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Useful information
Saving
Moving towards your goals
At its heart, saving provides financial security, freedom, and protection against money emergencies. And having savings can help you to improve your financial wellness and reduce stress in your life.
Establishing and working towards your savings goals can help you feel better prepared for those important moments in life, such as buying a house, helping family members, or affording the retirement you want. Knowing what you want to achieve is important, and, like exercise, little and often is a great way to start.
Have you thought about your long term financial goals?
We found that 95% of people we asked said that being financially comfortable in retirement is one of their long term financial goals. *The Fidelity Global Sentiment Survey, 2023
Get to know your goals
Understanding your goals is important, as it may help you to stay focused. So when starting to save, the first step is knowing what you’re saving for. It could be simply for peace of mind or:
Buying a home
Whether you're buying your first home or moving home.
A special event
Like a wedding or important birthday.
Retirement
To give yourself a financially comfortable retirement.
Refurbishing or renovating your home
Like painting the kitchen or installing a new boiler.
Holidays
From an annual trip to a once in a lifetime experience.
Starting a family
Helping to cover the costs of your growing family.
When you are thinking about saving, it’s important to know why you’re doing it. You might have some shorter-term goals that are relatively straightforward – getting your emergency savings in place, for example, or planning for something special, such as a wedding, a holiday, or a new car.
For the longer-term goal of building retirement savings, you’ve already made a great start by saving into your retirement savings plan. Retirement might feel like it’s a long way off, but caring about your retirement savings plan now might make it the biggest investment in yourself and your future.
Short and medium-term goals are things you plan to do within the next five years
For these goals, it’s important to know what you’re saving for and when you aim to achieve your goal.
It can be a good idea to keep your savings separate from your day-to-day money and bank accounts. By keeping the money separate it will help you to make sure you don’t accidentally eat into your savings and thereby extend the length of time it’ll take you to meet your goals.
There are a number of different types of accounts you could use to save into and you should investigate which type of account would be best suited for your needs and circumstances.
Top Tip: Pay yourself first
You could set aside money every time you get paid or use an app to round up your spending and put loose change into a savings account. The key is to make it a habit. Having goals and saving towards tangible things and knowing how much you need to save each month is a great way to stay motivated.
Goals that are over five years or more in the future.
When it comes to achieving your long-term goals, the earlier you start putting money aside, the more time it will have to grow. This is a way of supercharging your savings using the power of compounding. Put simply, it means you can potentially benefit from investment growth that has already built up on your savings. This will accumulate over time and could turn a small sum into a significant amount. It’s important to remember that with all investments, the value of them can go down as well as up, and you may not get back what you put in.
Top Tip: Supercharge your savings
One way you can potentially increase your long-term savings is by looking at how much you’re saving towards your retirement. If you can, increasing what you save on a monthly basis by an extra 1% of your salary, could boost your retirement savings. And because it’s a small amount, finding the extra money doesn’t have to mean big sacrifices.
Discover your financial wellness
See how much you've already saved
Checking how much money you’ve already put away for retirement can help you feel more confident about the progress you’ve made. Log in to PlanViewer to see how you’re doing.
Check out how much you should be saving
The question of how much you should be saving is key to ensuring you maintain your lifestyle in retirement.
A little extra goes a long way
Use our calculator to see how a small change to your contributions today can make a big difference to your pot tomorrow. Even an extra 1% could supercharge your savings.
A quick summary on saving
- Create savings goals, work out what you need to save and by when, and pay yourself first.
- Keep timeframes in mind. As you're most likely saving towards both short and long-term aspirations.
- Remember, a small increase to your retirement savings today, could make a big difference tomorrow.
*The Fidelity Global Sentiment Survey, 2023. The sample consisted of respondents with the following qualifying conditions: aged 20-75, either they or their partner were employed full-time or part-time and had a minimum household income of: Australia: A$45,000 annually; China: RMB 5,000 monthly; Hong Kong: HK$15,000 monthly; USA: US$20,000 annually; Canada: CA$30,000 annually; UK: £10,000 annually; Mexico: $4,500 MXN monthly; Ireland: €20,000 annually; Germany: €20,000 annually; Netherlands: €20,000 annually; France: €20,000 annually; Italy: €15,000 annually; Spain: €15,000 annually; Japan: 1.5m yen annually; Brazil: R$1,501 monthly; India: ₹55,001 annually, Singapore: SGD$2,000 monthly; Denmark: 100,00 DKK annually; South Korea: 1m KRW monthly; Switzerland: 20 CHF annually; KSA: 4,000 SAR monthly; Sweden: 180,000 SEK annually; UAE 29,000 AED
monthly; The data collection, research and analysis for the above markets was completed in partnership with Opinium, a strategic insight agency. Data collection took place in July 2023. Reporting and analysis took place between July and October 2023.