NOW CLOSED: Are you saving for your retirement or your child’s first home deposit? Discuss this topic with Barclays - £150 up for grabs

[AnnMumsnet]

Hello  you may have seen that this week Barclays have a big campaign to get people talking about home buying and money topics.

On Monday they asked "When are you too old to ask your parents for help?" and on Tuesday discussion focussed on whether (or not) "A home is still a home if you don't own it".

Finally Barclays are asking: "Are you saving for your retirement or your child's first home deposit"?

They say "We want to know what Mumsnetters think about home buying and money dilemmas - this time we want you to think about the future with your children. Our third question relates to savings and you and your family's future and the question is - if you're lucky enough to be making any savings these days (or plan to make savings) - "Are you saving for your retirement or your child's first home deposit?""

Please share your thoughts on this thread - there are no right or wrong answers and (as we've seen) - the question will mean different things to different MNers.

Add your thoughts and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one winner will get a £150 John Lewis voucher.

Thanks for all your comments on the topics this week  do continue to add your thoughts and we'll do the draw for all three threads on Tuesday.

Thanks MNHQ

PS Please note your comments  along with your MN name may be used on the Barclays pages on Mumsnet and elsewhere

[justshootmenow]

Unfortunately we have no savings just a few pennies in their money banks and cannot afford to save anything, on a brighter note the in-laws have some sort of saving account for each of the boys, but I don't know anything about it.

[Gatorade]

Savings - We don't specifically save for our children's future but we do fully utilise both of our ISA allowances each year and we have a number of other saving vehicles (some with instant access and others which are locking away funds for longer periods of time), however we largely focussed on over-paying the mortgage with the view to clearing this before throwing serious money at savings.

In addition our DC has a specific saving account which all birthday/christmas money is saved into, DH and I contribute additional amounts to this and match any money deposited from birthday/christmas.

Pension - Both DH and I are enrolled in employer pension schemes, we (including employers contribution) approx 10% to 15% of our salaries into these pension plans. DH also has an old defined benefit plan which will pay out a relatively small pension on retirement from an previous employer.

We don't have a plan yet as to what we will do to help out DD and future DC's when the time comes, I imagine we will heavily contribute to education (university etc) and we have investment properties that could be transferred to them if they can't get onto the property ladder and/or our pensions perform resulting in us not needing the income. However, I do think that they need to be able to stand on their own two feet and not have everything handed to them on a plate so it might just be university help plus deposit.

[CanonFodder]

Haaaaaaaa, haaaaaaaaa, haaaaaaa, haaaaaaa, ahaaaaaaaa. Wipes eyes. Ahem, oh, you were serious??? I won't be able to retire. Because by the time I get that that age there will be no such thing as a state pension, or the age will be too high to be of any use to me. I have no spare cash for saving for my OWN first house deposit, let alone my kids, and I'm nearly 40. The huge debts of Uni followed by mammoth house price inflation have done for me. I'd be weeping in the corner in despair without the comforting thought that climate change will have levelled the playing field by the time I get to old age and we'll all be in the same (leaky, rotten) boat by then! :o

[AlexanderS]

Saving for my DS's first home deposit?! There's no way I could do that. I might just about manage to pay for driving lessons and his first car.

University? Unless he has a vocational course in mind - like law, education, medicine, social work or accountancy - or has an absolute passion for a subject, I'll advise him not to go to university. And I've been to university myself (and done both an undergrad and a postgrad qualification). With the massive hike in fees I just don't think university is worth it anymore, unless you have a decent shot at a good job at the end of it to pay off all the debt you will accumulate. I think the days of doing what me and my friends did when picking our degrees - looking through the university prospectus and thinking 'Ooh, such-and-such-a-course sounds interesting, I'll do that' - are long gone. In spite of my degree I'm in a low-paid job and the fact is if I'd gone to college and done a vocational Level 3 course instead of going to university I'd be on a better wage than I am now.

My retirement is something I haven't been saving for (am in my early 30s) but I intend to rectify this soon by joining my (public sector) workplace pension scheme.

[joanofarchitrave]

I have an employer's pension and we own a house - the latter being in a flood area so i would expect to be homeless around 2040 or so. Though we do have a lilo.

