The latest Bank of Ireland/ESRI Savings and Investment Index has been released this week. The index tracks household attitudes towards savings and investment as well as monitoring their perspectives on the current and future savings and investment environment. 
 
Overall, savings patterns remained strong in August with 49% of people answering that they were regular savers. However, savers appeared happier with the amounts they were putting away each month – 51% felt they were saving the right amount in August, the strongest response to this question since April 2017.
 
The one negative in August’s data was that people still appear uncertain about the outlook for the savings environment. Forty percent of people felt it was a good time to save in August, down marginally from 41% in July. 

Older savers in particular were less optimistic on the savings outlook with 34% of over 50s saying it was a good time to save, down from 41% in July. Together this uncertainty pulled the Savings Environment sub-index down to 98 from 100 in July.
 
The percentage of people that felt they invested the appropriate amount spiked to 73% in August, a massive increase on the 54% response in July. One in three (32%) were also investing regularly in August, unchanged compared to July. The percentage of people that felt it was a good time to invest rose to a four month high of 34%.

Commenting on the August results for the Bank of Ireland/ESRI Savings and Investment Index, Tom McCabe at Bank of Ireland Investment Markets said, "August’s results for the Bank of Ireland/ESRI Savings and Investment Index clearly illustrate that Irish savers are in a good place. Over the past year a strong Irish economy has provided a fertile environment for saving. Seasonal trends with consumers starting to think of Christmas saving instead of summer spending combined with ongoing Brexit uncertainties probably bolstered the saving trend in August."

Source: www.businessworld.ie