To be in this job and feel poor?

I know we're going round and round in circles on this and I don't want to irritate you as I do agree with you/see your point in a way. House prices are outrageous these days, rent is also crippling and is it awful that so many people have to spend such a large portion of their salary on rent/mortgage.

However, to me the OP's situation is comfortable, in that she owns her own house, has more disposable income after mortgage and loan repayments etc than many other people have (based on my understanding of the info provided anyway, I could be wrong).

I was trying to find a post earlier in this thread that illustrated the point I'm trying to make, but I don't have time to keep looking back through. Someone said they have a combined salary with their partner of over £200k and even they are still feeling the pinch. I think most people would agree that £200k between two people is pretty comfortable. But people tend to live within their means, they find ways to spend more money and get used to a more luxurious baseline. Then when rampant inflation happens and their money doesn't go as far, they find they have to cut back. Nobody likes having to find ways to cut back.

The OP titled this thread AIBU to feel poor in this job, and after 21 pages, I still think she's minimising what being poor really means. I understand why she feels disappointed and I would have had more sympathy if she had worded the post differently. But I still think it's ridiculous to say she feels poor.

@upthehills1 that is why salaries are rising for childcare and care home workers then to fill all those vacancies?
If you take just a market approach, people will only pay so much for a service. So nurseries are closing or standards are reducing because nurseries can not attract enough decent staff on the current pay rates. Parents will not pay more to enable salaries to rise to a level they are attractive.
Markets do not operate in the simplistic way you state.

The job market is just that - a market. The more people capable of doing a particular job, the lower paid it is.

the argument that lower earners should be paid fairly is not the OP. It’s that someone on a fairly high salary (top 9% in the country as per someone else’s post!) expected to have a more comfortable life on that salary and is disillusioned.

Everyone in the UK should have the opportunity to earn a decent living wage, that would afford them a reasonable quality of life. The UK is a wealthy country and the levels of inequality are disgusting.

During an economic downturn everyone suffers. Years of wage stagnation and recent inflation mean that all of us see our money doesn't go as far. The middle class are not exempt from that.

So many people in the UK have been struggling to pay the bills for so long, but a lot of people only seem to care when it starts to affect them too. Which is surely why we've had 15 years of a Tory government, most people didn't seem to mind when they were only shitting on people less fortunate than themselves.

I don't think every full time role should have the same salary, some jobs have much more pressure, responsibility and impact than others. But I don't think those on lower wages should be the only ones needing to cut back in the current economic climate.

Yes. The expectation from most of not all was that a university education would result in a higher paid career. That is what he statistics show.

But surely the reason people spend years training or at university is to earn more?

Have you been to university? People go for many reasons - because they want a high paying job (probably a minority of them), because their friends are going, because their ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’ parents practically force them to go, because they can think of anything else to do, because they love learning, and so on.

But surely the reason people spend years training or at university is to earn more?

do you think a retail worker and a barrister should earn the same wage?

She has worked hard at a particular career path that pays better than any of those jobs pay. Do you think everyone should be paid the same?

Yes, people have loans. Student finance is about £200, so the £400 was by choice. Many families have less than £1300 to live on after housing costs. OP is buying their own home, an appreciating asset, and has chosen a car on finance and the associated costs. We all make our choices, and if OP had chosen differently she might well be in a far worse financial position, and unlikely to be in a better one.

Also, your insinuation that your years of training qualify as having somehow worked harder than others in simple jobs is condescending. Everyone that works, works hard as a rule. Your qualifications do not mean you have worked harder than the postman, retail worker, or carer earning minimum wage.

Yes, I noticed that including 170 for a special kind of dog diet. Interesting Guardian article. I suppose they picked people with 20k on credit cards etc who are in a cycle of not quite earning enough. Even the first one annoyed me as he left an 80k job for a 40k one in London so no surprise to anyone that he found it harder to mate ends meet.

You are far from poor. You are the product of 14 years of Tory government and only in last four years getting a taste of how the lowest earners live their entire working lives.

I know right? Matthew (not William!) is spending £540 a month on his sodding dog.

