How much can you save?

dippykitty

dazcouz wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Currently I have £17,500 saved up and am 22. If I hadn't of been such an idiot in the past I could potentially have £30,000 saved up. Basically, I still live at home with my mum and pasy £40 rent each week and on average take home £1,160 a month. It would be great if I could have £28,000 saved up by the end of 2009. I think this is a realistic goal as I have all the material goods I need and am very good with my money, also I'm still single:o so don't have to shower my partner with gifts etc. Ultimately I would like enough cash so I could put down a deposit on a house

Congrats on the savings I wish I'd started saving properly a bit earlier (I'm 21). Good luck with the 2009 goal!

jbennett_2

dippykitty wrote: »

Congrats on the savings I wish I'd started saving properly a bit earlier (I'm 21). Good luck with the 2009 goal!

Don't put me on a downer dippykitty it's friday night and i'm also 21 :-(

You make it sound like we are old lol

dippykitty

briona wrote: »

I don't allow myself to think about all the money I could have saved but didn't – it's far too depressing! LOL! Instead I concentrate on what I am saving now.

I have always been ok-ish at saving but have real trouble getting past a particular (not to mention fairly low!) figure – once I reach it I sort of feel more secure about having something saved and end up either not saving any more or spending the little I have saved! So I've set myself a big old target to inspire me to get past my "savings block" figure once and for all! Does that make any sense at all?! LOL!

It makes sense to me! I'm a bit the same,to be honest. I used to set myself fairly low targets so that I didn't feel awful if I didn't reach it, but then I'd either feel far too smug about it and not bother saving any more, or go and set myself an impossible target for the rest of the year and feel all miserable when it didn't happen :rolleyes: . I'm somewhere in the middle now with fairly realistic targets that I just keep shifting upwards (my target this year is £5k, and if I reach that before the end of the year, I'll probably just shift the goal up by £2-3k this time).

dippykitty

jbennett wrote: »

Don't put me on a downer dippykitty it's friday night and i'm also 21 :-(

You make it sound like we are old lol

Aw sorry - didn't mean to make us sound ancient! It just kind of annoys me that I could have had better savings by now if I'd been a bit more savvy but that's by the by I guess. I'm trying to be more positive though, so I'm glad I found this thread. You're all great motivators!

jbennett_2

Put it this way. Atleast you are not sat here now with £5 in your bank and you actually have some dosh saved up.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't even have a fivor and are probably minus thousands.

I think we just get so worked up in our minds about it and actually forget to realise the value of even a couple of thousand.

I use to go on big luxury holidays with friends when I was 18/19 and went on 2 holidays with my girlfriend. Plus I spent all my wages on total rubbish all the time. But I never regret this because it made me happy at the time and shaped me into the person that I am today.

But I do regret the TV I brought a couple of days ago as it cost £550 and knocked me back on the savings a little. I even burnt the box during new years eve so have no chance of taking it back now. I'm just going to be positive though and deep down I'm happy to have the television.

save-a-lot

Can I have some opinions. At the mo we are spending the savings on home improvements, conservatory goes up at the end of this month. Then after that all the associated furnishing and garden jobs like laying a new patio. Anyway, all that work is already payed for. I want to save back to the level we had as quickly and best I can. However, I save around £700 a month into my pension, I can alter my contributions at anytime. Right, I cannot decide whether to slacken off the payments into my pension and redirect this into savings to bring the level back up of the accessible savings. I can't decide fully.. I am leaning more on the sticking with the status quo and carry on contributing to the pension. But then again it is very nice having the buffer of savings in the bank, there and available, for the pension I have another 26 years before I draw on it.

What would you guys do?

Masomnia

I think it depends on your level of savings, how long could you last on them? How secure is your job?

If you can last 3 - 6 months on your savings and have a secure enough job I'd stick to the status quo.

gelato_cat

I'm with Masom... when looking at tying up savings I try and think about how much I need in readies and make sure I've got that amount... tricky though...

Suze

save-a-lot wrote: »

Can I have some opinions. At the mo we are spending the savings on home improvements, conservatory goes up at the end of this month. Then after that all the associated furnishing and garden jobs like laying a new patio. Anyway, all that work is already payed for. I want to save back to the level we had as quickly and best I can. However, I save around £700 a month into my pension, I can alter my contributions at anytime. Right, I cannot decide whether to slacken off the payments into my pension and redirect this into savings to bring the level back up of the accessible savings. I can't decide fully.. I am leaning more on the sticking with the status quo and carry on contributing to the pension. But then again it is very nice having the buffer of savings in the bank, there and available, for the pension I have another 26 years before I draw on it.

What would you guys do?

save-a-lot

Masomnia wrote: »

I think it depends on your level of savings, how long could you last on them? How secure is your job?

If you can last 3 - 6 months on your savings and have a secure enough job I'd stick to the status quo.

I was running at circa £35K, now we've transferred £15K into an easily accessible account for the impending home improvements, that 15K will go by April by the time everything is done and dusted. Currently my OH is a full time mum, so no income there, so the only hope of building the accessible savings up is to adjust the way things are now and redirect from pension payments to regular savings. My dilema is, am I panicking unnecessarily? I liked the fact that we had hit a point whereby the very gradual build up of the savings was going to match paying off the mortgage at the end of our current mortgage deal. That is still achievable (I think), but will be harder to do. I guess I am worried that the pot could be further eroded from just living costs. I think it is psycological, but going under £20K will feel like we are beginning to lose control of the plans we had.

Jobwise, secure I think, redundancies have already swept through where I work and I wholly believe there is still going to be the demand for my role in the future.. slim possibility of my role being outsourced, but not too worried as I perform quite a specialist role.

I have always been focussed on pension payments, but my OH thinks that we need it now and I should be making a bit more available through my salary. So, in a quandry at the moment.

Masomnia

Mmm I see the dilemma. I suppose it depends on the goals for the money. I guess you fill up both of your ISA allowances per year? If not that would be a good compromise between saving for retirement and instant access.