In the meantime I also have an actual, full-time, permanent job and right at this minute I haven't been told that I'm at risk of redundancy. So I save £20 a month into an account for ds, which I think of as going towards orthodontistry (prob about £2- 3K in 4 years' time). Because my sister-in-law never had orthodontistry and there aren't any pictures of her smiling until she was about 35 when she finally had them done.

I would love to think that I could save towards university for ds; after the teeth, that will be my aim. I guess I could hope to manage £3K or so towards it.

I save into a credit union. I thoroughly recommend them.

[fryingpanalley]

HAHAHAHAHA
Who the hell is saving for their kids house deposit? Seriously?
My top priority is saving to afford a flat large enough to fit a single bed and a cot in the second bedroom. Then my two DDs could share a room and we could stop having to juggle baby sleeping in the living room, our room etc. Sod twenty years time, we're talking about trying to get some sleep tonight.
We're not even low paid. DH is a higher rate tax payer but we've just lost child benefit, childcare vouchers, seen a doubling of nursery fees and now the 15 hours a week from age 3 is being eyed up. I honestly think that the people that dream up these questions about savings must be living in a parallel universe to the one of those of us with kids who - critically- got on the London property ladder late or not at all.

[lisad123]

Currently we aren't saving anything
But we are selling our house next year and moving into rented house. With the excess from the sale we will put some into a savings account or their trust funds, for them to use for first house, travelling, wedding whatever they want.

[BetsyBlingtastic]

We're hoping the pensions we're investing in will be worth something in 20 years' time, but with the economy the way it is, who knows?

I can forsee dc still living at home well into their twenties. But who knows if there will be a spectacular property crash (NOT that I would hope for that) that would make a home affordable for them.

[BikeRunSki]

My 4 yo has a CTF and my 1 yo has a Junior ISA. We put £20 into each account each month and grandparents add a bit occasionally. With 2 children in childcare, that's pretty much all the spare money we have at the end of the month. They have both also inherited a bit from their great grandmother. It's up to them how to spend it once they are 18. I am slightly worried that I won't have control of it then - I'd like them to spend it on a house deposit or Uni fees . I don't expect them automatically to go to Uni (even though I have an MSc and PhD and DH has an MSc), because it is such a big financial commitment - it really needs to be a business decision. We certainly would to afford to contribute to both house deposit and uni fees. My own parenst were not in a position to contribute to our house deposit and I was fortunate enough to be the final year of undergraduates to get a full maintenance grant and fees paid (graduated 1992).

At the moment my 4 yo son wants to be a fireman - that's fine by me - training provided and structured career progression.

As for retirement - that worries me. I have an occupational pension but I am not sure if it'll be enough. Hoping that retirement expenses - no mortgage, no child care, no commuting - will be significantly lower. But right now there is nothing I can do about it.

[Djembe]

The prospect of saving is such an alien one to me and DH. Having enough to afford our (key worker) mortgage in the SE is our aim, then to pay bills and eat reasonable food. Pay for a house for someone else?!?!

I am so clueless I have learned from this thread what a CTF is - or at least I have guessed that it is Child Trust Fund and it's basically giving the bank some money each month for them to gamble with. Fuck that for a laugh

[cryhavoc]

We put £50 a month away for DD, and have done so since she was born. £10 of that comes from my MIL, and DH and I have a £20 standing order from our accounts. That's non-negotiable, and she won't know about it until she is considering buying her own home. Neither of us were given any financial help for uni, and while we don't resent it, we would like to do things differently for our child.
We have two other savings accounts - the Five Year Plan fund, which will (hopefully) be our deposit when DH comes out of the forces (we currently live in quarters), and the fun fund, which is emptied more often than we'd like.

[EllenParsons]

I'm still saving for my own home deposit let alone saving one for children to buy property! I haven't saved for retirement yet but I will soon be starting a new job and paying into their pension.

[birthdaypanic]

When we first married retirement seemed so far away when it was suggested we increased our pension contributions we couldn't afford it, never seemed to be enough money to save for the future.
Retirement is now fast approaching and we still can't afford to save the age we can receive state pension goes up, government wants us to work until we drop.
So no not able to save even though we would love to.

