How much should a 20-30 year old have in savings

aj23_2

Lokolo wrote: »

I wouldn't worry about others. Salary ranges from £15k to £100k easily in this age group.

Basics I would aim for

21: Emergency savings of 2-3 months
25: Pension started and house deposit savings start
30: Property purchased

I agree with this.

Molillie

Just being on this site means you are likely to be quite savvy with your money. It can be very important to learn to follow your own path when you are in the forces, where so many of your outgoings are managed for you, combined with lots of people to socialise and spend money with. It's taking control of what you want for the future that's important. We don't know how long you plan to stay in the forces, but thinking about what you'd like to do later might help you decide on how to invest your savings. If you know that you want to live in your home area, for example, look at property prices there, and maybe start saving towards that once you have your emergency fund built up. If you'd like to get your own business, start getting any training you need, if not through your work, via online courses. You seem to be in a really good position, and being in control now helps you keep things in balance.

PEHsaver

Interesting thread , I am 29 years old and my current total net worth is just over £67,000.

This includes:

- Total of Individual Shares held at current market value
- Equity in my Home
- Current market value of my pension fund
- Current market value of my shares ISA
- Total of all cash held
- Current market value of my car
- Minus the total of all debts

Basically if I sold everything I own including my house, cleared all debts and walked away. I would be left with £67,000 Cash.

ian1246

Very interesting thread. I m 29 myself, turning 30 this year and my wife is 27. Between us we have around £6000 in savings (total "essential" outgoings are £1250 a month split between us - both of us work full time currently - myself in the emergency services & wife as a nursery worker). Wife has started contributing into her pension - around £1500 in her pot currently (increasing this by around £230 a month), whilst I've been putting into my emergency services pension for 4+years.

We brought our own house (3 bed semi) aged 26 & 23 in November 2015 for £165,000 - £41,250 Deposit. Today a rough estimate of its value would be somewhere between £190,000-£205,000, £112,000 remaining on the mortgage.

Moving forward, the plan is to get the emergency savings to £8500 at a minimum in the next 6months & then start overpaying the mortgage. We hope to get it gone within 7years if all goes to plan - then look to get our dream "forever home", using a combination of a mortgage (similar sized to that for our current house i.e. £110,000-£150,000ish), and the equity released from selling our current house. Once we've got that house (Mid/late 30's for me hopefully), we can then start to invest additional funds into wife's pension & start looking at long term investments, whilst modestly overpaying the mortgage.

We also plan to hopefully have our first kid in the next 2 to 3 years

If there's one thing I can advise - tracking your spending and creating a budget and sticking to it. Also: Excel is your friend hen it comes to budgeting/planning! We utilise a combination of 5% interest current accounts (TSB & Nationwide) to save in, whilst paying all our bills via Natwest for cash back (& using their cashback credit card for *ALL* purchases - paid in full each month). Sites like quidco are amazing also.

Trina90

28 here, with a husband, nearly 27. We only have about £10k in savings - but we are in a fortunate position at the moment to be able to save about a grand a month. We are trying to overpay our mortgage as much as we can before we have children, so this is where most of our savings goes. Our home equity is about 140k.

Alistair31

29 and circa £195k NW.

FIRSTTIMER

I am now early 30's. I have a MTG and job/pension, but that probably was around age 30 when I stabilised everything.

I pay £250 a month into a LISA/SIPP.
I pay £650 a month into government pension.
I only have around 3 months emergency fund (5k), but then I pay for permanent health income protection as well as life insurance with cic. So worst case for me is job loss.

atush

Can you pay off the stupid loan faster? Esp with any extra money you can save each month?

Fatbritabroad

I think the biggest thing nowadays is people buy property later which for most people will be their biggest mostly appreciating asset. Also alot of youngsters don't really think about pensions until later and are put off by a lack of financial literacy.

I'm 38 and bought my first place, a shared ownership one bedroom flat age 21 so have been on the housing ladder through a long boom time. I've also been weird and paid alot in my pension as I had a fear of being poor in old age and had an initial target of 100k. I earned essentially an average salary until about 8 years ago and am now a high five figure earner so have alot more disposable income now and have generally increased pension payments to the point in now putting 20% in a month including employers at 6%. A divorce took 100k out of my net worth 4 years ago but I made that back up with lodgers in 3 years or so
My net worth is around half a million and I'm now concentrating on non pension net worth to increase my liquidity. I don't know many in my age group with that kind of networth though there's a few on here with more.
The biggest thing for me was not inflating my lifestyle too much as.My earnings have increased so up to about 35% savings rate and trying to increase further .I'm also reducing my expenses now on things like my car and phone. Once you get decent sums in the bank your net worth increases become quite shocking as compounding takes over and for me I've found I can take on more well managed risk (p2p, investments ) and keep less cash which boosts this

I feel I'm extremely lucky to be in the position I am and don't want to squander it as we all know things can change in an instant so I try and balance fun treats(e. G. Flying business but using airmiles to do it) with decent savings and delayed gratification.

FIRSTTIMER

Thats awesome to read. I want to be in a similar position around age 40. Although, I am contemplating a second home as a cash cow and leave on long term rent.