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Poll: My savings generally amount to:
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Apr 16, 2020

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "My savings generally amount to:".

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Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 05:27
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Other Apr 16, 2020

Approximately what I make in two/three years, but I have another income (pension) and over the years I became rather frugal…

 
Philippe Etienne
Philippe Etienne  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 06:27
Member
English to French
A lot Apr 16, 2020

At least a lot more than 30 years ago, which is good, although I still don't wear a Rolex.
I expect people who begin in life to have less savings than those who have a few working decades behind them.
And it's never too early to start saving.

But I wouldn't want to spend it all during the outbreak, it's meant to be converted to extra living expenses for when I'm fed up working, higher education for the children, a new car when the current one becomes an unrecoverable wr
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At least a lot more than 30 years ago, which is good, although I still don't wear a Rolex.
I expect people who begin in life to have less savings than those who have a few working decades behind them.
And it's never too early to start saving.

But I wouldn't want to spend it all during the outbreak, it's meant to be converted to extra living expenses for when I'm fed up working, higher education for the children, a new car when the current one becomes an unrecoverable wreck, a flat or three for subsequent renting...

Philippe
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Elizabeth Tamblin
Angie Garbarino
Sanjin Grandić
 
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 13:27
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
2-3 years Apr 16, 2020

Half cash, half securities.

 
Michael Harris
Michael Harris  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 06:27
Member (2006)
German to English
Savings? Apr 16, 2020

I am married with two children (girls) and have a mortgage. As soon as I start to save anything, the state comes along and will tax it in some form or another:-(

Dan Lucas
Yetta Jensen Bogarde
Seoyoon Kim
Nadia Silva Castro
 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 05:27
Member (2008)
Italian to English
NOYB Apr 16, 2020

"My savings generally amount to:"


None of your business.


expressisverbis
Pascale van Kempen-Herlant
IrinaN
Sławomira Kaczmarek
ahartje
Angus Stewart
Bruno1011
 
Paul Dixon
Paul Dixon  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 02:27
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Savings? Apr 16, 2020

The market in Brazil is very bad, highly saturated (as the profession is not yet regulated, anyone who speaks a bit of English or 'has spent a few days in Disney' thinks they can translate, flooding the market, and pushing rates down), so jobs are not common in the best of times. And we have to pay massive taxes, software, hardware, dictionaries, association fees, accountant fees, etc - so it's very difficult to make a saving here.

 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
3+ years Apr 16, 2020

Unless you’re only just starting out, not having savings is just irresponsible. You never know what’s around the corner.

Angie Garbarino
Muriel Vasconcellos
JPMedicalTrans
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
 
Aline Amorim
Aline Amorim  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 02:27
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Around what I make in 1 - 3 months Apr 16, 2020

Sometimes I am making more money.

 
Muriel Vasconcellos
Muriel Vasconcellos  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 22:27
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
About a year and a half... Apr 17, 2020

...not counting equity in my home.

 
Michael Wetzel
Michael Wetzel  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 06:27
German to English
Ask your accountant if he feels you are doing enough for your country ... Apr 22, 2020

... and then ask him what your country can do for you.

Like Michael, I am married with (two) children in Germany:
I get close to €5000 (€4896) tax-free from the German government each year for having two children ("Kindergeld"). The government also collects no income tax on the first €750 (€1500 for a married couple) of revenue/interest earned on saved money ("Sparerfreibetrag") and encourages my wife and me to set aside an additional 4% of our annual income for tax be
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... and then ask him what your country can do for you.

Like Michael, I am married with (two) children in Germany:
I get close to €5000 (€4896) tax-free from the German government each year for having two children ("Kindergeld"). The government also collects no income tax on the first €750 (€1500 for a married couple) of revenue/interest earned on saved money ("Sparerfreibetrag") and encourages my wife and me to set aside an additional 4% of our annual income for tax benefits and a €950 government subsidy ("Riesterrente" with two earners and two children) ... but maybe I should be worried that they are going to start taxing savings next week and blame them for my refusing to keep my private expenditures in line with my earnings.
I have also been perfectly happy to accept an essentially free college education, heavily subsidized childcare and now heavily subsidized semi-private schooling for my children and a subvention to help me get my business started ten years ago. And, you know, roads and police and stuff.

