At your current rate of spending, for how long could you survive without income?
If you have investments, let’s treat those as liquid cash for the sake of argument. Otherwise, the assumption is that you’re not selling property or possessions, but continuing to live as you do now.
I’m still recovering from the mistakes I made 8 years ago, for another 3 years maximum, so no savings,
What do you do about housing/rent?
The rest of this month.
3 months at the absolute most, likely significantly less, even after cutting out all "luxuries" like paying for internet/phone/electricity/water.
70% of that would go on rent for my 1-bed flat. And no - I don't live in a big city. I earn more than most. I spend less than most. I don't use any subscription services and I pirate everything. I don't drink, and I never go out to pubs, cinema, (insert paid activity here) because all of that is way too expensive.
The UK is fucked.
Literally the only thing that decides how long I can live is whether or not you rent - whatever you do or don't do as personal responsibility practically does not matter unless you own a house.
The small variations in rent price are also irrelevant, I used to pay more for less, in the grand scheme of things the variance only amounts to £100-200 per year and usually depends on how much you can tolerate free penicillin on the walls.
The blame is only on boomers who hoard property, jack up rents and collect benefits from the gov't off worker taxes. Virtually no one else is to blame apart from capitalism more generally.
The same boomers will also soon elect the alt-right and things will get a lot worse and everywhere else seems to be on the same general trajectory.
I used to dream of a utopia like Star Trek. Now 28 days later looks like a utopia.
I earn less than average (£26k), live in the south, most of my hobbies are cheap though. Fair bit of outdoor stuff - touching grass is free.
The media really is pushing reform though, it's crazy how much press they get. The party that wants to remove your human rights..
I earn almost double and I can't say I have any hobbies that require spending money anymore, unless upskilling for work counts as a hobby.
Almost all of my hobbies are centered around spending less money, e.g. building an offline music collection to move off Spotify, homelab stuff to host navidrome & jellyfin to move off having any subscription services.
I did buy an acoustic guitar I've been absolutely in love with lately. Was pretty cheap for a guitar (£200) but that's something I suppose.
I was saving for a house but by the time I could afford even the shittiest mortgage I might have to flee the country and as such lose all the gains in my LISA. Might as well live a little I guess.
I used to dream of a utopia like Star Trek.
If im lucky its about 2 months.
Right now, until next month's mortgage payment comes due. Every time I get something in the emergency fund either an emergency happens or a maintenance that will be an emergency if ignored. Just ordered a new set of car tires about an hour ago, as it happens.
A month?
Many years technically, but I doubt the stability of… well, everything, too much to say that with much conviction.
1-2 years before I need to look at selling the house, although hoping that the mortgage will drop when our 2 year fix ends which could push that time up a bit as that is by far my largest expense.
About a year.
About a year.
About a month should be covered
Without cutting back at all, even my frivolous spending and holidays, about six months.
If i cut holidays and frivolous stuff, about twelve months.
If i cut back essentials, sold some stuff, eighteen to twenty four months. If on top i downsized the house, probably five years.
If i could make it to seven years then my private pension would kick in and I can retire. If the government hasn't already moved the age you can draw a private pension i could be retired already.
Cash only, about 6 months. Selling assets, 20 years.
13 years ago I had to walk 2 hours after work to get home because I didn't have a pounds to rent a bike (it was a bank holiday and salary was delayed for a day). My family helped me expanding my education and since things skyrocketed.
A couple months, but
Basically I’ve been saving up for years to redo a leaky moldy bathroom. That wouldn’t get done. Maybe ever
I’ve saved what I could to pay for my kids college. I could ruin their entire future to stay alive
I’m coming up in retirement age with way too little savings. I’ve finally able to put aside enough to catch up a little bit I guess that would go pretty quickly too
Around 4 months. But I could considerably decrease the rate of spending if that was an actual scenario, which would give me more like a year.
