varies so much, OP -

• The average person in the UK has £17,365 in their savings (but this is an average, so some people will have £50k, 60k, 100k and more, some will have much less - or none, see next point)
• 34% of adults had either no savings, or less than £1000, in a savings account.
• 61% of UK adults save money either every, or most, months - which means over a third don't save most or every month

I don't have any savings. It's terrifying. But I'm in a position where I can't save right now, and that will change soon and I'll be able to again. I'd like to have 3 months salary as a starter, and then go from there.

Around 5k. I am a civil servant so I see my job as very stable. I also don't have a very big mortgage. If either of those weren't true I'd like to have 10k minimum (if possible), if not 15k.

We have 3-4 months of monthly expenses in one account, (was nearer 6 but not now everything has gone up!) we save all our child benefit in another account (for the kids but we could dip into it) and have some premium bonds but not huge amounts of we can't afford it

In terms of savings that are sat that with no intentions on them....none. It just hasn't been a priority, we had kids young so were juggling the childcare years, then we needed to buy a house and then upsize, now we are a 6 figure household with a mortgage and no childcare costs so I know we need to reprioritise. I've always been a firm believer in giving the kids the childhood I wanted them to have not wanting to prioritise savings, mortgage etc whilst we were raising children, I wanted them to have a big enough home, holidays etc (within our means, we haven't gone into debt, we just haven't prioritised long term savings, our savings are for the car, holidays, Christmas etc.

My defence is we are both public sector workers with good pensions and job security, with a good line of credit, insured to our eye balls and have the means of family support if really desperate. We can even move into very cheap housing through DH's work if needed. That said I have said to DH we need to be proper grown ups now and build a savings pot (that's not intended for holidays!) going to start small at about £300 a month and go from there, I want to get to £10,000 (3 months expenses) DH will leave his job and enter the private sector in a couple of years and will get a pay out of about £12,000 so with that combined it'll give us £20,000 about 6 months cushion, which we will want with DH being in less secure work.

It's going to take a very strong resolve, it's a very different mindset than we are used to!

We have £20k in premium bonds which is a nest egg I saved before married etc. It's an emergency fund which we try not to touch. Other than that we have a savings account which fluctuates and in reality is more of a 'holiday' fund. Our excess cash goes into pensions and mortgage overpayments.

For me the key question has always been, if you lose your job how many months would it take before you have a new one and a pay check go into your account? For me it’s been 3-6 months, so I try to keep it at 6 months savings.

Now we’re approaching retirement we’re trying to save a years worth of income. Just to give us a worry free start. But obviously you’re not at that stage!