Whatever happened to "saving for a rainy day"?

Acceptable standards of living have increased with generations. What seemed like luxuries when the first people owned them are often considered necessities. Most folk have mobile phones and the internet. We had one house phone as kids, but a couple with 2 teenagers probably need 4 phones. They are not considered luxuries. Also Sky. And many of us take a holiday abroad for granted. I think people do save for holidays, but not sure there's much left to put away for a rainy day. I really feel for people who are struggling with cost of living and fuel bills.

No reason why not what, MissA?

Buy a coffee, do you mean? If so (and apologies if not) then IMO if people earn their money and choose to buy takeaway coffee that is up to them, and not anyone's place to judge them for it, any more than if they buy bibles or spend it on gin.

Of course it's sod all to do with anyone else, but when has that ever stopped anyone?

I’m going to be screamed down for this. Disability Benefit should be means tested. If you can afford to fly abroad on holiday twice a year and pay for your family (abroad) to live comfortably, paying for your grand-nieces’ education, then you can surely pay for your own cleaners etc or whatever DLA is meant for,

I have a friend who says she won’t be able to afford food soon and yet she is happy to pay £50 every 3 weeks to get her nails done and regularity spends over £100 on hairdressing.

I live in a really deprived area, and I see none of that type of thing.

It must be perhaps only certain sections of society who behave like that.

crazyH

I’m going to be screamed down for this. Disability Benefit should be means tested. If you can afford to fly abroad on holiday twice a year and pay for your family (abroad) to live comfortably, paying for your grand-nieces’ education, then you can surely pay for your own cleaners etc or whatever DLA is meant for,

DLA is in the process of being replaced by PIP - but I know many families with disabled children and I can assure you none of them are leading anything like that kind of lifestyle. It's very easy to sit up there on some kind of moral high ground when you have no idea of people's individual circumstances. Are you suggesting that disabled people - or families with disabled children - don't deserve holidays?

During my 30's and 40's it was impossible to save as a single parent even though I had a full time job. luckily I decided to sell my large house in Essex (part of divorce) , pay off the mortgage and move 250 miles away in order to buy a newly built house in a region I had never lived before, and knew no one ! My daughter had to move from a private school to a state school ....luckily she loved it and as it turned out, three other girls from different areas joined the same September ..so she instantly had new friends ! I got a full time job in the NHS ...I had to run a car in order to get to work .......it was HARD even then ....had meals in the hospital canteen at subsidised rates, and daughter had main meal of the day at school. I always cooked at weekends...oven full, and slow cooker full, to freeze for the week ...limited budget of about £20 per week for food ! Paid for gas, water and electricity by monthly direct debit ......made sure daughter could go on school trips and not go without ! Fortunately where we lived was a 'returns catalogue shop' so I was able to keep up with her friends and their trainers, coats, etc etc .....but no savings (the new house cost just about what I had left from the other one ) ...repairs if needed (roof tiles slipping, etc etc ) were a blow but overall we managed. She went to Uni with a grant, (which had to be repaid when she went to work) had to find money for her bus fares, etc .............I was bought up in the 50s when you never HAD ANYTHING on the 'never never' ! everything had to be saved for ...bills, repairs, clothes etc ....we suvived !

There is an old fashioned concept called 'living within ones means' that is no longer considered important.

Someone without a large house in the South to sell would be in a very different position though. If you found it tough with a leg up like that, how do you think it feels for those starting from scratch with student loans to pay off and having paid rent for years? Most people pay bills on monthly DD, and struggle with things like roof repairs, but they are also paying a mortgage, which your post suggests that you were not? You are really not comparing like with like.

At times I'm not surprised so many young people complain about 'Boomers' being out of touch.

betts

There is an old fashioned concept called 'living within ones means' that is no longer considered important.

I think it is considered important - it's just easier for some than for others.

crazyH

I’m going to be screamed down for this. Disability Benefit should be means tested. If you can afford to fly abroad on holiday twice a year and pay for your family (abroad) to live comfortably, paying for your grand-nieces’ education, then you can surely pay for your own cleaners etc or whatever DLA is meant for,

Are you disabled ? Because if not, you’re really not in a position to judge. Living with a substantial disability costs money. And it’s not DLA any more for working age people. It’s PIP - and there’s no need to means test it for monetary value because the eligibility rules are so tightly drawn and so rigidly enforced that no-one who isn’t genuinely disabled would qualify. I’ve lived with a substantial congenital disability and worked for as long as I could - full time - until my condition deteriorated so much I couldn’t continue. I can assure you that I don’t fly abroad at all or live in the kind of comfort you describe. I’m grateful for the extra benefits, which pay for things like running a car, without which I would be housebound, and lately, for the help with the cost of charging essential equipment and extra washing due to incontinence.

DLA is paid to children under 16 and those who had reached retirement age when PIP was introduced. I have several friends who have severely disabled children and some relatives who fall into the latter category. I can assure you their DLA pays for essentials, not luxuries. The point of disability benefits like PIP, DLA and AA is that they are universal and paid in recognition of the significant cost disability brings. You are generalising, and you know it - otherwise you wouldn’t have anticipated being ‘screamed down’ for commenting as you did. Means testing doesn’t work, it’s a race to the bottom and it leaves people who miss the thresholds by a few pence or a pound or two, struggling just the same. If you were at the pointy end of that kind of injustice, you wouldn’t be advocating for more of it, and especially not aimed at people whose lives are already more difficult than you can imagine.

