Monthly savings question?

Pokedot · December 2013

After reading a lot of responses on the "Monthly Savings" poll I have a question for anyone wanting to answer. Some of you voted that you don't put anything into savings so my questions is what if something happens in an emergency? What do you do then? I'm just totally curious because we're (S12) is all over the map on this one.

redneckmomma25 · December 2013

We have some in savings already. If we have an emergency we have some credit cards I keep and don't use or borrow money or something. Not ideal.

thebanich · December 2013

I don't want to be snarky or what have you... but this is kind of a weird question.

MeatballEsq · December 2013

Banich4eva said:
I don't want to be snarky or what have you... but this is kind of a weird question.

Yeah I agree. I don't think Poke meant it to be, but it sounds a little judgemental.

thebanich · December 2013

MeatballEsq said:

I don't want to be snarky or what have you... but this is kind of a weird question.
Yeah I agree. I don't think Poke meant it to be, but it sounds a little judgemental.

I know. I didn't want to be mean but it did come off that way.

Pokedot · December 2013

Oh guys, I didn't mean it to be snarky/judgemental whatsoever. Sorry. I guess after rereading I can see how that would come across. I was genuinely curious as to what some of us do for an emergency situation. No judgement here at all.

mrsbhk22 · December 2013

Sometimes people just have to hope nothing bad happens. DH and I were young and broke when we got married. That's what we did. When they was an emergency , credit cards were the only option. Not a good one, but it's life sometimes.

Now, we have a line of credit on our home. We opened it when we bought the house (we had a large down payment so we have plenty of equity). We've never used it, but if there is some type of emergency that drains our savings, we can just write a check off the line. No monthly fees so it costs us nothing unless we use it.

hmp1 · December 2013

Plenty of people live paycheck to paycheck. I'm surprised you would even ask this question. It's not some dirty little secret. If something happens, you find a way to make it work. Some might not have anything going into savings right now because they have a little emergency fund and are paying off debt with all their money. I know I would be in this boat if we had high student loans and no good savings plans set up through our work.

watercolor5 · December 2013

We have savings, just not in a savings account. We decide on how many months of living expenses we'd want to have in case of an emergency, and we make sure we have that much in liquid funds. We keep enough in our asset management account that it's available for unforeseen expenses that arise, or in case of job loss.

Pokedot · December 2013

hmp1 said:

Plenty of people live paycheck to paycheck. I'm surprised you would even ask this question. It's not some dirty little secret. If something happens, you find a way to make it work. Some might not have anything going into savings right now because they have a little emergency fund and are paying off debt with all their money. I know I would be in this boat if we had high student loans and no good savings plans set up through our work.

I'm not asking to air anyone's dirty laundry. I'm simply asking out of curiosity. DH and I never had savings until a few years ago. We used CC's if we needed them, cut down on paying extra on things etc. I've been in that situation and noticed some of the S12 mom's are as well. I was simply asking. And yes living paycheck to paycheck is a very real thing for many, many people.

Hyaline · December 2013

Well, yeah, this is a touch judgey. But I also kind of get it, because I was surprised that a full 25% are currently saving $0 a month--that seemed high for what I feel like I know about this board.

But--I think there can be perfectly legitimate reasons to be at really low savings,even beyond being in a cruddy financial situation. For instance, if I were to decide to go back to school right now, we would probably slash our savings budget to pay tuition, knowing that it's a temporary stall in our savings for the ability to save more later, we have a nice emergency fund stashed away, and have nothing in the near future we need to be saving for (like down payment on a house, car, etc).

Hyaline · December 2013

LoisLayn23 said:

Genuinely, in an emergency situation, we would get out our e-fund and if that didn't cover it, we'd put it on the CC. And then we'd use the next few months and stop paying extra on our student loans and pay back the CC and the e-fund.

but since we use the envelope system for most things, we don't really have a lot of "emergencies". Car, gifts, doctors, house, clothing, toiletries, etc are all accounted for with envelopes.

And see--I guess I see the envelope system as a form of savings, without a dedicated savings account.

Pokedot · December 2013

LoisLayn23 said:

Hyaline said:

LoisLayn23 said:

Genuinely, in an emergency situation, we would get out our e-fund and if that didn't cover it, we'd put it on the CC. And then we'd use the next few months and stop paying extra on our student loans and pay back the CC and the e-fund.

but since we use the envelope system for most things, we don't really have a lot of "emergencies". Car, gifts, doctors, house, clothing, toiletries, etc are all accounted for with envelopes.
And see--I guess I see the envelope system as a form of savings, without a dedicated savings account.

Eh, I guess. I don't count it as saved since it's already spent in my mind for whatever future need would arise. Budgeting perhaps?

I can see this for sure. We used the envelope system in November for "no spend" to help us really stay in check specifically gas/groceries since everything else is paid online. I loved using cash because I knew what I had at that exact moment. No need to "balance" a checkbook. It also helped us budget better for the amount we could comfortably put into savings and the extra left over was so nice to put on other bills. We'll be permanently using the system starting in January.

