From Pennies to Peace of Mind: A Story on Saving

Do you remember the first thing you properly saved up for? I don’t mean just holding off for a week or two, but something you really had to work towards and save up for over time?

And what feelings does it stir in you when you think about it?

For me, it was an England football shirt when I was about ten years old. It cost £36 that I didn’t have, and back then was a huge amount for me. It was Spring so, I thought if I started saving there, I could save enough to get the shirt by Summer.

I found an old tin in a cupboard and put all the money I could scrape together into it. I drew out a chart on a little piece of paper with a square for each pound on it, all the way up to my target amount. Each week I’d get a pound pocket money, and I’d put the pound in the tin and put a line through the next square in the chart. Sometimes I’d get a pound or two extra from my Gran for doing some chores. They’d go in the tin, and I’d see myself edging closer to my goal.

Even before I got to the end, I could see the savings building up and felt a growing sense of pride. Even though it was hard to see my brother go and buy sweets each week, as the amount I’d saved accumulated, I felt pleased that I was getting closer to my goal.

Eventually I got the £36, and I went to buy the shirt. My mum said she couldn’t understand spending that much on one T-shirt. I didn’t care, I had the shirt. But, looking at the chart of crossed-out numbers, I also had a great satisfaction that I’d achieved something in saving up for the shirt.

What I didn’t realise was that I’d also sowed the seed of a habit, one that can transform lives. By experiencing the rewards from saving for a football shirt, I knew I could start again and aim for more and bigger purchases and eventually for driving lessons and university.

As well as opening up opportunities like this, saving brings peace of mind. If, while saving up for my football shirt, an emergency had come up I knew I could have dipped into the pot. The reassurance that savings provide is one of its most powerful benefits.

Research shows that regular saving is linked to better mental well-being, and also to longer term benefits such as avoiding getting into debt and ultimately achieving life-goals such as buying a home. The well-being benefits for savers are shown in better scores for feeling satisfied with life, sleeping well and feeling optimistic about the future. Better well-being can have other benefits too, like making people more productive at work.

Yet, according to the Money & Pensions Service, a quarter of adults in the UK have less than £100 to fall back upon in an emergency. That’s fourteen million people who might struggle to cope with an unexpected expense.

Today I work on savings policy, and am proud to lead the UK Savings Week campaign. This aims to get people engaged in saving, particularly those who don’t have a buffer of emergency saving. This year, the focus is on having a clear savings goal, whether that is peace of mind or a dream holiday. Knowing what you are saving for can keep you on track when other temptations to spend arise.

We know savings habits can’t be formed in a week, and for many people the cost of living means they simply can’t save at the moment. The Savings Week campaign encourages people to find a way to save that works for them, with hints and tips for people in different circumstances.

The campaign brings together organisations that see the benefit in fostering a savings culture, helping them to help people to think again about savings and to take the first steps in changing behaviour.

Last year nearly 300 organisations supported the campaign, from savings providers to charities to businesses. We’ve created tools, activities and resources for social and traditional media that enable organisations to raise awareness of saving, and to help people to take steps to start saving or to manage their existing savings better.

This year, 9-15 September, if you want your organisation to support the campaign, get in touch to find out more or to access the resources.

Saving doesn’t give you the immediate adrenaline rush that spending can. Instead, the emotional payoff to saving is in the future, and softly felt. Yet, it can be incredibly powerful: liberating and providing a foundation for aspiration. I want to help more people get this feeling, as well as their new football shirts.

By Andrew Gall,
VocL Voice,
Head of Savings & Economics, Building Societies Association