@Ginmonkeyagain Just about all the people in that article need a lesson in budgeting and priorities. I know the Guardian wants people to think 'isn't the Government awful that people are struggling like this, but it falls quite flat when it talks about people 'having to buy lunch on a credit card' (buy lunch???!! whatever happened to making your own sandwich or having leftovers?) or the idiocy of people like Charl, who 'shares a rental flat with her mother in London, found a new job with a £35,000 salary, but had to opt out of her employer’s generous pension scheme in April 2023, because she could not afford to pay into it'.

Even if they live somewhere expensive and her DM is on NMW, she will be able to afford her pension, rent, food and basic bills etc, just not alongside whatever fripperies she indulges in.

It seems to a lot of people that their definition of 'poor' is 'not being able to continue spending on whatever the hell I like whenever I want to'.

@Ginmonkeyagain it's astonishing how much the latest mobile phones cost. It's such a con. I bought my phone from a company that refurbishes second hand phones, I bought it outright and have a sim only contract. It's so much cheaper.

I also think buying new cars on finance is a massive waste of money. They depreciate so fast. Someone said earlier in the thread that you end up paying more for a second hand car due to the repair costs, but that hasn't been my experience. I've had several hand cars over the years and I've got a lot of mileage and value out of them.

I do understand that rent increases and rising house prices are absolutely crippling for younger generations. Something needs to be done to bring rent under control and to increase affordable housing options. But society does have a lot of other ways of conning into throwing our money away.

The OP isn't alone - https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/22/debt-britons-financial-difficulty-credit-cards

Some tough tales here but some of these, particularly William, need a good hard lesson in proper budgeting. £90 a month on mobile phones when you are drowning in credit card debt?

@SquirrelMadness yeah I can see how it could be higher if it is a newish mortgage - we are half way through paying off ours, but doubling sounds a bit odd.

Mine was 1.34% mortgage interest only (repaid it last year). They are much higher now.
I asked much earlier on the threat what the profession is here as mumsnetters might be able to help give ideas for her to earn more money in the career where she spent 7 years training which is probably a better and easier course of action than just trying to get slightly lower bills; but I don't think the poster has been back.

I guess she's at a much earlier stage of paying off her mortgage, in the first few years you're pretty much just paying off the interest. Having said that, I'm also at an early stage of paying my mortgage off, it increased much more than yours did after the Truss debacle but it didn't double.

I also think it's very fishy that the OP initially said £1300, then said she'd got it wrong and it's actually £1500. I think if you were struggling to pay your mortgage you'd know exactly how much you were paying each month, you wouldn't forget. I know exactly how much my mortgage is as it's my biggest monthly outgoing, I wouldn't need to double check if someone asked me. I think the OP could be bad at budgeting and bad at making sure she's on the best deals, which maybe also explains the ridiculously high energy bills. £240pm for one person in a two bedroom house doesn't make sense, especially if what she says about having the heating on for 1hr per day only is correct.

The sums in this thread don't add up. Either the OP is over exaggerating how high her bills are or she's not working on making sure she doesn't default to the highest rates.

You’re done really well! I can see why you feel this way though, I think a lot of us do at the moment. Everything is so expensive and wages haven’t increased to match.

Can you sell your house and buy a place with a lower mortgage? Is a lodger out of the question, even if just for a while to see some more cash coming in? You might resent it (I would too), but as a temporary money earner to give you some slack.

What is your profession? Will your wages increase in the long term, surely?

Yeah we went from under 2% to 5.1%.

A couple of years ago you could get a mortgage with a rate under 1%. Some time recently it's been up to about 6% so I don't know if that accounts for the increase. Would obviously depend on amount and term of mortgage too.

I'm struggling to understand what happened with your mortgage, why has it gone from £800 pcm to £1500 pcm?

We had to get a new mortgage deal literally weeks after the disasterous Liz Truss budget and we went from £728 pcm to £861 pcm. I am not sure why yours has pretty much doubled.

are you being serious? Do you honestly think being single and child free in your forties is the same as being in your twenties?

How patronising and silly.