To be in this job and feel poor?

YANBU

We've been told this sort of salary is being "well off" but the cost of living is extortionate. £58k ten or twenty years ago would have gotten you an awful lot more.

I don't think you're being unreasonable at all.

What is it that you trained to do and what is your job OP? I'd guess it's likely the same as mine!

She has 600 student loan repayments a month, her mortgage went up by 500 a month and I’m guessing car finance is around 300-400 as cars are fricking expensive these days, even clapped out bangers.

She literally says she’s 35 in her first post. And she has done 7 years of uni/training and had to take out hefty bank loans to fund some of it - many professional courses are not covered by student loan funding, eg law. She pays back 600 in student loans per month.

I don’t get how you are skint. The maths doesn’t work out here. Your car finance must be ridiculously high, get a more affordable car.

You say you’re on your early 40s, so am I. I’m guessing you went to uni in 2002-2005?
Back then the university tuition fees were around £3000 per annum. 3 years meant 9K. Plus then maybe you took out maintenance loan too, so another £10k. Cost of living was pennies compared to now.

I managed to get my student loan paid off in 8 years whilst in a trainee position. I also saved up on money left over. How comes your student loans is so huge?

I thought she might be a doctor but then I realised that Junior doctors are on £20-ish-k

You've missed council tax, water, gas, electric, car tax. All of that together will significantly eat into that 700 "left over" at the end of the month.

That's how the system works. Unless you want a complete free market, capitalistic society.

If you are really struggling, and I know even this amount can be tough, perhaps you could

• extend the life of your mortgage, or
• go interest only repayment until your car is paid off.

• Do you really "need" a car?
• Could you get a job elsewhere and move and sell up?
• Work out the relocate and commute, if it could, but not always, be cheaper
• Cancel any packages, and go for cheapest broadband, look at your phone contract (mine is £6 pcm, but there are cheaper)
• Make lunches at home, download a budgeting cookbook
• Remove alcohol, pop and crisps, and any prepped veg or meals from your shopping list
• Make an art form of buying and eating only what is on offer - waste nothing, but freeze what you don't use
• Give up nail bars, gym membership, beauty sessions. Compare prices on products ( a simple shower gel can vary from 30p to £8)
• buy nothing to read, you can download or use the library

If you can do any of this to help, you may feel less stressed.

This.

Whereas its tone deaf to complain when you are amongst the highest earners and its all over the news yesterday that huge numbers are in absolute poverty. It doesn't just wear thin it grates.

Lack of awareness of privilege isn't helpful.

Also most people I know who are single and own their home have a
lodger

How can your fuel be £240 if you only have the heating on one hour a day? We have a 4 bed house with 2 of us and pay less than that.
i would look around for a cheaper fuel supplier or get your house insulated better.

I think the OP, who hasn’t replied in 18 pages, has probably had a rethink on her ill-advised career choice from some middle class career group . Yawn.

Okay so including both undergrad and post grad loan, net income would be around £3150 so £50 off.

£240 per month energy bills for a 2 bed semi is way outside of the norm unless heating is on 23c all day night and night.

Why are your student loans so huuuge? Something sounds amiss here?

How has your mortgage gone up 50%, in one year?
You may gave answered by the time this is posted, but your industry would help.
Everyone knows what their selected industry pays, so I’m always amazed at posts like this by people suddenly amazed they aren’t earning £400k a year after 5 years.
I will read on to see if we get any clues that help explain your bemusement, but it’s normally entirely foreseeable.

I’m struggling to be sympathetic. I earn £47k a year, I raise and pay for two children by myself (not my choice) and I’ve just had to sell our house and downsize so we can afford the mortgage when my current v low mortgage rate comes to an end. My education required for my job took five years and I paid my student loan off when I was 41. We still (just, now we’ve moved, have enough to survive - & I live in the expensive South East). Living in a two bed house when there’s one person is a luxury. Refusing to rent the room out demonstrates you are not as hard up as you claim to be (when you are genuinely poor, you’ll do anything to survive). You’re just not as rich as you’d like to be OP. If you can’t live off £58k as a single person, then 100% that’s because you have too high expectations of what life should be or you’re not very good at managing money.

Do you think that when you were a student, you could have worked part time without compromising your qualification and career ?

Is there anything, looking back, that you wish you'd done differently that would have put you in a better position now (excluding getting a partner/husband)?

Student loan payments will be approximately £250 a month on that salary so deduct those too

Gas and Elec £300!? That’s orettty outrageous.