Hyaline · December 2013

LoisLayn23 said:

Hyaline said:

LoisLayn23 said:

Genuinely, in an emergency situation, we would get out our e-fund and if that didn't cover it, we'd put it on the CC. And then we'd use the next few months and stop paying extra on our student loans and pay back the CC and the e-fund.

but since we use the envelope system for most things, we don't really have a lot of "emergencies". Car, gifts, doctors, house, clothing, toiletries, etc are all accounted for with envelopes.
And see--I guess I see the envelope system as a form of savings, without a dedicated savings account.

Eh, I guess. I don't count it as saved since it's already spent in my mind for whatever future need would arise. Budgeting perhaps?

I mean, if it's next week, then yeah, not really savings. But we have a car fund that I consider savings even though it's set aside for a car, since we won't touch it for the next 5-8 years.

I guess there is a difference between short-term and long-term savings, and I think a lot of people answered the poll differently depending on how they see short-term savings/budgeting.

Eastie156 · December 2013

We are one of the couples that's not currently saving on a monthly basis. We had a good chunk in savings from before E was born, combined with the sale of our condo, so if there was an emergency, etc, we'd be fine, but on a monthly basis, we are finding it hard to put away a ton of extra money. We just put in H's Christmas bonus and we'll put in our tax return like we always do, but right now that's what we are doing. We've got a lot of expenses right now!

melody921 · December 2013

hmp1 said:

Plenty of people live paycheck to paycheck. I'm surprised you would even ask this question. It's not some dirty little secret. If something happens, you find a way to make it work. Some might not have anything going into savings right now because they have a little emergency fund and are paying off debt with all their money. I know I would be in this boat if we had high student loans and no good savings plans set up through our work.

Yeah, for all my adult years before getting married and a few after I was married, we would have been SCREWED if anything had come up. I literally had NO savings when I was single. My paycheck was enough to cover necessities, gifts for other people and an occasional splurge like a haircut. I consider us pretty stable now, but we'd still have an issue if something really life-altering happened.

elizabethwig · December 2013

Our lack of savings will (hopefully) be temporary (max 4 years, hopefully under 2). I saved for the last few years when I was getting paid better and had no baby.
Now, I have a chunk of savings I'm currently eating into for the next 2 years, and investments that I consider 'true' emergency money. We have separate savings for our wedding and another (small) savings for DD.
SO and I only recently started thinking about it as 'our' money and I'm struggling somewhat to change how we save/spend based on what that means.

Holly_1007 · December 2013

We aren't actively saving anything right now. Fortunately we have things we can fall back on in an emergency. We have assets that we could sell, equity in our home, and family that we could ask for help if need be. One of our goals as a family for 2014 is to get a better handle on our financial position and really work on our savings.

miss50 · December 2013

JohnJacobJingleHeimer said:

We hope nothing bad happens. Not everyone is blessed to be able to save 2k a month, or even a year, unfortunately. It is what it is.

Wow, we agreed on something.

I'm currently making 1/2 of what I was making just two years ago. Shit happens and I hope to get back on a savings track when the job opportunities open up. Unfortunately i can't move for a job because of DHs business so I stay here and keep trying to get a foot in the door in another field. Until then I buy very minimal for myself such as that haircut discussed earlier and get by with mostly window shopping through S12 posts. Oh, and saving gift cards for years on end to get something for myself. All my nickels and dimes are being saved for the so called get together.

OP I didn't take any offense to your question, I am genuinely curious about finances too.

klgrh6 · December 2013

We currently save x amount of dollars but before pay day, we often have to pull it out of savings and use it. So we're not really saving any money. We just hope for nothing bad happens because it screws us. During college pre-marriage, I used extra student loan money to help pay my bills and it's going to suck when we are actively paying it off. When things get tough enough you just pick and choose who gets paid and who doesn't. Hints why our ob still isn't fully paid for DD after 15 months.

Life gets hard sometimes and you just have to find a way to make it work. We're definitely in a better place then when we got married. More financial stable but still paycheck to paycheck. I'm thankful everyday for my husband's job because it makes the biggest impact on our life.

willy_gert · December 2013

We are obviously one of the couples saving $0 now. We have obviously hit ridiculously hard financial times.

We luckily have parents that are pretty well off, so my dad has stepped in and given us a no interest loan to help pay down debt. We are literally slashing everything and hopefully selling our house for a profit.

It sucks but we hope nothing else happens and that we can make it through this without permanent or long term financial damage. Someday we will be able to save as much as possible.

tinyhumantoe · December 2013

This makes me feel claustrophobic to remember how fucked I was financially for a block of time. I really can't ever go back to that. I had to decide which bill to not pay. So savings? Ha! It was the last thing on my radar. When I was finally doing well, I had $10 "spending" money every other week, and honestly that should have gone to a credit card.

I was always having "emergencies"... Like bald tires, or having to buy gas the day before payday. My parents did loan money a few times, but it was a BAD idea to borrow from them (held over your head forever). I sold stuff on eBay until I had nothing left

It is such a slow climb out. I bet Dave Ramsey's method would have helped me climb out sooner. I dunno, sometimes people are in such a hole that asking why they don't save- as if they have a choice- seems like a slap in a face. If it were me, I'd reply: I'm broke not stupid.

And I guess to me the 25% did not seem high. It seems low.

tinyhumantoe · December 2013

Aww dude I didn't realize how old this thread was. SORRY!

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