How much can you save?

nat21luv

My net is £25k and saving about £500 a month not including extra income from eBay/surveys ect. I'm 26 too, quite frugal and don't have a social life although I do try and have a city break in london every 2-3 months or so. Generally don't go out and if I do it's on the cheap things we do to own our own home!

Lethal_Brizzle

Gosh that's interesting - I'm doing ok then on the amount saved each month as I always think I should be saving more. I'm quite* frugal too.

I earn £1,450pm net. I save £600 p/m in my ISA plus another £150 towards stuff that I know will crop up over the year (car Ins, road tax, mot, birthdays, dentist fees, haircuts, etc.) the rest goes to rent, food & house bills. I have very little social life going out wise as it tends to involve going round friends for food & byo - were all skint so its a good thing for my social group. I'm single & live in a house share

*tighter than two coats of paint & I have a coupon for everything.

Ronnie_Fresh_start

Dazza 86 u seem to be doing well, its a reasonable amount for your earning and i'm sure once the debt is completed u will be able to add a lot more..
i am on 30, 000 but only managing to put £400 from january as i still have some debt from when i bought my care + have not been wise with money!

Taking a leaf out of lethal brizzle's book ...my resolution this year has been to live a frugal life because every pound spent has to be rearned.....well done guys!

Thrifty_Pixie

Hi guys! Thought I'd move into this thread after spending a few years on the PAD thread killing my debts a couple of years back. Now I'm all about the saving! :money:

You can see a summary of my savings goals in my signature, however the background is that we came into some money last year (death in the family) and bought a cottage. Luckily we had previously been saving for a deposit anyway, so we used most of that for moving expenses, however we didn't want to plough all our windfall into the mortgage.

So we decided to put down a hefty deposit on the cottage and, given the current savings climate, the best thing we could do was to take out a slightly more expensive offset mortage and put the rest into the savings part for easy access should we need it. The offset meant that we could either pay lower mortgage payments each month or pay the original stated amount and, as long as we didn't touch the offset total, it would eventually bring our mortgage length down...and we'd pay less interest (which balanced out as better than savings rates currently available - even ISAs).

Anyway, long story short, we have built our offset up to the level in my signature - the £35k being an initial goal we picked that could bring our mortgage down to a round number of around £600pm. If we hit that we will probably move some into the mortgage section and start over, but until then I like to have a pot for emergencies.

We are managing to save £500 per month between myself and my husband, however we've had a lot of expense lately, and more to come, so we are currently keeping our monthly savings in our joint account for easy access over the next couple of months - just so that we're not constantly fiddling with the offset.

My immediate goal is to try and find some extra money to pump up my husband's teeth fund, as he'd like to get them done in March. He very generously insisted that I used some money to buy myself a Harley Davidson a couple of years back, so I feel it's definitely his turn for a treat!

I look forward to hearing about all your progress!
Peace,
TP:coffee:

Saving_NOW

Hello everyone great to hear of all your goals and how much you can all save, we save around £800 per month (£150 pm of that is for our holidays). We are aiming to save £10k this year and this will be the most amount of money we have ever had and we would like to continue doing this every year. Thinking about our retirement and making sure we provide for the future.

Lethal_Brizzle

Well I feel like I've had a financial slap in the face. I have had a couple of rather expensive outgoings crop up this year. I knew they were coming, but it wasn't until I sat down and added it all up that I found out it was going to cost at least £3,000!

This does not fit in with my savings plans.

So me being me, I want to do it all. I want to save up for these expenses and I want to hit my target of a deposit of a deposit of £10k by September. This is not going to happen - I do not earn enough. So what I am going to do is be rather cruel to myself, strip the laxity in the budget and save £750 per month instead of the £600 and reduce the other savings pots from £150 to £100 per month. After food budgeted at £30 per week I will have £50 for the month. Ouch. Hopefully I'll hit the savings target in November instead. I am going to need some real discipline for this!

Thrifty_Pixie

Lethal_Brizzle wrote: »

Well I feel like I've had a financial slap in the face. I have had a couple of rather expensive outgoings crop up this year. I knew they were coming, but it wasn't until I sat down and added it all up that I found out it was going to cost at least £3,000!

This does not fit in with my savings plans.

So me being me, I want to do it all. I want to save up for these expenses and I want to hit my target of a deposit of a deposit of £10k by September. This is not going to happen - I do not earn enough. So what I am going to do is be rather cruel to myself, strip the laxity in the budget and save £750 per month instead of the £600 and reduce the other savings pots from £150 to £100 per month. After food budgeted at £30 per week I will have £50 for the month. Ouch. Hopefully I'll hit the savings target in November instead. I am going to need some real discipline for this!

Good luck!

lbnblbnb

Thrifty_Pixie wrote: »

Good luck!

Good luck from me too. Our ancient oil boiler is giving up, my husband has managed to get it going but I can see we will have to replace it soon. That will ruin my plans too. I am also losing confidence in my plans as I am wondering if I should be paying off the mortgage instead of building savings? My first payday of 2013 is on the 19th so need to make some decisions.

useyourillusiontoo

We have a joint income after tax and pension payments of £33,500.

Since March 2011 we've been trying to save as close to £1000 per month but not less than £700.

In 10 Months we've saved £7400, much nearer the lower end of our monthly limit than i'd have liked.

We're in the process of doing up our house as we moved in to a "DIY man's dream" and also expecting our first nipper in April 2013. Our finances shouldn't be massively impacted by maternity leave as we've got it all planned, though I expect the amount we save to decrease a lot.

The objective of our saving is to put the cash towards a new house in a few years, the lower the mortgage the better!

Our weaknesses are Take away curry and eating out which drain our saving fund, also, I hate to admit it but I do like going to the pub on Friday evening.

I think it's well within our means to save a lot more than £1000 per month but my better half doesn't want to feel like we're living on the breadline. I'd live on basics just to save more, I even started to make homebrew!

I'm not a total cheap bum by the way, i'd just rather have money for a house deposit rather than pay it as interest to the hated bank!!)

marcusjames

Thought is was time I contributed to this thread.

I've read a number of posts from people saying they can't see how to get their savings to that next level. To set the scene, I'm currently living abroad and saving £7,000 per month (and have been for six years!). It has become a drug which consumed my hobbies. I started properly saving back in 2000 when I was freaked by the level of credit cards balances. I started saving a few hundred pounds per month, which increased as I became more selective on my spending.

I'm in a great cash position now but do wonder at what cost. I'm 40, and to a certain degree wonder if I'd prefer to have my time again. My salary has increased, my mortgage has reduced, and now I find myself wealthier than my desires. That probably doesn't make much sense, but I simply struggle to spend. I've worked too hard to blow it now!!

In conclusion, my advice is to keep the debts manageable but don't make too many sacrifices. Life becomes easier, and money appears to become more readily available. In theory, you only ever need one sofa and bed etc etc. Once you have the bare essentials, saving is so much easier.