Building Societies Association

What inspired the creation of UK Savings Week?

So in my role, I'm head of savings at the Building Societies Association in the UK.

So that's the trade body for building societies that are a group of savings providers in the UK.

And we've been looking at savings for a long time and thinking, how can we really help people start to build those savings habits? And The need is pretty extreme.

Yes, that's basically it was you, Andy and the team at Be Clever With Your Cash that saved my savings.

So let's get back to National Savings Week and this research from the Building Societies Association.

We've spoken about your experience with savings and mine, but this data is now showing some other stuff in terms of young working adults, isn't it?

Yeah, and we've seen this type of research before, which is showing the lack of financial resilience that young people have.

So this new set of data from the Building Societies Association as part of UK Savings Week is showing us that young working adults are facing a savings challenge, which to many might not be surprising given the circumstances, which I'll go into in a little bit.

So it's saying that more than one in three, so 35%, are unable to meet an unexpected £300 expense.

so that's basically talking about this financial resilience which in normal people terms is the ability to withstand a financial shock so having enough in an emergency fund or enough tucked away for that 300 pound expense and that could be anything that could be something essential in your household like needing to get the fridge fixed or the washing machine fixed or if something goes wrong with your car which you rely on to get to work It's those kinds of things that we are in need of that we need to have the money set aside for.

Totally.