[Closed] Do you have £100 in savings?

I've got about £650 of unsecured debt. Mind you I'm seemingly Opex, Mrs S is Capex.

Not surprising in the slightest, but definitely scary. We're a nation propped up by credit. A huge amount of people live month to month, and the saying that you're only 2 pay cheques away from being homeless is probably very accurate.

Jesus! do you know what level of willy waving is going to follow? 🙄

Not see so long ago I didn't. Can't say I was scared.

up until my mid 30's I didn't.

before 27ish that was because I kept buying records and booze

after that it was because I was self-employed and genuinely skint. I don't find that stat surprising at all - probably almost half my friends are now in their mid 30's and still living in shared accommodation...

In pensions - yes.

In a savings account - no.

Basically: people with no money should save a load of money. Yeah, right.

I regularly put money away, one pot is going towards getting on the housing ladder (hopefully happening before summer next year) and the other is going towards a new bike (that's happening in the new year, nothing is getting in the way of that!)

Yup, but unemployed, currently forecasting to run out of money mid december. Could be better, could be worse.

We have no debt to except the mortgage (should be paid off in our early 50s) and enough savings to buy a used car should we need to.
I know people with terrifying mortgages at our age, a £40k car on PCP on the drive and loaded credit cards......

Of course not. What's the point in savings when interest rates are virtually zero. I'm throwing every 'spare' penny I'm left with at the end of the month (usually sweet FA) at my mortgage. A small percentage of interest on £100 savings is FA, a small percentage of interest on Ten's of grand of debt is a bit more substantial. Bikes are funded via interest free credit cards/credit or bike to work (mainly because of the tax benefit - I'm a tax avoider on that score).

"I know people with terrifying mortgages at our age, a £40k car on PCP on the drive and loaded credit cards......"

Likewise. And stranger still for me - dont seem to be worried about it.

I couldnt sleep at night with the level of debt some folk i know have - esp working in ne scotland at the moment.

Until i was 34 or 35 i hadn't even had a steady income for more than about 4 months at a time in any year. My tax/pension/NI status in the UK was somewhat ropey. I think i'll get about 47p a year pension (unless they abolish them before i retire.)

The first *complete* tax year where i worked an entire 12 months (that was a shock) i had so much money that i didn't know what to do with it.

So i spent it all. And then some.

Was probably into my 40s before i could honestly say i had a bank ac**** (of any sort) that even managed to remain in the black for an entire year. Probably ok now though.

I haven't got a single penny in savings and no pension whatsoever.

I haven't got a single penny in savings and no pension whatsoever.

[Passes Loddrick a fine single malt and a service revolver]

Those figured can't be right for Yorkshire. It'll all be stuffed under the mattress, and they just aren't admitting to it 😉

I certainly do these days (he said waving his willy) but there have been times when I didn't and ended each month in debt. So no, I'm not surprised.

Of course not. What's the point in savings when interest rates are virtually zero. I'm throwing every 'spare' penny I'm left with at the end of the month (usually sweet FA) at my mortgage.

Could you get at that mortgage money if needed? What about investments? The concept of savings is not clear really as depends on debt levels as to how much savings mean really. But so many people not having as little as £100 in cash or instant access a/c surprises me.

[quote="muppetWrangler"][Passes Loddrick a fine single malt and a service revolver]Wonder what a service revolver would go for on the black market, might cover his £100 quid in savings.

No, neither of us do, but we also have zero debt.

Didnt this one get done a while ago with x% of americans couldnt raise 300 dollars at short notice story?

I've got a buffer saved up that in the event of redundancy i should be okay for 4-5 months before I start panicking. Hasn't always been this way, only managed to build this up over the last few years.

I have a little bit but not very much. If push came to shove I should be able to take a bit more money from my business though (which is what I tend to do in the form of bonuses as and when I need to).

We are, thankfully, owners of around 66% of our home so if crap hit the fan we could downsize and be mortgage free.

That's partly the fault of Gov. policy though for dissuading folk from saving..

I couldnt sleep at night with the level of debt some folk i know have

Me neither, self employed and don't feel comfortable without a years worth of mortgage/living costs in the bank as a float to see me through a recession.
I don't understand how salaried people can rack up so much debt and not have a bit in reserve when you know exactly what is coming in every month?
I appreciate there are those on low incomes (I was one once) but I bet a lot of them have sky tv/new iPhones/eat out and booze/nearly new car etc etc.