[Jux]

Huh! Chance would be a fine thing! DH and I, for the first time ever have said we'll just give each other token presents this year.

Yes, I would love to save for 'retirement' or for anything, dd's (almost) inevitable Uni fees, her first home deposit, something to live on and buy food with when I'm 80, lots of things. No money lying around atm and unlikely to be any in the future.

Luckily, we do own our home outright, so we'll sell it, downsize, and have to live on the interest of whatever's left over, which will probably be £1 a month or something ghastly. Not looking forward to it.

[prettybird]

Didn't notice the other bit of the topic: have always contributions to my pension, ever since I graduated. Non-negotiable. It never occurred to me NOT to. But perhaps I've been fortunate enough to always have had jobs where I was well enough paid to be able to afford the contributions and not notice the deductions.

[ElfBabies]

are we going to turn into america with high fees and scholarships

[ComradeJing]

I think it's more important to save for retirement than a deposit for children's property.

At this stage we need to get rid of our credit card debt before we do anything else and then build up a savings buffer. We do already pay into pensions so that's being dealt with.

[suzydelarosa]

We have paid off the mortgage so are now trying to get credit card debt down and then start saving. I have put 10% of my salary into a public sector pension but have no doubt that the terms of that will slowly be adjusted as the baby boomers use up all the pension money and it won't nearly be what I expected when I retire. I only have one child and have put £100/month into her CTF since she was born - she's now 6. When she's 18 and wants to use it for University it will probably cover one term, maybe a year at most!

I find the OP's (Barclay's) actual question a bit misguided and out of touch. Given that we are living in an 'age of austerity' and that so many of the posts on MN talk about financial struggles, it seems a bit rich that they're asking questions about whether we are saving money for our children's house deposits.... when many can't even afford homes themselves!! They might as well have asked if we were saving up for our new family yacht or new cars for all our DCs! Kind of beggars belief since only a very very small minority of the population have the luxury to be able to save for their children's future homes and Barclays should know that. Market research by myopic marketing t**ts working in The City.

[ifso]

Not sure I'm entirely happy with Barclays using MN for its 'research'.

Frankly it's none of Barclays' business where our money is going!

Sorry, rant over

[ifso]

Possibly we'll leave the country again in 2 years, giving our kids a taste of how things run in more efficent countries, with more efficient banking systems. Maybe we'll be in a better frame of mind to think of the happy future they may have in another country...

If we don't leave this country, I will actively encourage independent thought in our children, a sense of adventure, a spirit of enterprise of not relying on their parents, the state, grandparents for handouts. They will get jobs, like most adults do, and I will teach them the benefits of planning what to do with their money

Reminding them there is a big world out there, rather than encouraging them to shackle down to a mortgage or pension with a questionable lender is not high on my list of priorities for our children. I hope that answers Barclays question for them sufficiently. Eugh. Why does this thread make me so angry!?!!!

[HECTheHallsWithRowsAndFolly]

Neither.

My children both have autism and will need care for life so we are doing what we can to ensure they are financially secure, but this will not involve a deposit for a home, as they'll need supported accommodation.

[ksld]

If I were saving I would be saving for my retirement as I don't want to be reliant on anyone (my children) for hand outs to keep me going when I retire. I want to be able to help them not the other way round. However as I don't have a job and can't find one at the moment I am entirely reliant on DH's earnings. DH saves £10-20 a month after all outgoings. This is 'saved up' until the next thing breaks - this year has been boiler, car and freezer so the 'savings' are actually non existent.

Thanks Barclays it hadn't actually occurred to me that people were ever in a position to help their children with first deposit on a house, that will be something else my children miss out on then.

[B3nnyB0y]

Why save? With the base rate at .25% what's the point?

We've got some put away in ISAs for emergency but apart from that there's just no good rates around. When we did have some cash (before DS came along) it went into Premium bonds and got a much better return Vs banks

[ChippingInAWinterWonderland]

IfSo - You don't have to be happy about it. It is MN's business, not yours.

If you aren't happy about it, why post on their thread?

Barclays are at least doing it 'up front' with MN - a proper business deal. Do you seriously think that some threads aren't started by companies wanting information but doing it in a sneaky way and that many, many other companies aren't reading the threads daily and posting??