Our Year Round Regular Savings

Regular savings are important to include within your budget, even if you can’t afford to save much. But getting into good habits of saving money every month will help you, in the long run, save towards your financial goals. Or just keep your emergency fund topped up just in case.

We’re in a very fortunate position where I have both a full-time job and earn from freelance/ blog work and Luke works full time. So instead of spending everything we I like to save on the things we need to spend on an annual basis, and for the fun things like holidays and bigger treats.

I thought I’d do a rundown of our regular savings that we put into either every week or every month to give you an idea of how to split up our money.

Regular savings for seasonal events

Each week we put aside money towards Christmas. At the moment we put aside £35 a week which may seem like a lot (and it probably is), but it’s a figure we’re happy with. This will cover presents for every one we buy for, including each other. And it also includes a budget for food and decorations we may need/ want to buy. I love buying presents for people and because we save this money every single month it means I find the perfect present in May there’s already money aside so I can buy it. Having this money also means that don’t suddenly feel poor come November/ December.

We also put £100 a month aside towards birthdays and events such as Mother’s/ Father’s Day. In total, we have 12 events and by saving money every month means we have the money to buy presents. Like our Christmas savings, having this money means that when we have busy months we don’t have to stress about present buying. For example in June there’s Father’s Day for both of our dads and two birthdays).

The grown-up not so fun stuff

There’s plenty of regular savings that we do that cover the more practical stuff. It’s stuff we don’t want to save for, but we need to save for.

For us, this included vehicle savings which we put aside £20 a week to put towards the car and van insurance for our two vehicles and services for both vehicles. This also covers MOTs, taxes, and other more ad-hoc work we may need such as a new tyre. This is a great one as it means we don’t have to pay monthly for insurance so we save money. But it also means that if something breaks or goes wrong we know we have the money to sort it out.

I put aside about £100 a month towards my own taxes. It’s a boring and overly practical one, but it generally means I have almost enough to pay off my taxes in one go when I submit my self-assessment without worrying. Another practical one is our emergency fund. This is actually one we have on pause at the moment as we have a set amount saved that we’re comfortable with. But we were saving £50 a week towards the fund to cover us for those ‘just in case’ moments.

Then the final more practical regular saving that we do is for our pets. We know we have two beautiful kittens and I’ve started saving about £50-80 a month towards things they may need. This might be vaccines or their worming treatment. But also when they get bigger and need different scratching posts or litter trays etc. We pay monthly for their pet insurance so that’s something we don’t have to worry about.

Regular savings for big life events

Most people will have some sort of big life event on the horizon. Be it having a kid, buying your first home, or something else. For us, it’s getting married, and weddings are expensive. We’re not planning to spend stupid amounts of money and are cutting things we don’t think are worth it, or DIYing some bits. But we also want a day we’re going to love and remember forever, and not regret not doing or getting something.

So from getting engaged right up until our wedding in May 2023 we’re saving £100 a week. Again this might seem like a lot but we’ll be paying for the bulk of the wedding ourselves and this will include everything. Because we’re saving this over quite a long period of time it means we shouldn’t have to take out loans/ credit, and we shouldn’t *touch wood* need to stretch ourselves closer to the time.

The more fun stuff

Now for the super fun savings aka the holiday funds. We currently have three trips planned, a smaller staycation in Bath for November this year. Then a week in Portugal next March and a two-week cruise next November. I worked out the budget we’d need for our two trips next year and that covers everything. From the flights and actual trips themselves right through to the money, we’d need for Luke being off work and not earning, etc.

For all of the trips, we factored that we needed to save £400 a month in total, so that’s what we’re doing. When these trips are over we won’t need to save this amount of money, but chances are we will have another trip we’ll want to save for so the cycle will begin again.

More ad-hoc savings

We do have some more ad-hoc regular savings that we’ll save for regularly but only over a shorter space of time.

At the moment this includes going to weddings that we’ve been saving £80 a month for around the past year as we’ve had three weddings including my brother’s one. This covers outfits, gifts, hotel stays, and drinks at weddings. We all know that going to weddings can be pricey so we’ve been saving in advance for this.

We also did this for a period of time for stag and hen parties as we had a few of those that came up. And our home savings also come under ad-hoc regular savings. When we know we want to do something at home such as garden work, new fences, etc we save specifically for those things. Once we’ve finished saving for a few other bits I am going to make our home savings 100% regular so we always have money aside to do work that we want to.

Regular savings for our future

I have regular savings through my work for our pension but another regular saving we have is some money into Stocks & Shares ISA’s for us both. Once we have finished saving for our wedding I am going to start putting regular money into our lifetime ISA’s (LISA’s) as well. Having all of those ISA’s will hopefully mean that when we come to retire we’ll have a good setup behind us.

Do you have any different regular savings?

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