We had about double what we have now before we bought our house and we are working towards building it up again! We are a little low right now, but it's still enough for us to get by.
When I say "savings" I don't mean to include 401k's, investments, stock, etc. Just in your savings account, where you could go to the bank today and take it out.
I added a poll so you don't actually have to say!
104 votes
pineapple / 12526 posts
We have around $10k in our primary savings and another very, very large amount in CODs and a trust in the states.
GOLD / eggplant / 11517 posts
Keep about 2k in accessible savings. We are working to aggressively pay down debt, so we aren't adding to it right now.
GOLD / squash / 13464 posts
Well I voted based on our investment account. We don't keep just a plain old cash savings account. They don't earn enough interest to make financial sense to me. But we keep a cash threshold in our investment account and everything else in there is liquid.
coconut / 8854 posts
@highwire: We are trying to pay down debt as well, and we are making ends meet right now, so we aren't adding any to savings. But right now we have almost 6k
honeydew / 7968 posts
We have more than I'd like... Int sucks... Should invest it in something. Any ideas? Lol...
cantaloupe / 6800 posts
21k in my "life money" savings, and $80 in my regular savings that I allow myself to use on everyday things if I need it. (Feel broke typing that last part out!!)
I think this is going to vary wildly on area. Bees in bigger city-like areas are going to get a higher income so their savings will be bigger on paper, but their everyday living expenses are higher so it balances in the long run.
I'm in North Carolina, in a rural town if that helps?
cantaloupe / 6800 posts
@MrsBrewer: ditto! Hince the $80 haha, thats from my direct deposit into it monthly 
coconut / 8854 posts
@MrsTiz: Good point, I probably should adjust my poll because of that. I'm in the midwest so 30k is almost unheard of here to just have!
hostess / watermelon / 14932 posts
I'm with PPs, we are focusing more on paying down credit cards. We had over 10,000, which felt so good! But we bought a car for $8,000 cash in Feb, added to savings, had to loan BIL a lot of money (supposedly we will have it back in a few weeks..) and a $1000 (!!!!) car repair bill for DH, so we are down to $1100 right now.
cantaloupe / 6146 posts
We are not at all liquid. We have retirement funds, and then stocks and CDs. So... we're actually struggling to make ends meet right now even though we actually have more money than many of our friends. Weird.
We don't own a house though. And we own one car and half of the other is still being financed.
ETA Technically we have money in savings right now, but it's budgeted for our upcoming trip. I think other than that, we have like 1k--the least I've ever had since I started working.
coconut / 8681 posts
We were up to 20k but we bought a car for 11k cash in February so that number bumped way down. We’re now in the process of buying a house and will have very little left in savings after paying the down payment. We hope to get back between 6-10k before baby is born in October.
kiwi / 614 posts
We are trying to significantly add to our savings to prepare for our upcoming move to the US. We are going to need plenty of money on hand to pay for the move and set ourselves up in Chicago. I really hope we still have savings when we're all done! The one good thing is we have 0 debt.
GOLD / squash / 13464 posts
@pastemoo: Stocks are still considered to be liquid investments and almost the same as cash. If you needed to access that money all you need to do is wait for the three business day settlement. That's why we choose to invest most of our extra money, and just keep a cash threshhold in case we have a need for cash during a down market cycle.
pineapple / 12793 posts
Right now we have a ton of cash on hand because we are house hunting and need access to at least $50K for deposits.
cantaloupe / 6800 posts
@tequiero21: If you don't like it, you can send it over my way 
I have about 10k worth of silver. My father convinced me that was THE investment to make. DH didn't understand it, paying $16 or whatever it was, for a silver dollar. I've got a big bank robber style bad full of silver dollars. They're worth money though, just have to wait until they're worth MORE to resell. 
coconut / 8854 posts
@MrsTiz: Interesting! Do you have a safety deposit box that you keep all that? Or at least in a safe.....I hope!
grapefruit / 4703 posts
@MrsTiz: ha wow, that's so cool
We have like, 5k right now, but it's already allocated for a few projects. Most of our extra $$ is going to paying down debt right now - the only money we're actively saving is for things in the near future that we need to pay cash for (vacation, home improvement, etc) so we don't add to the debt 
pomegranate / 3388 posts
We have a ton in savings right now b/c we anticipate buying a house in the next year or 2 and a new car in the fall. It seemed too risky to put that cash into stocks or mutual funds, given that we're planning on spending it in the short-term. I do keep it in what used to be a pretty high interest rate account through ING. Unfortunately, even the interest rate on their accounts has plummeted recently.
