To be in this job and feel poor?

You are 35 and own a house on your own. For most countries that is almost impossible these days for single person.
Rent out a room until you get car& student loans down.
Many your age with good jobs have to rent rooms in house shares.

I'd like to know where all these one bed properties are.
I'm single, do still have a child at home. We live in a 3 bed terrace.
As part of my retirement planning a year or so ago I was looking around at the type of property available
All the decent one bed flats were over £75k more than the best I could hope to get for my house.
Not that I want to live in a flat anyway. Nor will I move - my life is here
The point being that its very easy to say downsize - there isn't always the property to downsize to

As a matter of principle, I've never ever had car finance in my 40+ years of owning a car @fedippp

I bought my first car when I was a student (earned the money in holidays) and always saved and bought newer cars for cash.

You could get rid of your finance on a car and buy an older car for £2K or less.

When my DCs started working, they bought bangers for £1K and even if they were sold as scrap a year later (not that they were), the loss was equal to annual depreciation of newer cars.

Also, the fact you have 3 degrees doesn't equate to a massive salary.
Just as some people with PhDs working in research earn far less than a train driver. You've saddled yourself with student loans which does beg the question if you HAD to do 3 degrees to further your career - or if those degrees were more for personal fulfillment.

Lol. She asked if she was being unreasonable to feel poor on her salary. That was the question in the title of the post. My answer is yes as I don't think she is poor.

The reason I mentioned my degrees is because she says she feels depressed at being highly qualified yet earning less than her less- qualified friends. I also spent a lot of years in FTE, am highly qualified and still have less than friends who went down a different route. But that doesn't make me poor.

She currently pays over £200pm for her gas and electricity bill, which doesn't make sense for a single person in a two bed house. Unless she's growing cannabis in one of the bedrooms or something. This makes me think there are savings to be made in other areas of her budget too.

I know what you mean OP, my DS is on the same salary as you and his DW earns similar and even so they are struggling, although they are left with the same as me after paying their mortgage and bills (I am on just over half what they earn but dont have a mortgage or rent to pay, if I did I would be in debt for sure. My outgoings are just council tax, gas, electric, internet, mobile phone and insurance, comes to around £390 a month. There mortgage alone is £1400 a month.

You may have three degrees, but you still don't get the point the OP is making.

It's bad news for the UK when even 'high earners' (and childless ones at that) are feeling skint.

As others have said - in my opinion this largely comes down to the ridiculous cost of housing.

And it has been compounded in the last two years by the sudden huge increase in the general cost of living - bills, food clothes.

Gas and electric prices don't vary by region of the UK do they? If the OP is able to reduce her energy bill (which seems astronomical for a single person in a 2 bed house), she could save that extra money for holidays. Having an energy bill of over £200 just doesn't seem right, that's a lot of money disappearing month on month. Equally, the cost of a car on finance could be a lot of money going out each month - a cheaper car could help save quite a bit of money potentially.

Yabvu. When I was in your position I got a lodger

How do you know when I bought my house?? I bought my house as a first time buyer 2.5 years ago just after the massive increase in house prices, stupidly I only got a 2 year fixed mortgage deal so my mortgage went up last summer to £900pm. I'm not in the boomer generation, I didn't buy my house back in the days when house prices were substantially lower.

If you take home £3000pm then even with a mortgage of £1300 that still leaves £1700pm.

I think I feel reasonably wealthy on a lower salary than the OP because my salary has risen in the past few years. I'm used to living on a lower salary. People tend to live just within their means.

Yeah it's total bollocks OP. Someone on your salary should be able to afford decent food.

I guess in hindsight a cheap runaround and a cheaper house would have made sense, while you pay off loans, but too late for that now. I think a lodger is your only option really.

youre a senior teacher on the highest grade, years of experience and you earn 29k?

When all qualified teachers have a starting salary of 30k?

OK.

One of the biggest changes is greedy banks and other lenders.

They don't care if you can't pay your mortgage- they'll repossess.

They will lend more than you can barely afford.
No advice about interest rate increases.

In my day, when I bought, the max mortgage was 2.5 times a salary.
Now, they'll lend 5 times.

This means people are over-committed and get into debt or have issues like the OP.

I think this is more of a dissatisfaction with life.

We often have ideas of how our life will pan out but that rarely happens.

