How much can you save?

The_One_Who

I'm really looking to start saving up my money so this thread should spur me on a bit, and make me feel a little guilty if I splurge too much.

My only real accounts are two current (one student) and an ISA that I'm waiting on being transferred to give me a better rate. Once that's done I'll plump most of my current account cash into it.

By the time I graduate I'm hoping to have enough to pay for my Masters and hopefully accommodation too. Well, I can dream! I should definitely gave enough for the degree.

purplevamp

Anzac_Biscuit wrote: »

Does anyone else have trouble working out what to focus on for saving?

I have no trouble at all . I want a house and that is exactly what I'm saving for. I know it's not the be all and end all but it's the only thing I want, I have a wonderful husband, 3 fantastic children and a (good) job. We're just in a bad neighbourhood and my family deserve better. People have said to us "why not just rent elsewhere?" The main reason we don't do that is our rent is £450 for a 3-bed h/a house atm and if we privately rented this would be anywhere from £900+ and if we're spending that much on rent we'd be better off spending that on a mortgage.

BUT...

we can't get a mortgage for a decent house as we don't earn enough and if we moved we'd be "throwing good money away" on rent. What to do?

Sorry to rant, but I couldn't help myself

EagerLearner

Anzac - see my sig, I have a spreadsheet whcih has a savings or debt section, regardless it;s meant to be used for a 'pot' of an amount of money. I have all my personal savings with IceSave and I use the spreadsheet to divide what is in the 'pot' and what it's for.
My sections are:
Future (ie: if I lost my job for any reason I'd want 3-6 months savings)
Pension: Any extra cash for my pension I put here, then I transfer it to my SIPP in lump sums
Birthdays
Clothes
Travel - for yearly holidays or weekends away
Driving Lessons
Etc

Then, the entire amount is easy to track in one place, but my spreadsheet tells me what it is all made up of. I then withdraw as needed from each category.

Purplevamp - Sounds like you are in the same boat as us, personally I think you are better off staying where you are for now (paying less rent than a fancier rental place) and putting all that extra cash towards your deposit. Then you can buy and move to a nicer place in time, and with the market the way it is, it could be sooner and for less than you thought!

Wantosave

Sorry All,

Quite right, I am not meant to ask (bearing best Eyore expression I can find!).

Apologies - hope you can find it in your money saving hearts to forgive me!

Money Angel
:A

paulboy83

Anzac, i'm kinda unsure what i'm saving for, it's habit as much as anything else. In the back of my mindI want to get a deposit for somewhere to live, but it's also my emergency fund in case I end up jobless. I do put money away towards my car (insurance, tax, mot etc) but i'm trying to sell it at the mnoment so that is going to stop soon! I save for my OU course fees, and I'm trying to get about £1000 together to have as a just in case for any big expenses.

For now i'm just enjoying seeing the amounts increase, and i'm aiming for £16000 in savings in total by the end of the year which is possibly doable but a bit of a push, If i can see £20000 in my savings within the next couple of years i'll feel like i've succeeded! I'm sticking with small targets for now, and the main one is trying to get £500 a month together for my Halifax reg saver! It's going ok so far but i'm thinking of applying for a new job which (if I get it) will mean a paycut of about £500 a month, which will make things a lot harder!

amethystcash

Anzac_Biscuit wrote: »

Does anyone else have trouble working out what to focus on for saving? I don't have any debt (yay) and would like to be saving for extra to add to a house deposit but I also have loads of other stuff like travelling home (to Oz), emergency fund, even just having money set aside for clothing etc. I've got a sealed pot that I'm trying to add something to every day - I think this year it will probably go towards Christmas and/or travel, but technically they should both be covered by my regular savings.

Arrggh! Don't really want to be just saving 'in general' cos it's too easy to use it up again on smaller things or treats etc. Any ideas?

I've created a spreadsheet that separates out all the savings goals I have - maxmum ISA allowance for the year, £600 pm for ISAs, £500pm to Reg Savings A/C, savings for holiday and home expenses (which we set at the beginning of the year), emergency fund etc. I have monthly targets for each one so that I can see how well we're doing against the target. Our long-term goal of achieving £100k savings in total and I note the target of that achieved too each month. We aim to save 50% of our income each month in total, allocated to all the items I mentioned above. Like you we don't have any debts and also managed to pay mortgage off so now want to capitalise on available money for our long-term future. This works pretty well for us.

Anzac_Biscuit

Thanks for the advice I had a quick look at your spreadsheet yesterday, EL, so will probably try setting that up. I've made a budget for everything I can think of, I'm just trying to work out what to do with any 'extra' (ie saved from grocery challenge etc) at the end of each month, but I guess I could always just put that in a different pot for now, it doesn't have to be allocated immediately.

:j

emmasaint

hi,

I have been reading the site for a while and having used many of your tips and spreadsheets i thought I'd join in.

I am saving for a decent deposit for a house and if i can an actual house outright . Had a couple of months of spending like a woman possessed and i'm normally so restrained. I try to save £1000 a month and have £13,000 (£3,600 in an ISA and the rest in a fixed term bond at 7.10%)at the mo.

Any more tips would be so appreciated especially if it stops me buying shoes!

cookie9

Welcome to this thread Emmasaint.

Not sure if I can help with the shoes - I've a bit of a problem there myself although did get my 20% discount on my boots from Office thanks to Glamour mag. Unfortunately I missed the Oasis discount because I went to the pub on Friday.:o

There are good moneysaving ideas on the OS Board. Personally I find menu planning and sticking to a shopping list very useful. Cashback websites such as Quidco are good and you can get vouchers using points earned on sites such as Pigsback.When saving make sure you use your ISA allowance to avoid having to pay tax on your savings. After that regular savings accounts often pay a reasonable rate.

amethystcash

I just wanted to provide more information on we organise our finances to keep track of everything. We bank with N/W BS and use online banking.

We have 2 current a/cs - 1 for DHs pay that we then use for groceries, diesel and meals out etc and the other for my pay that we use to pay the bills.

We have 2 e-savings a/cs - 1 for savings towards our ISAs, £600 p.m and the the full ISA allowance transferred into our ISA Bonds in April each year and the other for general savings (short-term savings for holidays, Christmas, stuff for the house etc).

We each have Regular Savings a/cs that we pay £250 p.m each into.

We can view all the flex (current) and savings accounts in one place and it is super easy to transfer money between the accounts and keep track of everything.

Money is set up to transfer into the savings a/cs each month on the day that we get paid (automatically for the ISA and Reg Savings). We manually transfer to savings all DHs pay over the budgeted amount we've set for groceries etc so all expenses and overtime he gets goes straight into savings.

We use the general savings accounts freely to buy stuff for the house and holidays etc but not without really thinking about whether the thing we want to buy is really necessary or not.

I was really ill for the first 6 months of this year, not able to get out much at all, and money was really tight with me not working, so we've really got out of the habit of shopping as a pasttime and its really helped us to rethink our attitude towards spending. I really enjoy seeing the savings grow and as long as we eat well and get a few treats here and there I'm happy for this year to continue to keep on the savings path at the expense of spending on "stuff". We have missed out on 2 holidays we were meant to go on this year due to my illness, but are looking forward to trating ourselves next year when the savings pot should be nice and healthy.

Sorry long, long post, but just wanted to share my experience this year.