I am a Uni Graduate - Am I Saving Enough?

I'm 23, a graduate, living at home. I currently have about £6,300 in my account at the time of writing.

I earn about £1,700 a month. I try to save at least £900 a month - I am averaging spending £800 a month.

When I actually try and pinpoint how I spend £800 it's really tricky! It's roughly:
£280 on leisure a month (£70 a week)
£80 on petrol a month
£300 on rent a month
£80 a month miscellaneous

Would you say my finances are good or not? I really have no clue as I can't compare to friends since they understandably keep this private. It would be nice to have some sort of barometer to know if I'm doing well or not.

What are you saving for? I suspect you are doing seriously well compared with your friends.

Just saving for life really. A house, pension, marriage, weddings, a ring, children etc. Everything that'll happen in the future and will require a lot of saved money.

My friends all seem incredibly stingy to the point that it gets ridiculous so I'm not so sure.

You must have some unusual friends tbh- not that thats a bad thing. You are in Dave Ramsey level saving! Do you have prospects to increase your income? That helps with saving.

yes my friends are unusual i guess! What do you mean "Do you have prospects to increase your income"? My job is fairly new so wont be due a pay rise for a while and dont have any side income

What kind of job u have it if you earn just 1.700£/ month

Just saving for life really. A house, pension, marriage, weddings, a ring, children etc. Everything that'll happen in the future and will require a lot of saved money.

My friends all seem incredibly stingy to the point that it gets ridiculous so I'm not so sure.

For pensions, you should be using your salary sacrifice scheme to get an additional contribution % from your employer.

It's good that you're saving so much but I'd suggest that you ought to focus your savings more. For pensions, you should be using your salary sacrifice scheme to get an additional contribution % from your employer. For a house, consider using either a HtB or Lifetime ISA to get the 25% government bonus. Think about exactly what you want to use your savings for and you can make them go a lot lot further.

Not all companies operate a salary sacrifice scheme.

Contributing to your workplace pension is still solid advice though OP. Contribute at least the maximum matched amount (usually 4 or 5%).

Thanks - out of the 2 do you think Help To Buy or a Lifetime ISA is better?

Also I'm thinking I may get a Saturday job. Even if it brings in £80 a week... that'll help over time. It's also up to about £40 I may have saved which I would've spent if I wasn't working.

Both ISAs offer the same 25% bonus. The Lifetime ISA allows you to save more (£4000 a year instead of £2400), and the bonus is paid monthly instead of annually, so you acrue a bit more interest as a result. On the other hand, H2B ISA has been around longer, so there's considerably more choice on offer. There's literally only one cash-based LISA, and the interest on it is not that great. There are also several stocks & shares LISAs which could well offer you a decent return, though you need to be in it for the long haul to make that work, five years minimum is what I've heard to ride out the "bumps" in the stock market.

I can't really say which is going to be best for your situation since it depends on how much you want to save and when you might be considering buying a house. You also need to be aware that your money is "locked in" to some extent with these ISAs, in the case of the LISA there's something like a 6% penalty for withdrawing early, not sure what it is on the H2B.

As I said before, have a good think about what your priorities are, and once you know what you want to achieve, you can pick the savings type that best fits your plan.

I'd like to have moved out in 2 years at latest. Realistically probably buying somewhere & moved out 18 month from now. I aim to save £800 a month. So probably about £15k on top of what I saved already. So I'll have a total of around £20-22k saved by the time I want to move out.

My gf is doing a masters (finishing this September). So hopefully September next year we will have moved out. Hopefully she'll have about £8-10k saved up.

So between us we will have £30k saved up by Septemver next year when we'd realistically move out. We'd look for a property (ideally a house not a flat) for around £200k I reckon.

Am I being realistic with this all do you think?

Sounds relatively doable, provided you can continue to save enough for a deposit, and when the time comes, prove to the lender that you'll be able to keep up with your repayments.

I would recommend you open up a cash LISA right now, and put in the full £4000 (or as much as you can) before 5th April, as the government bonus is done per tax year so you can esentially get a boost to your savings right from the get go. Your girlfriend can do the same thing under her name, giving you up to £2000 free money right away.

After that keep contributing to both LISAs to build up your deposit fund, and keep any additional savings above the £4k/year cap in a separate account. When you reach the stage of starting to shop around for houses, you can do the same trick as above, and fill up your (and your GF's) LISA with the full £4k allowance for the year. This time you'll likely do it near the start of the tax year rather than the end, and have the government bonus paid out to you the following month. Doing this plus the above tactive effectively gives you two extra years' worth of the government bonus, which ought to be a significant help.

In the mean time don't neglect your credit score. Having a decent deposit is great but if the banks think you won't be able to handle repayments it won't get you that far. Research ways you can improve your lendability (if that's a word) so that you stand a decent chance when you step into the bank manager's office. Good luck

I'm 23, a graduate, living at home. I currently have about £6,300 in my account at the time of writing.

I earn about £1,700 a month. I try to save around £1000 a month - I am averaging spending £750 a month.

When I actually try and pinpoint how I spend £800 it's really tricky! It's roughly:
£280 on leisure a month (£70 a week)
£80 on petrol a month
£300 on rent a month
£80 a month miscellaneous

Would you say my finances are good or not? I really have no clue as I can't compare to friends since they understandably keep this private. It would be nice to have some sort of barometer to know if I'm doing well or not.