Well said, Pammie1.

Grandmagrewit, when I read your post, I thought it rather unrealistic. Although I think saving is very wise, I believe it's just not possible, for many people, to save anything much.

You mention the coming fuel bills - and the cost of future care - but have you really considered the vast sums involved? Few people would be able to save enough for those expenses.

Doodledog: I worked out that NOT buying coffee for £3.50 for five days a week for a 48 week working year would allow you to save £840. It's too hot to work out how many years it would take to save even a 10% deposit for a £100k house, but it would be a long wait.

Answer: between 7-8 yrs at interest. Saving for wants is worth the goal.

coastalgran

Rain would be very welcome at the moment let alone saving for it. There is the famous quotation 'The poor will always walk among us.' I think that life should include things we all enjoy and something saved for bigger things. It is not a governments job to keep bailing swathes of the population out all the time. Food hubs, food banks etc are a modern version of what has always existed the better off helping out the less well off.

I don’t really understand how you equate that point of view that it’s not the job of government to keep bailing swathes of the population out, with the fact that the energy producers are being allowed to make obscene profits while very many people are facing the prospect of either freezing this winter or getting into severe debt to try to keep warm. Or the fact that they didn’t think twice about bailing the banks out during the financial crisis. Once more it seems to be one rule for the rich and another for the rest of us.

Norah

Doodledog: I worked out that NOT buying coffee for £3.50 for five days a week for a 48 week working year would allow you to save £840. It's too hot to work out how many years it would take to save even a 10% deposit for a £100k house, but it would be a long wait.

Answer: between 7-8 yrs at interest. *Saving for wants is worth the goal.*

Where do you bank to get that level of interest? I'll tell my children. If you can tell them where to get a house for £100k close enough to their work to allow them to commute, I'll pass that on too.

As ever on here, any example of how things can be is taken literally and stretched to snapping point. I'm sure that if my children just had to do without coffee to buy a house they would do it. I was referring to the comparison between 'our day' when you could only borrow twice one income and half the other, and deposits were far more achievable and now, when a modest house costs more than ten times an average salary. I'm generalising, but probably most young people lived at home until marriage back then, whereas now they are more likely to rent somewhere after university and both rent and student loans make saving far more difficult.

Maybe we should agree to differ about whether they deserve to have any luxuries before taking on mortgages that tie them down for years. I approve of them enjoying their youth, even if that just means buying a coffee for the train to work and washing in nice product - I see both of these things as minor extravagances. You may not - each to her own.

One of the best things you can do to save money is to stop paying for your tv licence.

Doodledog The answer without any interest at all is a bit over 8 yrs, not much time really. Yes interest is on the way up.

Interesting point here: If you can tell them where to get a house for £100k close enough to their work to allow them to commute, I'll pass that on too.

I didn't set the cost numbers, you did. You said what a coffee cost and the hypothetical house cost - not me.

Ok. I'm going to leave it there, as it's entirely hypothetical and really not worth arguing about - I was speaking of the principle.

A house for £100k? My DD and her brother have just bought a two bedroomed flat together, it cost them £264k. Neither could have bought on their own despite being amazing savers.

Doodledog

Ok. I'm going to leave it there, as it's entirely hypothetical and really not worth arguing about - I was speaking of the principle.

as for the house price inflation over the miserable caffeine, nice soap, avocado and fun free years..........It would feel like more than 8 years

More people than we realise haven't been able to save during their working lives and I'm not just talking about young people. It seems to be a misconception that if you do any kind of work you'll have enough to cover basic outgoings and money left over to save and that if you don't, it's your own fault and you must have overspent on, heaven forbid, some sort of luxury like a week's holiday or the odd trip to a hairdresser!

In my experience, most people do the best they possibly can and would save if they could. Most work hard and make sacrifices, but that doesn't automatically lead to being able to save enough to buy a house or be financially secure, even if you're a professional like a nurse or a teacher.

It would be lovely to think everyone who needs it would get a little help at the right time to enable them to plan ahead, gain a measure of financial security and then build on it, but life doesn't work like that and many are left behind through no fault of their own. For those people, saving is impossible.

While I admire people who can save by working hard and making sacrifices, I'd never blame those who work hard and make sacrifices to meet their basic outgoings but aren't in a position to save.

Doodledog

My two both rent, and are both paying back student loans, so buying somewhere of their own is nowhere near as easy as it was for us, even though we bought at a time when prices were rising and interest rates very high.

I don't think it's fair to blame young people for not doing what we did - times are different. I also think that castigating them for buying little luxuries is unfair when they work so hard. We didn't buy fancy coffee* as it wasn't available, and also because saving the £3.50 every day might have moved us closer to the deposit for a house. It would be a drop in the ocean these days, so it's really not comparing like with like.

*insert 'frivolous' spending of choice.

A very good post, Doodledog.

Any savings I had were swallowed up when my husband left. My children were 17 and 14. I worked as a nurse in private Nursing homes. I retired when I was 68. I am now 81 and anything I had in the bank is long gone. You don't know anyone circumstances and I am not sure lots of you are qualified to comment.