too skint to start saving?

Yes, we did, it wasn't easy.
I think that when you are really hard up, you need to decide what kind of savings account suits you best.
We are all very different, but in my head there are 3 kinds of accounts:
1. pension type accounts, that you really can't dip into.
2. rainy day accounts
3. holiday / treats

If you're not careful, the last 2 can merge a bit. Of course it's OK to dip into your holiday fund for a real emergency, but not vice-versa!

I would check out the following type of accounts (which weren't available when I was younger, but I have used recently)

Credit Union accounts (if you have one locally) can be very useful for emergencies as, having established a savings pattern you may be eligible for a loan. Their interest rates are often low, so it depends on how useful you think they might be.

Limited withdrawal: these can be very useful for things like Xmas or holidays, but if you go over the allowed number of withdrawals you lose out.

And I don't dismiss the old "20p in a whisky bottle" (or whatever) - it can be really useful for treats. I knew someone who had a holiday every year by putting her "fag money" (she had never actually smoked!) in a whisky jar.

I used to work on "save 10%", but other friends have saved by trying to cut costs, and putting what they have saved into a savings account (or the whisky bottle)

My mother would never use "Xmas Clubs" as they didn't give her a good enough return on her savings. But I know friends who would rather buy a £5 gift voucher at every supermarket trip, and put it away for Xmas. When I point out that they are losing interest, they say it is the best way for them to save.

So I genuinely think that the secret is to find what best suits you, considering how to encourage saving and discourage taking out!

Good luck!

Hi Dill, unless each and every penny you both spend is on absolute essentials, and you never ever buy anything that isn't an essential item or pay a bill, yes, you can save.

Expenditures tend to match and slightly exceed income, which is why there are even people with six figure incomes who have no savings. And why it is perfectly possible to have a very low income and have savings.

If you have appliances, the clock is ticking down on each and every one of them until they break beyond economic repair. In your case, it's the washer now, but it could be the cooker, the fridge or fridge-freezer next. Unless you wash your clothes in the bathtub and cook on an open fire, and only use a trad larder, of course.

Plus all household goods like mattresses, floor-coverings and furniture eventually wear out and need replacing, so running a home is going to have costs attached to it over and above the daily bill-paying and food purchasing.

Easy gains if you want to scare up some extra money are things like food or drink eaten outside the home, magazines (80% adverts, the remainder pretty mediocre in most cases), newspapers (out of date by the time they hit the mat), alcohol, cinema tickets, clothing and footwear bought new, as most adults have far more than they need and are buying on whim or fashion rather than need.

You could try putting the money you don't spend on any elective purchase into a jar, and then banking it, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your savings grow.

Whereas, if you wait until you reach some metaphorical plateau of income where you will have enough to start saving, you'll probably never have any savings and will have a mini-crisis every time an appliance dies or any kind of unexpected bill comes in. That's where you can find yourself taking on debt, and you get stuck in a downward spiral. HTH.

it hard to know where to start.

When I was unemployed and had very little money. I would allocate myself amounts to spend I would try to keep under that amount so the balance could be saved. The money I saved my rule was the first £5 month went to emergency fund anything over that, half was put to emergency fund, half for treats (this was my incentive). Most of the money saved came from food shopping YS items etc.

I also had budgets for utilities and anything saved went to emergency/treat funds, anything over came from emergency fund. I did not dip into treat fund as this was the one thing that was keeping me going I was saving for days out etc.

theoretica wrote: »

It will happen again - you don't expect to live the rest of your life with the appliances you have now do you? How will you pay for the new washing machine this time? You could have been putting that aside earlier, or at least the extra the laundrette is costing you.

My attitude was that as it's going to be one d*** thing after another then in the gaps when something major hadn't struck if I put the money aside as though it had I could get ahead on the next one. I preferred to scale back a bit on comforts all the time and have the reassurance of knowing I was unlikely to lurch into crisis and need major cutbacks.

You are amusing the OP is you, for you it is possible to save as you have comforts to cut back on. The OP might not have any comforts, there are plenty of people who don't they can't afford it, so where does the money come from that they are able save?