My credit card debt outweighs my savings but things are manageable. The only way I manage to save anything these days is through buying company shares (it comes directly out of my pay), I put 10% aside for that (the company matches 3% and the shares have performed well for the last 15 years so kind of works for savings if not exactly risk free). Ofc every couple of years I withdraw chunks to waste on bikes or to stop me getting overdrawn so I only have a couple of grand there at any time, others in the company have built it up over 15+ years and are sitting on 6-figure amounts of shares 🙁

I could probably scrape together a couple of hundred but that is it.

I'm 43, our Mortgage is in excess of £250k and we have fair chunk on Credit cards (as a result of extending our house)

However, we have over 50% equity in our house, so if/when it all goes wrong we'll sell, pay everything off and buy a cheaper house with little/no mortgage.

It probably should keep me awake at night but doesn't...

I have enough to choke a dozen donkeys.

(Which apparently is £900 according to film quotes)

In reality I'm not prepared to comment.

I reckon I could last 3-6 months comfortably, perhaps a year with tightening some belts, perhaps 18 with severe budgeting.

Just me to think about though, so aware not everyone is as lucky

I currently have -£200, Usually teeter around +£400 to -£300 and don't see that changing for at least a couple of years.

I find this surprising and scary:

If you find it surprising that a 16million people don't have any savings then you've led a very sheltered life. The vast majority of people that work for our company are on minimum wage, every penny they get counts, by the time pay day comes around they have zero money left.

I know people with terrifying mortgages at our age, a £40k car on PCP on the drive and loaded credit cards....

IMHO there's no right or wrong answer to this.

Yeah, too much debt can be stressful, but, and this is sometimes a shock to some people - one day we will all be dead, you can't always be thinking about the future because one day you won't have one.

I don't personally have a huge amount of debt, more than I'd like but by nature I'd prefer to have none, but I don't judge people who do - often it's the case that they're in a better position than you might think long-term.

Consider the people you know:

Large mortgage, but large asset - having a large mortgage does limit the amount of disposable cash you have month to month, but legislation as it is these days means than they would have needed at least 5% equity to buy it, there's a possibility they could have self-certed into a too big mortgage about 10 years ago or bought it with a 110% mortgage, but those issues will have resolved themselves by now.

Big PCP payments, I have my own personal issues with the PCP product, but ultimately it's another leveraged asset, the finance company had to 'prove' to a decent level of certainty that they could afford it when they bought it.

Big Credit Card bill, hardest to look past of course - but do you really know how much they owe? I don't know anyone who hands over their statements to their friends every month - but again, the credit card company cannot lend more than they can comfortably afford AND can afford to repay, not just 'service' every month. They can't fib and borrow £10k from Barclaycard and £10 from Capital One at the same time, because balances and repayment history is centralised and published to any and all potential lenders.

So, whilst it doesn’t seem prudent, you can live with a lot of debt and it’s reasonably safe too – finance has changed a lot over the years and especially since 2008 – these days a finance agreement is considered a 2 way agreement (it always was, but rarely worked as such in the past) The customer presents a set of fact – income, expenditure, past financial history, the seller presents a facility based on those facts – if anything meaningful changes than the seller is duty bound to change their agreement – so for example if you lose your job they should accept a lower payment until things improve, it will have a detrimental effect on your credit worthiness, but not as bad as you might think, if there’s a disaster, say someone is badly hurt and may never return to work again, then they may ask for assets to be returned but it’s not quick and it doesn’t need to be any more painful that it needs to be – if you’re honest and open with your bank it’s likely you’ll get 12 months before your house is repossessed, most people can sell up and settle long before the bailiffs come.

Consumer Debt really is a no-lose gamble these days as long as you don’t panic or bury your head if things go wrong, and if it does the courts are heavily weighted in favour of the consumer – if a bank lends more than they should, they’ll lose in court, if a bank refuses to be reasonably flexible in the event of a ‘meaningful life event’ they’ll lose in court, and if it all goes wrong and you end up in Bankruptcy court – the most you’ll lose is the things you bought with the borrowed money in the first place. The assets they’re allowed to take for bankruptcy is just luxury goods.

More than that but not loads. Like a few on here though, no debt and money in the bank is a relatively recent thing, it's only in the last couple of years that income has been steady and predictable which makes a massive difference IMO.

