Emergency savings

[jansman]

As preppers we all understand the need to have an emergency funds to deal with...well, life in general and all the little surprises it throws at us. Here is an interesting article.

How much of a savings buffer do people need?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35801951

[pseudonym]

Amazing, you work hard, save, start a pension, pay taxes, buy a house just as the Govt suggested all those years ago, then

when you retire you find out if you had done none of the above the Govt would of helped in all of that anyway

[gunner7]

this is one of my goals at the moment. I'm aiming for at least a years outgoings in cash savings, which for me will be about £8000. If I concentrate on only essential outgoings then I need £5000. I didn't do this before as I was working towards paying off my mortage and still enjoying myself Now I'm abit older I'm abit more sensible.

[Deeps]

The problem with all these kind of evaluations is real life. Real life has a habit of getting in the way goddammit. There's a whole load of reasons why we don't all put spare cash away for rainy days, some just like spending it and for some we just don't have much to spare. For most of us its somewhere inbetween. Its all relative, I might be a gazillionaire but that won't stop the zombies from giving me a hiding (or the local neds) if society breaks down. If the world goes to Hell in a handcart it might actually make sense to be in hock up to the eyeballs depending on the situation.

That's me very much playing devils advocate, while we do use and play rubber with credit cards, the ideal is to pay them off sharpish, it doesn't always happen as quick as we'd like but life goes on, elastic money is useful and arguably very useful.

[whenfires]

I've fortunate in that I've managed to save quite a bit in real terms in the last 10 years, but it's savings to be spent. I'm doing some work on the house, including a garage conversion, new kitchen and all of the decorating so it will all be gone. BUT, I'm not borrowing to do it so no increase in mortgage and it's a one-off spend which will never be repeated so if I can continue to save at the previous rate my mortgage will take a proper beating and could be paid off in the next 5 years.

If the asylum will just give me a bit more time before the lunatics truly and finally take over, I'd appreciate it.

[nickdutch]

The idea of most people having "just" £400 as take home pay is interesting. I would be quite happy to reliably earn that much each week to be honest.

But i do have a few savings. Some ISAs allow you to just deposit £20 per month via direct debit into them and after a few years it can really mount up. Not massively but it can all help so long as you are good and just chose not to touch it.

Then there is silver and a few other things.

It is still possible to save, but it can be hard, and you can be target driven as much as you might like as life happens (medicine costs, life issues).

[yorkshirewolf]

I don't know where they get their figures, but £400 a week is absolute rubbish for most people i know.

The new 'living wage' for over 25's is £7.20 per hour, which on a 40 hour a week contract gives you £288 before tax & NI, so take home, maybe £220?

Thats half of what they say is an average. and thats not taking into account the current minimum wage which can be anywhere from £6.70 down to about £5.00 P/H


People are struggling to make ends meet without having anything spare, which is why not many people have savings, luckily, and due to high diligence on our part, we do have some savings as well as emergency 'living cost' funds, it's not six months worth, but anything is better than nothing.

[jansman]

I have to agree that the 'average' £400 a week take home pay is not what I am used to. If it were , then we would be in clover! Of course, this is an average across the workforce, which means a lot of folks earn an awful lot of money. Aah well, one has to work with what one has...

[Deep Thinker]

Why we prep I suppose to deal with the ebb and flow of lifes challenges ,build up supplies and cash when we can .This allows us to deal with the unexpected and not get caught out and be less reliant on others . Yip I save a bit but then last week suspension went on the motor and 200 quid down.

[grenfell]

As far as I understand the average wage is a median average , or to put it in other terms half the population will earn £400+ per week while the other half earn less than that amount. Thus as a crude example imagine a factory with 99 employees and one boss. The workers earn £100 per week so with 99 of the the total is £9900 . Now let's say the boss earns £1000 per week . Added together that makes a grand total of £10900 in wages per week . Now if we were to use a mean average we end up with 10900 divided by 100 which gives a figure of £109 per week . That means that 99% of the workforce are below the average so a median average is used to give a "fairer" picture.