how much have you saved so far and how long has it taken you?

obseen16

hi guys, im trying my very best to save up as much as i can as fast as i can, my main goal is to save 50k for a house deposit, so far i have about 2k which has taken me about 18 months to save,

i was just wondering how much you guys have managed to save and how long have you been saving for?

p.s im on a very low income (under 12K)

Addo

Hi, my current total is 9k, my target is 10k & to do it in the next 10 weeks at £100 p/w to get there. I'm 22 & have been saving small amounts since first job (at 17)

I'm also on a low wage but I live with parents & have used this to my advantage to save as much as possible recently, I've kept my expenses low & fortunately have had use of a works vehicle recently which has added to the total significantly.

Good to see others saving stories on here, good luck.

MaryMurphy

Hi obseen16,

Welcome to MSE! I saved just over £1440 between now and July (aproximately) though I am on a higher income than what you're getting at the moment.

I think if you want to save up that amount of money you might need to look at investiments as it will take you a long time to save up so much (plus as Savings Dave said your money loses value with inflation, and the interest rates currently don't even match it with most savings accounts).

I don't know anything about investments other than they obviously have a certain amount of risk linked to it, but perhaps further down the line it's something you could explore? I have started looking into this but it's very very early stages yet.

I found keeping a log here has helped keep me on track, and it's good to see how your savings have grown I have a total target of £3500 (so way smaller than yours) but I found it useful to break it down, for example I am working towards reaching half of this by March (see sig) and others on different threads have also found it easier to keep the motivation up by breaking it down.

Hope this helps

MMx

jimjames

Firstly well done for saving £2k, on the wages you are on that must be quite hard. The living wage for London is quoted as £7.85 ph which equates to approx £15k pa.
For SavingsDave being able to save £700-£800 pm on £14k presumably means you have almost no outgoings as that must be around 60-70% of your net monthly income, for anyone renting or living on their own I would think that would be virtually impossible to achieve but its great that you are able to. A lot of people I know in that position are just spending for today on going out, flash car etc rather than saving for their future.

There are quite a lot of living below your means forums/sites that could be useful to work out the best ways to minimise your spending. The key thing is to avoid debt and keep "below your means" ie don't spend more than you are earning.

CurrentWorker

Hey,

I just managed to save over £700 over the last two months. I am currently in part time as well.

Gray_colt

Great that you have managed to save up 2k in the current climate, ive been saving for about 7 yrs and have 110k in the bank so far. Good luck with your future plans!:beer:

sweetmate

Just reached the £20k mark and started saving 3 years ago so saving around £500 a month which I thought was good. But that is about 1/3rd of my wages and I have very little in the way of outgoings so compared to some on here I am doing pretty poorly. I am trying to up my game this year and try and save £10k by Dec 2011.

Wish fellow savers luck :T

carpedieme

Have saved seven hundred pounds since beginning of october as we need anew bathroom, has been quite hard as my husband and daughter are unemployed, however it can be acheived if you are focused, think the main point isthat we hhave no debts whatsoever apart from the mortgage so are able to throw all spare cash at the savings, target is two thousand pounds, should be acheived by july:j

scottishblondie

I've saved almost 26k in the last 5 years or so. I would have had more in the bank but I used some for capital repayments on my mortgage a few years ago, and buying my flat in the first place used up almost all the savings I had before that. I'm pretty proud of this as I've been at university for the last 7 years (I'm 25), altho the last 3 I've been getting a good regular income in the form of my PhD stipend.

paulw98

managed to save 30k in the last 6 years, only on a modest wage but living at home with the parents helps. Would have saved a lot more but being into nice cars is an expensive hobby! However at 25 its time to stop that and move out really...

dasherman

Managed to save £45k between 20 & 27 then bought a house outright with the majority of that (42k) and started saving again.
I'm now 42 and the house is worth about £120k and have managed to accrue another £105k aprox. mainly in ISA's & additional pension(on top of a salary based one).
Current wage is about £20k which is the most I've ever earned.