A month, maybe. I'd probably get arrested for squatting at work sooner, tbh. If I cut and run to the woods tonight, I could probably make it further, but I'll run out of food money faster than I could get a reliable food source going before winter hits
A month on current funds and maybe a couple more if I started selling off longer term assets.
Next week.
About 30 months without any cutback on spending. Pure living costs is about 60 months.
I could probably make it 6 months maybe slightly more, I don't spend a lot as it is and where I live has a relatively low cost of living.
Next weeks paycheck is already spent
Edit- I am very frugal and the money goes toward bills and rent
If I was more devoted to my saving, I could probably last a good long while. Like, maybe a couple years worth of just savings, leaving my job and just living worry free. My expenses are moderately low so it'd be stupid easy.
Maybe one year
3 years for my wife and I.
Probably 6-7 if we take money out of retirement accounts.
We have been very fortunate in circumstances. Spend about 2.5k a month. In mid twenties.
If I'm frugal, about a year. But I own a small business and this would only occur if my business is bankrupt. In which case debtors might chase my personal assets.
Is it not a limited company?
We had to wager our houses to get the initial loans during startup. Loans are almost finished.
I'm one of the lucky few who have a pension. I do not have enough savings to last until the pension kicks in, and in any case the pension is less than my current income, but I could live off my pension and social security alone.
About 4 months before I have to sell any assets. Then about 144 months, not including future growth of those assets before they're sold. But then I'm broke at nearly 50.
No idea. Really.
Of course I would change my spending automatically, if the income went down to zero. But it is not likely at all that something like that happens.
Buddy I live deep in the Appalachia mountains. I don't need money at all. All this technology and civilization bullshit is just a bonus for me, not a need.
Five months, but, three quibbles:
If I didn't have income I'd be cutting way back, and with only essential expenses it's more like eight.
I wouldn't plunder my retirement investments to keep spending at the current rate, so if I kept spending the same but didn't plunder, it's more like two months.
I started a good job recently after being underemployed for over a year, and am still financially recovering; normally my emergency budget covers ten months without any income.
3 months
I don't use my car much anymore, so would consider that liquid, and could make the kids pay some rent now they are working (not much), if I sold that and nothing in the house needed repaired or maintained (ha ha ha) I am at almost 3 years. So I guess if I had some fatal illness and was willing to run out all of both my &my husband's retirement money I could stop working. Well, no, nevermind, I couldn't, because the medical care would bankrupt us. But we would not immediately starve anymore. It only took half a century to get here!
About three fiddy.
Aye, me too. I can no longer work but I also don't get benefits because according to the rules I can actually work. I have post exertional malaise, chronic fatigue and chronic brain fog. I'm an editor and proofreader.
I just ran the numbers for the first time ever, and it adds up to 34 months - which I realize is a pretty privileged place to be. However, I’m by no means rich; I just live well below my means and invest all my savings.
Dude, you are rich.
Depends on who I compare myself to and how one defines “rich.” To me, it means someone whose passive income exceeds their spending - and I’m nowhere even close to that… yet.
I used to rent a single bedroom in an overcrowded house share, didn't learn to drive because I couldn't afford it.
Had over a year of expenses saved, hardly makes you rich.
He's rich in spirit.
In reality, he's about seven orders of magnitude from rich, and your perspective needs a good tinkering.
Nearly everybody who speaks English is rich. We just have no clue who poor other parts of the world are and so think of ourselves as poor.
I'm in my mid 40's.
It's not particularly uncommon for people in regional Australia to own their own house with no mortgage by my age.
It's pretty tough to find a family home that costs less than 10x average wage.
So, as a kind of line in the sand I'd say maybe a third of 45 year olds living in regional Australia could "survive" for 10 years with no income.
How do you know how to invest? Asking for a friend.
I don’t. I do it the boring way - buying cheap, highly diversified ETF index funds.
Buy into a broad market tracking ETF (something that tracks s&P 500 or 1000 or similar). That way you're not betting on individual companies, your betting on the collective largest companies in the world doing well. Over a long period of time, which for over a century has averaged ~7% inflation adjusted return yearly.