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The news that people are hardly saving any money doesn’t surprise me. As interest rates have been low for quite a few years now, there has almost been a dis-incentive to save and a real temptation to do the opposite - to borrow as much as you can.

Apparently 20 percent of us don’t bother to save at all, and another fifth only save a small amount each month and that is for things like holidays. Living for the moment is great, after all you can’t take a stash of money to the grave with you, but it would personally make me uneasy if I wasn’t building up even a small amount of capital.

According to some experts we should all have at least three times our monthly salary stashed away in case that “rainy day” does decide to visit us. As the average salary is around £25,000 in the UK, that means we should be striving to build our savings to at least £6,000.

I’m all for that level of saving, even though £6,000 doesn’t actually buy that much, unfortunately. But this news about savings published today chimes with the article on Money High Street about overpaying your mortgage, that we published yesterday.

With interest on mortgages being more costly than interest earned from savings accounts, particularly when you consider tax reductions on savings account interest, it makes real sense to start over paying your mortgage, once you have built some savings and have paid off all credit card debts.

To my mind not saving now will cause you real problems in the future - perhaps when you are earning less through retirement, changes in circumstances or a reduction in salary. At least you will have built up a valuable pot of capital that can grow, if invested sensibly. You could always treat yourself to a nice holiday from it later on, without having to borrow the money.