We earn half of what you do and are genuinely poor. I could work more hours but the life i was given means that i care for an adult disabled son and home educate my youngest, i wouldn't change it to spend more time away from them at work.

We don't have holidays or extra/spare money but we are happy.

If you had a partner to share the burden i wonder if you would feel differently? Comparing yourself to others really isn't a good idea.

I am genuinely sorry that you are unhappy and i feel that so many people are struggling to stay afloat but we don't necessarily see that side of things.

Take the positives from your situation and be proactive about what you can do to change things. I know it's hard at the moment, this government are doing the utmost to keep is unhappy but enjoy the simple things if you can 🥰

I can see the point this poster was making though. We have a joint family income of over 200k - but the reality is that our standard of living is only really marginally better than my parents when I was growing up in the 80s snd 90s where my mum was a SAHM and my dad was in a manual/unskilled job (looking at the govt bandings for the same job now he would be earning around 40k in today's money). OK so we do have a little better standard but the main difference is we have a huge mortgage for a house which is worth about the same as the one my parents still live in!! Yet were earning over 5 times as much as they would be on now. Times have definitely changed!

I've not read all the pages but I've read your posts @fedippp

You're paying a lot for your mortgage. Did you overcommit with a large mortgage? (ie small deposit?) Why has it almost doubled? Even allowing for interest rates going up that's a huge increase.

Unfortunately, some people don't plan for hikes in interest rates and borrow more than they can afford when interest rises. I remember the days when our interest rate hit almost 15% but we'd not borrowed the maximum, allowing for things like that.

Have you contacted a broker and seen if you can get a lower mortgage offer and swap?

You've not given a break down of your net income and your outgoings (and things like student loans.)

Yes, the overall standard of living in the UK is steadily declining and has been since 2009. This will be evident at all levels of income, so just because the OP has a higher income than others, still will feel as if she is doing less well than previous generations at a comparable age and qualification level. I'm sure there are plenty of things she could do differently from a budgeting point of view, but I think the point she is making is that she resents that reality, understandably. We have absolutely insane house prices and almost no economic growth.

I think people can only help you if you post your take home pay and outgoings. But saying you feel poor is a bit offensive to those genuinely struggling. Having a 2 bed house and a fancy car is a lot more than a lot of people have.

Generalisations or what? Your bitterness and envy isn't a good look.

It's all about housing costs here. It's pretty much the one thing that determines how good a life you'll have on a given salary, and it's why you get some people saying "what?! I can live on 30K and and go to Spain with a new car, why can't you", yes but you bought your house years ago in a different part of the country and your mortgage is very low. £1,300 is actually quite a low mortgage payment in the South East now, and I'd be very surprised if that was in London, where you could expect that to be twice as much for a 2 bed.

In my part of the country I wasn't even allowed to rent the house I live in unless our household income was £45,000.

And they fucked the country with Brexit, don't forget that.

Where do you live? The reality is that many single people living in London flat share/ take in a lodger to be able to afford the mortgage. One option is the 5 nights lodger who is only in the city for work and clears off at weekends. If you are outside a big city, this might not work, though.

I earn a lot less that you and have also studied...and live alone and own my own house and car...wish i earnt that!!

The OP asked whether she's being unreasonable to feel poor. I thought that was the point of the thread. I don't really understand how she feels poor on £58k, but I don't have full details of her budget (I'm not suggesting she posts full details either, just saying I made the YABU judgement based on the info provided). Someone with a £58k salary and their own house does not sound poor based on my own life experience.

She did mention holidays, just not in her original post. She said she doesn't go on holidays because she can't possibly afford them.

My mortgage is lower than £1300 - £1800, but my salary is also lower. I earn just over £50k now but a few years ago I earned £30k (I've had a career change). I had pretty low earnings until quite recently but I always lived like a student - cheap car, cheap lifestyle in general. I buy second hand clothes, second hand phone. I think the issue is that people tend to live just within their means so as COL increases it's hard to cut back. But it often is possible for people on higher salaries to find ways to cut back.

Yes I do think that just people in the UK deserve a better standard of living, and I think it's totally unfair that people contributing so little to society sometimes get paid so much more (hedgefund managers etc). But I still think that life is happier if you can appreciate what you do have, rather than comparing yourself to others and obsessing about what you can't have.

I am a senior teacher on the highest grade and years of experience and I'm on half that!