I'm in a 5 bed house with 2 kids and charge an electric car laying £275 a month since last summer and I’m £80p in credit post winter 🤷‍♂️

Admittedly I cut back on central heating MASSIVELY this year and burnt £150 of wood instead from Nov - Feb.

i don’t understand how people use so much Energy. My parents used to have their hot water on for 2 hours a day until I changed them back to 15 min and saved a fortune.

Your mortgage is 50% of your salary. You need to pretty much sell and move to a cheaper house/flat. There isn't another solution as this is just too much for 1 person to pay. :( with the increasing interest rates its just madness! I wouldn't get a lodger as that will bring like 600 quid but you will share your living space and kitchen which I would never do.

I'm confused by your post and your budget. With a salary of £58k you are currently taking home £3,620 per month after tax and NI. From April, that figure will be £3,683.

Then, of course, there are pension payments. There can be big differences if you are employed by a private company or a public body or if your employer just pays the minimum amount required into a Workplace Pension Scheme.

For example, if your employer runs a Workplace Pension Scheme then you will be paying £146.77 per month, your employer will be paying £110.07 and there will be a tax credit for your pension of £36.69 per month. Also you may be able to claim extra tax relief as a higher rate tax payer depending on how your employer operates the pension scheme.

In contrast, being employed by the NHS for example, you might expect to pay in the region of £430 per month towards your pension and the NHS would be adding around an extra £760 per month - not a bad deal if I might say so.

So from April, after pension payments, you're left with between £3,536 and £3,253 per month.

Then there are student loan repayments. OK this can be tricky. You studied for seven years so can I assume this is an undergraduate degree followed by an MA or MSc and then a PhD? Or maybe a medical qualification or (as somebody else suggested) perhaps an architectural qualification?

"I have student loans then professional bank loan (standard thing for this work). in total I’m paying back almost 600 a month."

OK, that's slightly more than I would have thought - without a "professional bank loan" I would have thought you were paying around £450.

So, since you're clearly not working in the NHS with their very high pension contributions then it looks like, after paying student loans, you're on about an income of £2,900 take home after all deductions.

"my mortgage repayment, it’s up to 1,500"

OK, so this leaves you with £1,400 per month.

"Then council tax is 140 (with the single person discount). Have the heating on an hour a day, gas and electric bill was 240 last month."

OK, so this leaves you with £1,000 per month to spend. Also, I would just say that I am also a single person living alone and my gas and electric bill is nowhere near that; it's less than half of what you're paying (and I work from home!). Perhaps have a quick check for some cheaper deals?

The actual amount of money I have to live on is very similar to you. The difference is that my salary is rather lower but, there again, so is my mortgage. It balances out.

You appear to have a £1,000 a month to spend on food and anything else that you want. Some people splurge on takeaways and lease a brand new car and then wonder why they have no money. Could this, perhaps, be your situation?

To be frank I do spend an absolute fortune on food at Tesco, Waitrose, Aldi and specialist retailers, probably in the region of £70 per week - just for myself. But it's all food that I cook myself from scratch, I enjoy cooking it's a hobby.

I know that it's a total Mumsnet meme but, yes, I can stretch a £30 organic 100 day chicken from the likes of Ginger Pig to make myself five meals and also stock from the leftover bones. But the big thing here is that there is literally just me on my own - not a family.

"I eat beans on toast 3 nights a week."

Yes, I could do that as well. But I choose not to.

Unless you have a really large car lease payment on a brand new car then I can't understand where the rest of your money is going (and, yes, I also have Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions).

For context, I drive a 2012 Ford Mondeo. I've had it for years and it's never needed anything more than an annual service. The car is huge and it's got a massive boot. If I ever go to Ikea or buy some second hand furniture on ebay then I can usually always get it stuffed in the back of the car.

Serious question here, can you please provide some sort of breakdown as to where you spend your money at the moment?

I’m 26 on £42k and feel like this. To be honest I don’t think wages really go far these days as the cost of living is so high and shrinkflation etc

i grew up in a double parent household but my mum was the sole earner for most of that. She was nhs band 7, so I’m assuming on £50-60k. She was able to save up a least a year’s salary to fund my dad’s various business ventures/periods on unemployment/minimum wage work. On her salary alone, my parents bought multiple properties and also had different commercial properties over the years. My dad had lots of failed businesses but my lifestyle growing up was comfortable

there’s no chance I could buy one property let alone all that, on my salary