What savings should I have?

BucksLady

JasX wrote: »

Well, this thread seems to have wandered off onto controversial ground.

I guess the key lesson is times do change, some things get better, some things get a lot tougher. Some lessons and conventional financial wisdom from the last few decades goes completely out the window (and there will be those who to their detriment didn't notice), there will be some that are truer than ever (and again there will be individuals who think those rules don’t apply any more to their detriment).

So yes I see plenty of things a lot of people my/our age get wrong (which I'll call late 20s early thirties)

1-Seeing debt as the norm and using credit where it could have been easily avoided. Paying interest *ever* is a horrific drain on quality of life, when you hit later life every single £1 you've paid in interest is £1 less of total 'stuff', 'fun', 'holidays/world experiences' etc etc you missed out on is the way I've always seen it. If you can get something slightly cheaper by getting it in 3-6 month’s time is usually worth it in the long term. Older generations did this, the view 'everyone has debt these days' and using credit being seen as a norm seems to be condemning large numbers to a much poorer quality of life due to obvious effects they seem oblivious to (Education system to blame?).
There are very narrow criteria where debt is a good thing (eg to start/seed a new business that will grow and make more money than the interest being paid based on a sound business plan) -debt for the sake of it is horrific.

2-My generation seems to have forgotten/lost the ability to either a) do basic DIY themselves and b) consider repairing something over throwing it out and getting a new one. Ok so I'm an engineer and have something of an advantage here but having parents and grandparents in less technical professions (nursing, running a bakers shop etc) they certainly knew a thing or two about fixing a chair/table leg, tiling their own bathroom and making a decent job of it, hanging their own wallpaper etc etc, particularly when they were young.

3-My generation also seems to have lost the ability cook/run an efficient household budget, the 'old style' board here is testament to making good use of leftovers, cooking from scratch, efficiently sourcing ingredients, using your freezer etc etc. Frankly I struggle to understand SOAs around here where people spend £400-£450 on monthly groceries. I personally make a point of eating based on 'what I have in the fridge' and virtually never throwing any food away. eg a couple of weekends back for a friends BBQ I knocked up food for myself and two friends overfeeding them and probably enough spare for others to dip into that it could have been 4-5, this cost me £45, £10 filled two rucksacks from a local market with fresh veg and between that Aldi, and a few extras from Sainsbury’s it not only did the BBQ but kept me fed for the next two weeks with very weather appropriate salads, roasted vegetable cous cous dishes, a curry etc etc with minimal top up shopping.
People who can't feed themselves without buying a Waitrose/M&S ready meal per person every day with extras or grabbing a takeaway menu waste heaps

Well those are the main three bugbears of mine, I guess there are a few more general observations I have.

4-Renting is a mug's game -if you assume people eventually buy and spend c20years buying a house outright and then live virtually rent free in a house they own at some point in their lives. Every year they then spend before buying renting is 100% dead money. I bought early on (age 26) which took living with my parents from age 21-25 scrimping together a deposit to get on the ladder in London (not a fun time). I have a sibling who rented their own place with friends after uni but realised age 27 they were getting nowhere near getting a house deposit together and moved back in with parents at that point (even less fun!) but eventually got somewhere with fianc! aged 30.

I guess the problem with 4 is a chronic undersupply of homes drives prices up regardless and leads to something of a race to the bottom in both markets -> people renting smaller and smaller rooms in increasingly sub-divided houses or sharing with more people on the renting side or people getting more creative when buying -> I have a friend who bought a 3 bedroomed place and converted the living room into a 4th bedroom where he lives. Uses the 3 rental incomes to help fund the mortgage and is overpaying like mad planning to slowly reclaim the rooms for himself and kick out the tenants one by one over the next 5-10 years. Neither of these situations is a good thing but illustrates the lengths those determined to do something that makes financial sense are willing to go to in the absence of a proper fix for the countries housing situation.

There has got to be a correction at some point (hence despite now having a decent job and income I'm personally happy staying in a modest sized dwelling out on the fringes of London zone 5 and expect I'll put off trading up for many years)

Guitarman I guess the defence against currency devaluation is the same as it's always been -> spread your money around as many different asset classes as you can -> personally I'm a big fan of online fund supermarket (ie low fee) stocks and shares isas and keep the savings pot I have split between the house I own (ie overpaid mortgage), cash and about 15 different funds which are as diversified in intent as I can get (blue chip developed world equities, some emerging markets, some property/resource focused, some responsive/unrestricted/'special situational' funds, etc etc).

Anyway offtopic-ish ranting seemed to be the order of the day, I think that's me for now


oh no 3) - people tend to 'upgrade' things unnecessarily frequently these days too -I was very happy with my 4 year old smartphone till it finally died (I gave it a few software upgrades in it's time to keep the interface sleek but since it did email and browsing without issue I had no problem with the IT guys at work occasionally yelling at me 'hey, is that a windows phone ...but from before windows phones actually got good'), a side effect of this approach is the £7 a month I pay for an old style 'unlimited' unlimited mobile internet option I've now transferred to my shiny Google nexus4 phone they are all extremely jealous of ;p

You are so right

atush

Buzzybee90 wrote: »

But you're making this up, the biggest and the best is just a figment of your imagination, or based on your own sons. Social networking as in linkedin. You could say the same about any demographic, you're just basing it on prejudice.

