Given the current economic climate, I was curious to see how much living allowance people have saved in the event that they lose their job tomorrow. I posted a poll on LinkedIn asking "How much living allowance have you saved" with possible responses split into five bands:
- Virtually none.
- Less than two weeks.
- Two weeks to one month.
- One to six months.
- More than six months.
I was expecting to have peaks in the first and third bands, but was surprised to see that my (admittedly small) sample's responses were skewed toward the last option. Males represented three times as many big savers as did females. Younger people (18-24) unsurprisingly represented lower savers, while nearly half of the bands are represented by 25-34 year olds.
The take-away from this article is a message of hope: it is possible to save significant amounts of money in the event that you lose your job. Get out of debt, save, maintain a well-diversified portfolio and be responsible with your spending.