I'm a bit surprised by the figures but only in that I'd have thought it would be a [i]little [/i]bit more, a few hundred maybe. It's no surprise that millions of people have effectively naff all money saved.

Im secure now, but earlier in my life I had no savings and lots of debt.

We live in a world with no rate of return on savings and marketing that causes you to buy stuff or feel worthless. Social media makes it worse. There was a time when any sort of loan / credit was seen as wrong.

Now we have happy adverts making 1000%+ interest seem quite normal.

Most people are doomed when they cant work - governments will then have to tax those that did save and work to pay for those who didn't.

I'm keeping my savings offshore so they cant be spent on the poor 🙂

Oh as for me.

This is collectively between my Wife and I.

We've got about £1500 in our savings account. We have a 'windfall' of £9k due soon.

But we owe about £2000 on a low rate card, we also owe about £4000 on a very low interest loan - this was a tidy-up consolidation loan to clear debts associated with my Wife completiting her Uni course.

We've both got decent incomes, nothing flash, but over the national average salary.

Jesus! do you know what level of willy waving is going to follow

Without wishing to live up to this 🙂

I have around 100x that available in 'cash' as savings - but am still very very nervous about credit / ongoing monthly commitments - it's definitely down to attitude as much as income.

It's also my only savings, I should be having less as 'cash' working the rest of it a lot harder somehow, but I get the heeby jeebys doing that too!

I'm not sure I get the argument that there's no point saving because there's no meaningful interest though.

no

There was an article a few years back which looked at something similar and a large number of people interviewed had winning the national lottery as their retirement plan.

I chap I work with says his retirement plan is to rely on his wife.

Who earns about 14k at best and is about 20 years younger than him.

I also upset him when I worked out that since the lottery started he has spent well over £7,500 on tickets and still hasn't won more than a tenner.

Mr Salmon, the point isn't that people don't have savings that they are using to generate more cash by investing it, but that they don't have even a small amount of available money if something simple, like a broken washing machine occurred.

Of course not. What's the point in savings when interest rates are virtually zero.

If you're in a position to, it sensible to have some liquid assets in case of unforeseen expenses You need a buffer. Not tens of thousands but some.

It's no good paying every penny you have off the mortgage if you need to borrow at a higher rate to pay for a new boiler or something.

I chap I work with says his retirement plan is to rely on his wife.

Who earns about 14k at best and is about 20 years younger than him.

I also upset him when I worked out that since the lottery started he has spent well over £7,500 on tickets and still hasn't won more than a tenner.

You sound a bundle of laughs to work with.

wobbliscott - Member

Of course not. What's the point in savings when interest rates are virtually zero.

What's the point - for me, it's to cover unexpected 'emergencies' like the boiler dying on it's arse, big car bill (although I have a separate car maintenance account that would hopefully take care of that), blocked drain that needs sorting etc, and worst case scenario; redundancy....

I've always hated the idea of debt & always wanted a 'buffer' of savings. Even when I was in my mid-teens and working part time at Olympus Sport I would endeavour to only spend half of my monthly pay; didn't always work, of course.

I've got a lot more than £100 saved, but I wouldn't say it's a huge amount. We have no investments to speak of, we chose a house that enabled us to have a modest mortgage, we own both our cars outright and don't have any credit card debt.
But, mainly that's through being sensible with our money, as opposed to being loaded - we are far from that - although I recognise that compared to a lot of people in life we are very fortunate.

Still gonna buy a Euromillions ticket on Friday! 😆

I've got some cash in savings, but I've mostly been over-paying the mortgage the last year or so. I can borrow it back or take a payment holiday if I need to, so it's still my main safety net, but because it means going and asking the building society, I'm not tempted to fritter it away on cars / bikes on a whim.

large mortgage > large savings pot. So I guess we have liquidity rather than savings? What does 'savings' actually mean?

Mr Salmon, the point isn't that people don't have savings that they are using to generate more cash by investing it, but that they don't have even a small amount of available money if something simple, like a broken washing machine occurred.

That's not what I meant- see jon1973's post!
The point of saving to me is basically to have that money in the bank for some future use as opposed to not having it because I spent it on something else instead. Whether there's any interest earned is neither here nor there in terms of whether having that money is a good thing or not, and surely most people would think that it is...?