Yes, it would indeed be the state's fault if I now felt the need to claim Corona benefits intended for people who actually might be in desperate need, like our more illustrious cousins among the "liberal professions", such as doctors, dentists, lawyers, architects, etc., who actually have rent to pay for their offices and who usually have salaried employees (and, yes, most self-employed doctors need to be included on that list, because the Corona situation is also doing a number on their earnings), as well as people actually running conventional businesses like restaurants, bars, small shops, etc.

And more generally:
What does it mean to be an "independent" contractor and have less than three months (nearly half of respondents) or less than one month (just over a quarter of respondents) of savings to weather a bad spell?

While our own private catastrophes will rarely come in forms as spectacular as the Corona virus in 2020 or the Great Recession around 2010 or the dot.com crash around 2000, we can pretty well count on them coming in some other more mundane form at some point in time. Freelancers depending on their workflow remaining constant for every three-month period during the remaining decades of their careers are not thinking clearly (particulaly if they are blaming someone else for their choice not to save). What are the odds of that kind of streak of non-misfortune?

On the bright side: If you save 20% of your net earnings for two years, then you will be ready to weather just under five months at zero earnings after just two years. At 10%, you would hit six months after five years. A lot of us genuinely cannot do that, but a lot of us could, but haven't.
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Philippe Etienne
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Christopher Schröder
Dan Lucas
 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 05:27
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Very low Apr 22, 2020

Michael Wetzel wrote:
Freelancers depending on their workflow remaining constant for every three-month period during the remaining decades of their careers are not thinking clearly (particulaly if they are blaming someone else for their choice not to save). What are the odds of that kind of streak of non-misfortune?

Even if there were no major secular events of the kind you mention, life is cyclical, from almost every aspect of the natural world, to mundane economic and social forces. The pendulum swings one way, then the other...

Dan


 
Angie Garbarino
Angie Garbarino  Identity Verified
Local time: 06:27
Member (2003)
French to Italian
+ ...
Exactly ;) Apr 22, 2020

Tom in London wrote:

"My savings generally amount to:"


None of your business.


expressisverbis
 
Michael Wetzel
Michael Wetzel  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 06:27
German to English
Because I can't edit my post ... Apr 27, 2020

... I'll make a new one.

I forgot to insert a smiley or irony marks or anything of that sort after the quotation at the beginning of my post. Now I am wondering what percentage of the people who read my post also read it in the sense in which I intended to write it. Looking at it again, I even wonder if I wrote it in the sense I intended people to read it.

And so, because this forum post will probably outlive me (for anyone who knows how to find it) and I don't want my
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... I'll make a new one.

I forgot to insert a smiley or irony marks or anything of that sort after the quotation at the beginning of my post. Now I am wondering what percentage of the people who read my post also read it in the sense in which I intended to write it. Looking at it again, I even wonder if I wrote it in the sense I intended people to read it.

And so, because this forum post will probably outlive me (for anyone who knows how to find it) and I don't want my great-great grandchildren looking back in shame on what an antisocial jerk of a libertarian their great-great grandfather was, I would just like to humorlessly clarify: "Ask your accountant if he thinks you are doing enough for your country and then ask him what your country can do for you" was meant facetiously. I think that is a condemnable attitude and I think people who feel like they have paid their share (particularly those who have children) are almost certainly self-servingly deceiving themselves. I also think that a significant portion of people are so crazy this might not be immediately apparent to them, so I wanted to be clear. Just for the record.
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Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
Confused Apr 27, 2020

Michael Wetzel wrote:

... I'll make a new one.

I forgot to insert a smiley or irony marks or anything of that sort after the quotation at the beginning of my post. Now I am wondering what percentage of the people who read my post also read it in the sense in which I intended to write it. Looking at it again, I even wonder if I wrote it in the sense I intended people to read it.

And so, because this forum post will probably outlive me (for anyone who knows how to find it) and I don't want my great-great grandchildren looking back in shame on what an antisocial jerk of a libertarian their great-great grandfather was, I would just like to humorlessly clarify: "Ask your accountant if he thinks you are doing enough for your country and then ask him what your country can do for you" was meant facetiously. I think that is a condemnable attitude and I think people who feel like they have paid their share (particularly those who have children) are almost certainly self-servingly deceiving themselves. I also think that a significant portion of people are so crazy this might not be immediately apparent to them, so I wanted to be clear. Just for the record.


So what exactly are you trying to say?


 
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Poll: My savings generally amount to:






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