Not making it up, and linked in can be accessed form a laptop or work PC.

It isn't prejudice, and I was once you. And I had a lightbulb moment and started to save and no spend. I even gave up my shoe habit.

atush

Buzzybee90 wrote: »

No I didn't, I have a smartphone - I need it for work. It's not the latest iPhone. I'm not moaning, I have a lot of money because I've saved (as you can see from this forum many 20s have) - you're just making assumptions about the youth and it's quite offensive really. On that card, why should old people get free bus passes and winter fuel allowance, the old people I know are all sinking rich (deservedly), but, using my brain I know that not all of them are. You need to apply this to your view of us.

I think bus passes and winter fuel allowance should be means tested out of the hands of rich pensioners.

My view is younger people today convince themselves they have to have things they dont need. I dont just base this on 20's I know but ones we see here.

Buzzybee90

atush wrote: »

I think bus passes and winter fuel allowance should be means tested out of the hands of rich pensioners.

My view is younger people today convince themselves they have to have things they dont need. I dont just base this on 20's I know but ones we see here.

Let's agree to disagree.

Better_Call_Saul

atush wrote: »

I think bus passes and winter fuel allowance should be means tested out of the hands of rich pensioners.

My view is younger people today convince themselves they have to have things they dont need. I dont just base this on 20's I know but ones we see here.

I agree strongly with this. Giving state benefits to rich people regardless of how old they are is disgusting.

Buzzybee90

Better_Call_Saul wrote: »

I agree strongly with this. Giving state benefits to rich people regardless of how old they are is disgusting.

A lot of the older people agree too with the lack of need for the fuel allowance for them.

It's not their fault and I do think they deserve it for putting into the system. But if they say they don't need it, it should be a different story.

Better_Call_Saul

Buzzybee90 wrote: »

A lot of the older people agree too with the lack of need for the fuel allowance for them.

It's not their fault and I do think they deserve it for putting into the system. But if they say they don't need it, it should be a different story.

Many OAP's have accumulated vast wealth over the years.

I think people who actually need benefits should be put above people who have paid in and therefore think they should get something back.

atush

Buzzybee90 wrote: »

A lot of the older people agree too with the lack of need for the fuel allowance for them.

It's not their fault and I do think they deserve it for putting into the system. But if they say they don't need it, it should be a different story.

Actually, I know rich (or maybe comfortable) pensioners who would raise holy h*ll if you took away these things. They consider it ehri 'right' as they paid for it with their contribs.

Massive vote loser for anyone who brought it in, as pensioners vote more than younger peeps.

but at least we agree on something

atush

Better_Call_Saul wrote: »

Many OAP's have accumulated vast wealth over the years.

I think people who actually need benefits should be put above people who have paid in and therefore think they should get something back.

Many high profile pensioners who are wealthy do donate WFP to a charity to pay for heating for poor pensioners.

But not enough IMHO.

But, some who think they need/deserve benefits are wrong. You would not believe the number of threads we get here from people wanting to hide money so they dont have to pay care costs when older.

We need balance

kwmlondon

JasX wrote: »

I don't know, I thought a fair bit of that was pretty universal:

-Consider fixing things before throwing them away and buying a new one
-Learning to actually cook and avoiding food waste
-Think very carefully careful about paying even a few £s in interest, ever....

I just seem to see a relatively small proportion of people my age and below doing all the above and think there is a lot of inefficiency going around. Yes my personal perspective is not universal. Yes there will be some who do do all the above and encounter other obstacles.

My experience is that I know plenty of older people who don't know how to cook, or care about it that much. I know a lot of people who would rather work harder and not cook - the amount of money they'd save by making their own food rather than buying ready-meals is much less than they'd make working for the same amount of time.

Do you service your own car? You could save a lot of money doing that.

Do you bake your own bread? Do you knit your own jumpers or sew patches on your jeans?

I'm not telling you to do this, but me- personally - I'd rather pay someone to iron my shirts as I HATE ironing them so much I'd rather sacrifice something else in my life than iron them. I detest ironing. I'd rather scrub the toilet.

Paying money in interest? Ooh, that's a toughie - you're right, of course, every penny spent on interest is a loss.... but...

If I needed a car right now I could either buy a banger and risk it being unreliable (probably not acceptable if I needed to get to work on time) and save money each month at 3% interest or borrow money and buy a reliable car still under warranty that would retain its value well and only pay 4% interest.

It depends if I can get credit, how stable my job is, basically what my options are.

Both you and I (and everyone else) had opinions based on their experiences of life, and our experiences come from the good and bad decisions we make, but about half of our options are pure chance, blind luck. We can make the best of it, but what we have to work with (intelligence, upbringing, resilience, health, genetics etc.) are not down to us.

I don't like this denigrating young or old people - there's no fool like an old fool, except a young fool and they'll get old and still be stupid.