GOLD / pomelo / 5167 posts
we have zero. yup that's right. We had, but then emergency after emergency came up and we had to use our savings. Plus like @highwire: we are paying debt down. (were, because now we are so broke)
cantaloupe / 6610 posts
DH has a savings account for us that is in the 6 figure range. He is nothing short of a financial whiz. He made me open a personal savings account to try to help me learn how to save too, and I have a pathetic $100 in it...I kind of just forget. And am really bad about just relying on him to take care care of things like that, and using the money that I make for fun stuff. When I get paid, after I deposit the bulk into our joint checking where our bills are paid, I think "I am buying Harper this..." instead of "Let me transfer some into savings..." DH is baffled by this thought process, but I'm so glad that's one of the ways that we are different, because if I married someone just like me, we'd be a Hot Mess!
nectarine / 2834 posts
We also have a huge bundle in savings right now, but it's because we're planning on buying a house in the next year or 2. After that down payment, we will definitely take a hit.
pomelo / 5331 posts
We have about $6,000 right now because we had a couple of car bills come up. We're able to put between $500 and $1,000 in there monthly, depending on what else comes up. All my bonuses go into savings, too.
grapefruit / 4187 posts
I have about 1/3 of my savings left after buying an apartment in jan then realizing dh and I weren't witholding enough in 2011 and writing a big fat check to the irs. It's now like swimming upstream to get the number back up because not only are our expenses higher from owning a home, but we are now getting about $1,500 less per month after adjusting our witholding. Thankfully though we have no other debt and we are still putting $ away, just not nearly as much as I thought we'd be 
bananas / 9229 posts
We have six figures in our savings account. We're saving to buy a place in Manhattan and unfortunately 20% down means six figure down payment.
pomegranate / 3980 posts
We have absolutely nothing saved... just trying to stay afloat for now!
honeydew / 7235 posts
yikes - some of you people are impressive!
we sadly have very little at this point - all of our cash went into our down payment - and now we're paying down some debts.
pineapple / 12234 posts
We have about 2k in savings after paying off credit card debt, hospital bills and buying everything for baby...blah. I'd like to have at least $6k in there at all times. $10k would be ideal but there always seems to major expenses that we are dipping into our savings for. Especially for our house...which is a money pit.
honeydew / 7504 posts
We have just about $5k in our savings account. We have a CD worth about $10k, but we can't really touch that without paying a high penalty.
kiwi / 553 posts
Wow, I was feeling good about our savings account until I saw the poll! We have just under $10K in our savings, but we're working to pay down debts slowly. We don't want to deplete the savings account to pay off the debt as we are homeowners and we need to be ready for anything to break!
grapefruit / 4291 posts
DH is military so has a superannuation fund of over $120K which we can access when he gets out of service but in everyday savings we have about $7k in an emergency savings account (we try not to touch this) and about $15k in our other savings account.
Sometime between now and October we'll be pulling out about $5k from our savings to finish renovating our kitchen but we're still saving like crazy because I'm hoping to have at least a year off work with Baby.
pomelo / 5866 posts
We had 20k but then we bought a car with cash last week. So now we are down low around 5k. But it's allocated for stuff we will use it for (gifts, travel, etc)...so very low, actually.
hostess / wonderful grape / 20803 posts
We own a home and put a lot down cash, have a lot in retirement, and no debt....but not as much in cash savings as a result...maybe 20k Working on it though!
GOLD / papaya / 10206 posts
We have about 15k in savings right now, we're planning on putting a chunk into rrsp's this winter and an even bigger chunk on our mortgage in the spring. Our goal is to pay the house off in the next 5 years.
papaya / 10560 posts
we have a few accounts, the "baby" account, which we use for expenses related to the baby-doctors appointments, baby purchases, etc. we each have our own checking accounts, and then we also have a joint savings we contribute to each month. it's nice, because we hardly ever touch that money, but we are looking at buying a new car and possibly buying a house...so i can see it going fast. i also have an emergency fund.
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