Did you know that two in five working adults have less than £100 in savings?. Make it your 2025 goal to end the year with a reasonable emergency fund. A £3000 fund is enough to cover emergencies, and will help you get through tricky times such as redundancy. A target of £3000 sounds like a lot, but with just a few small changes to your financial habits, you will see how easy it can be to build your emergency fund.
Rather than telling yourself you have to save £3000, think about that in a monthly or even weekly amount. This makes it feel more achievable, especially if you create a tracking system to motivate your savings. You might be surprised how motivating ticking off amounts on a list and giving yourself a gold star sticker can be, no matter what your age!.
To save £3000 in a year, that’s £250 a month, or £57.70 a week, or £8.20 a day. For many, those figures still seem too high – after all, £8 can feed a family of four for a homecooked dinner. To make the savings target easier, try to aim for three different targets: £1000, £2000, and £3000. The first £1000 is essential, while £2000 is better and £3000 is ideal. Saving £1000 in a year is just £2.73 a day, £19.20 a week, or £83.30 a month.
Take a few hours in the next week to study last year’s income and expenses. Gather your credit card, loan, and other finance statements, your payslips or income records, and your bank statements. You can use an app like Plum or Emma to analyse your bank records to make this a lot easier too – they’ll automatically tell you where you’ve been spending your money!.