Obviously I appreciate that not everyone is in a position to do this though.

the credit card company cannot lend more than they can comfortably afford AND can afford to repay,

not sure this is true at all. first credit card they gave me £5k limit. I was making monthly payments, as i put money on it the limit increased to £5k above the balance. I realised this was dangerous and paid the lot off.

If i maxed it out i'd really struggle to pay it back.

I got paid this week. After the overdraft had been cleared off (and before any outgoings came out) my current account in credit to the tune of £0.09. Go me.

not loads more. but yes.

400 / 500 quid in an easy to access savings account (will be zero after christmas, then build up again)

shares - about a grand

pension

70k of equity in house, as an absolute last resort. I do think about it, and I know I need more ready savings to hand, but coming out of vast amounts of stupid debt, I'm in a much better position than 2 years ago.

generally about - 2.5-3k pcm

Hi five cougar, I've had a year of being skint on payday, well on the 1st of the following when all the DD's come out, the boss gets the housekeeping + other budgets and the childcare bills get paid.

The wife's back at work now though so I've got a bit left over to.......pay off the credit card and overdraft from when she wasn't working. (and buy a new bike on 0%, ssshhhhh)

No cash at all, but I keep 2 kilos of coke in a mattress so that come the zombie apocalypse I can either barter with it, or hoof a kilo up each nostril and die in a blood-soaked psychotic blizzard of baseball bats and kitchen knives

that they don't have even a small amount of available money if something simple, like a broken washing machine occurred.

I may not have savings but I've enough clean underpants to see me through until the next payday.

no but I've got 2 cars and if i HAD* to then I'd shift the 2nd car and that would keep us afloat for 3 months or so. No point having money in the bank at 0.2% when I could be cruising round in it listening to sick tunes**

*I don't want to, I'm having a love affair with my truck
**Radio 4

Ish, but I've got loads of bikes and snowboards to sell so no probs.

I chap I work with says his retirement plan is to rely on his wife.

Bloody hope not. I'm relying on her too.

My approach is 3 x monthly outgoings + 25% in my savings account. Then every penny I could save each month gets put into over paying the mortgage

It's almost impossible to comment why people don't have savings though isn't it.. Low paid jobs, hardship etc, or a BIG expense had cleared them out...

We've an offset mortgage, so I class that as savings (the money in the offset, not the mortgage)...

However, truck lover up there made an suggestion they other day that made me think.. Completely max out your mortgage ability with no intention of paying it off, but live in a nice house for a few years. Then, once equity in the house increases, and the kids have left, sell up, pay off mortgage, get small house...

DrP

This is an interesting part of the article - some poorer people manage things ok:

However, the research also showed that some people on low incomes do save money.

Roughly a quarter of adults with household incomes below £13,500 have more than £1,000 in savings.

And 40% of people in that income bracket manage to save something every month.

I'm 26 and have approx £16k in ISA/assets. I will liquidate that asset this month though to get the cash. Not sure what to do with it, plan was to buy a house with my partner but then we moved to London. Still might buy to rent elsewhere in the country. (we are combining money, obvs £16k wont get me owt)

I've saved a minimum of £400 a month (avg around £700) since I got a job after Uni at 21 (or was I 22). I went travelling for a bit which ate up £6k but it was worth every penny and I'd spend it all again in a heartbeat.

Living with parents, paying minimal rent, not paying bills, etc put me in a very advantageous position in my early 20s. Im fortunate enough that I have a good relationship with my parents that allowed me to do that, otherwise it would be a different story I'm sure.

I think I'm now able to save + live comfortably on my salary, so that's cool for me, but appreciate at 26 years old i'm massively in the minority.

I don't have £100 of savings but I do have, in a pot at home, cleverly converted to foreign currency, mainly coins, so I don't spend it, my emergency stash...

Includes

Greek drachma
French Francs
about $6 in $1 bills (only foldy stuff)
Random Danish coins
lots of Portuguese escudos

Bound to worth something if I get desperate

^ I was in a similar position, saved as I was single at the time. had a good sizeable deposit then met a girl.. and she already owned a home. happy days. combined forces, bought a house. comfortable. but little savings. usually have a least half a months wages on standby with no debts other than the mortgage (no loans and CC card gets paid off monthly - if i use it). had really good savings rates back when i was saving too.

running on fumes because of summer hols, so battening down the hatches and promised myself i can save for a new bike, if i can save for a new car first (which will take a while, but with the right choices will give me better economy, and less running costs overall).

^ I was in a similar position

Think the holiday coins in a pot is quite common 😆

I have a pot like that tiger.

