What's your approach to money?

My late wife, myself, her parents and my parents are of the view that we live well but any remaining wealth belongs to the next generation.
We do make arrangemente where the children get half the house when the husband or wife passes away as we do not want the money to be taken for care fees or by a possible future husband or wife.
Sadly I am widowed and I will not get married again as I do not want complications for my family.

Frank

When our children were young we were quite hard up. DH was in the furniture trade and regularly went on short time. I made the childrens and my clothes and DH did all the maintenance and decorating around the place.

This did have its benefits though, it made you very careful with your cash. Before this even we were both careful with our money and never wasted it.

Holidays were camping and our cars were bangers.

Things did improve grately though as time went by. We got a endownment mortgage before it all went pearshaped so when payout time came we paid off the mortgage and had quite a few thousand to spare. Being an only child I inherited my parents flat and got the money from that.

Anyway hubby paid extra into the state pension with serps and gets a reasonable amount plus 2 other small pensions. I worked for the NHS for 12 years and have that plus full state pension so we do manage quite nicely. We have our savings to.

We have a carvan (towing) and go away lots in the summer and generally have a week abroad in September. We are off to Warner for 3 days on Friday and do this every year around this time.

Living in London we make full use of our Freedom Passes and travel to town usually at least once a week to all the free museums and parks.

We consider ourselves blessed.

What's mine is mine, what's his is mine too... swear that's the best economic policy I know

Oh I see thank you Marelli chance would be a fine thing for me I'm afraid. I honestly couldn't set 1 months salary aside never mind 6.

I find the Leeds building Society and the Newcastle BS quite helpful at the moment. But not about Isas money is losing its worth in savings spend spend spend.

I went to move some ISA's around today and realised I hadn't been getting any interest for a couple of months because they were for a fixed time. And can only get 2% interest. Can't face moving them around and probably won't get much more with any other Building Society anyway. It's so disheartening trying to save for a rainy day and getting hardly any interest .

I still keep bits of string and wrapping paper as well, storynanny! My grandma used to keep paper bags....the thing is, she used to keep them in the oven for some reason....so you can imagine the problems that caused!

You are absolutely right! And growing up with parents who were children during the war with even less. My dad still saves bits of string and old wrapping paper even though he could afford to buy every ball of string in the shop. I'm always amazed when I read "credit crunch" tips like take your own packed lunch to work!!!!!
On the subject of being "poor", my dad, a wonderful 85 year old, has no truck with modern idea of poverty. He says being poor is when boys stood around you in the playground watching you eat an apple and asking you if they have your core to eat.
I like to think I've instilled some ideas of money management into my children, but was shocked to hear that eldest son in London, good job, takes 5 work shirts to the dry cleaners every week to be laundered and ironed, can't believe I brought up someone who can waste money like that!!!! However, everyone is different ( another of my mantras)

storynanny, I think that's because we've never had all that much, actually! Starting off in 'married life' with very little and doing lots of struggling along the way. We have simple tastes and really have all we need.

Thanks for your responses, I agree with the 6 month idea and having enough to help out children and grandchildren. I was just worried that I havent added anything to my 6 month/ rainy day fund since I retired early Last year and was thinking that maybe I've come to the end of adding and now moving into taking away! It really is amazing though as some of you have said, how it is possible to adjust to living on far less but still enjoy life.

Yes, Marelli sorry I didn't explain it very well gilly

I think Movedalot meant 6 months salary/usual income to be laid aside?

Not sure what you mean by the 6 months figure movedalot ? Forgive my ignorance I am a bit slow on the uptake today.

I've told mine that if they need it they can have it now rather than when I'm dead as I'm planning to live for a very long time. When I'm 102 and broke then they can help me out.

The generally accepted figure is as already said 6 months which will be different for all of us. As we are retired we think we need more.

I know - I couldn't do that, either, gillybob!

Yes Marelli and Grannyeggs How could any of us enjoy spending money on treats or having a savings fund knowing that our dear children and grandchildren were struggling to make ends meet?

At least we know we're not alone, then, Grannyeggs! It's actually quite a comfort for someone to say that!

Marelli and Gillybob, it' s the same here, the rain is always falling on somebody's head in this family. My little rainy day fund is getting smaller.

gillybob, that's the way my life has gone over the last while. Oh well, they may as well get it when they so desperately need it - and we'd never see them stuck, would we! I've discovered that it's quite surprising how much I can manage without!!

I think everyday is a bit of rainy day in our family at the moment. Constantly bailing out my son and his family and my daughter who is struggling to keep her home after recent split with partner.

Rain rain go away come back another day...........

storynanny I feel comfortable with £7K in my stash. If it gets to more than 10K I transfer it somewhere less accessible where it earns more money, or have a little holiday.
We too need a new roof on the garage this year so the money will come out of the stash and I will have to build it up again.

Oh, I don't know, a million perhaps ?

storynanny, I was glad I had a bit of rainy-day money a few months ago when we discovered the kitchen roof needed to be replaced. That was £3000 pounds out of my stash!! That was a major outgoing though. If I hadn't had that, I think I'd have had to have taken a loan from the bank.
Having had this experience, I think perhaps £5000 might be a realistic amount to keep in the rainy-day fund.
We're both retired, receive State Pension and both have quite small work pensions. We don't run a car now as we have a good public transport system and manage to have a couple of holidays a year (one Europe and one in Britain for a few days each).

So, out of interest, I know everybody is different and has different wants and needs but...... When is "old age" for you? For instance, I'm in my mid 50's, paid mortgage off on my tiny house, not supporting children any more, got a long term partner who I live with, work part time, got a small work pension monthly, got enough day to day money for bills, the car, visiting my son over seas once a year, a couple of cheap ish holidays a year, but not much in way of rainy day money. What do people think is a good sum to have tucked away for the mythical "rainy day"?

I agree anno you have to have a contingency fund for things like that. I like to have a certain amount in an easy access savings account, separate from day to day spending and separate from investments.
But having worked hard all my life, and saved for my old age, I'm determined to enjoy it now it's here