Only its nigerian niara , turkmenistan manat , angolan quanza , equatorial guinea cfa , azeri manat

I think the coins from each are worth more as scrap than as coins ....

Not a bean what's the point with interest rates as they are. I have a pension because free work money but that's it. All my spare cash goes toward clearing the mortgage. I have a 0% card for emergencies if I need it. No other debts though bar a very cheap car which my allowance more than covers.

Think the holiday coins in a pot is quite common

...come the zombie apocalypse I can either barter with it, or hoof a kilo up each nostril and die in a blood-soaked psychotic blizzard of baseball bats and kitchen knives

Crikey, do you have any idea when this is happening? 😯

I have a buffer, and a selection of other investments. If necessary I could cover the costs of living for about 2 years, but I may buy a C250 estate on Saturday, so that'll knock that back a bit...

I'd be fine if it wasn't for those pesky bikes 😳

So no, I don't have £100 in savings (or rather I do, but I also have a credit card at a similar level so it all balances out to about zero).

We have a bit in a savings account (5k or so) thanks to some windfalls in the last year or so that were horrible at the time personally but have worked out OK financially. We save about 500 quid a month but that's for holidays, Christmas, etc. so is all spent at some point.

Fair bit of equity (100k-ish) in the house so if push came to shove we could downsize and be OK.

Balancing that are a couple of personal loans for car, etc. that on the salary of two experienced teachers are currently easy to afford.

So overall, I think we're lucky enough to be in a relatively comfortable place but up until maybe 5 years ago we weren't due to my youthful stupidity with a bank employee's rate credit card and the financial fallout of my wife's previous relationship. At that point we'd have probably been some of those people in the article...

Savings are all subject to income and outgoings and I can recall quite clearly when I didn't have a pot to piss in, so got that T shirt.

I'm fortunate that I have earned enough in recent years to save regularly, but then it burns a hole in my pocket and I feel the NEED to spend it!! 😳

I have a bit more than £100 in savings. But maybe not for much longer. Just opened a letter from my bank saying my savings interest will be going down from 0.25% to 0.05% per annum. Great. Time to blow it all on coke and hookers I reckon.

Too little information in this headline grabbing story.

How old are these people? It does not stipulate they are adults. There are 11 million under 18s in the uk. That could seriously effect the figures.

Secondly if you have a £10K personal loan and £1K in your savings account are you counted as having £1K in savings or minus £9K in savings

Thirdly - what constitutes savings? Does it have to be in a savings account? If it's in your current account or your wallet does that count?

Finally, at what point in the month/year were they asking? £100 is less than a third of the weekly wage of a full time person working on minimum wage. Asking them on a Thursday or a Friday might make a hell of a difference.

I do have more than £100 in savings. When I was younger i got into minor debt difficulties and saw how quickly a small debt can escalate into something unmanageable. Since then I've gone pretty much debt free, I have a credit card but it's just for convenience and is paid off early every month.

There's been a few periods where I've cut back quite dramatically on expenditure in order to stay debt free but I'd rather do that than live beyond my means and rack up a debt even if I thought it was a temporary situation.

I do very much appreciate that I am financially fortunate, and that for a great number of people being able to put money aside for a rainy day is very difficult.

Yes and agreed a scary headline.

Of course not. What's the point in savings when interest rates are virtually zero

So if you loose your job how do you pay your mortgage ?

There's been a few periods where I've cut back quite dramatically on expenditure in order to stay debt free but I'd rather do that than live beyond my means and rack up a debt even if I thought it was a temporary situation.

yep, I've had a real mind shift over the last year or so. I used to rack up debt at an alarming rate, then with kids, realising i was spending hundreds a month on debt, and not stuff like family holidays, fun times out, I changed how i live and spend dramatically. best thing I've ever done. long way to go, and I still get urges to blow a massive amount of money, but I'm resisting.

the amount of people driving brand new Audi's and mercs these days is frightening, I can only imagine the debt they're getting into.....

the amount of people driving brand new Audi's and mercs these days is frightening, I can only imagine the debt they're getting into.....

I have been busy saving a few pennies this last year, since my better half began working and paying her share of the household bills, besides all the money I've spent on bike related stuff since picking up the fatbike.

But we are still "throwing away money" on rent, I reckon we have paid ~£64k in rent here over the last ~10 years! 😯 😯 😯