To be tired of being squeezed?

Telling OP to just "move out of London" is an interesting one. Who takes her place when she sells up? Where are all these people with the means to live in London and where does their money come from? Despite what MÑ would have you believe, the amount of workers on £100k+ is a tiny percentage.

It's very sad when people who have grown up in London for the sole reason it's become so unaffordable. And galling to see people being housed in nice new apartments for free when OP would have 0% chance of getting one if she put herself on the housing list. But there you go.

Tiny two-bed terrace with a backyard £800k-£1m here.

Even more if the attic has been converted into an extra bedroom.

Sharing another perspective. Especially as you say moving isn't feasible at the moment.

If you moved out, you would probably get a bigger place, but I wonder if you would save much money after commute cost? For example, I live in Cambridgeshire (not Cambridge itself) and I used to live in a standard 3 bed terrace with tiny back garden. This has just been listed for £1500 per month. I don't think the location I live is particularly expensive. People have suggested you move within a commutable distance to your job, but I wonder whether that would really "save" money.

The other thing that happens with many landlords these days is yearly rent increases to keep things in line with the market rate. For example, when I moved into that 3 bed 5 years ago I paid £900 a month. One of the reasons I moved was because he kept increasing the rent every year.

Moving won't necessarily solve all your issues - unless you do move somewhere with massively cheaper rent. Or you decide to find another tiny flat. Or you change your job location too so you don't need to commute (which could mean a pay cut).

Things are genuinely shit for a lot of people moneywise. Do you think you or your partner could change jobs to the private sector and get a boost in pay that way? The civil service is massively underpaid and you would probably get a huge salary bump in a similar role elsewhere.

Exactly...in some areas of London, a two bed terrace with a tiny backyard is for the well off!

It IS different now. The young people, in many areas, can’t afford to buy that 2 bed terrace with a tiny backyard or anything near it. At all. So they are stuck in rent traps with ever rising bills and no disposable income (like the op) or at home with their parents and buying the lattes and cars but no asset.

Unkind and unnecessary

When I think back I've just been quietly downgrading my lifestyle for several years now.

Same! But I don't want to leave London, where we have lots of really solid friends, to take a chance on a more affordable area. If we were renting I don't think staying would be an option though.

I understand absolutely what you are saying.
We first set ip house many years ago. It was very tight but we both worked, & carefully calculated we could afford the mortgage, & the bills. So we got a small, old 2 bed terraced, with a tiny backyard. We had no washing machine, ( used the bath) no vacuum cleaner, ( dustpan & brush) no TV. No wardrobes. ( cardboard boxes.) Lots of other things people take for granted, ( new clothes, holidays, more than 1 pair of shoes, heating) we didn’t have. But we could save a little and gradually improved our lot. Then interest rates started rising, ( we paid upto 17%) and inflation at stupid %.
We too had no more corners to cut , no credit cards to fall back on.
So what is happening now is nothing new. It was soul destroying then; for anyone going through it now, it's so hard. It was years & years before we could sleep easily without worrying about bills.

Presumably living in London will at some point become a privilege of the rich (with pockets of those who can live with support from the state eg social housing ) This is in no way meant as a slur !
No inbetween I mean !
Move out of London - look at where can be accessed on fast trains (where I live it is 50 mins )

Not a nice area IMO and I’m desperate to leave , but commuter towns do exist and many are nice !
All the best x

The problem is not your income. The problem is that you are living in central London and that you had children before buying a house. These things are both choices but we all make choices and have to live with the side effects of the choices we make.

Our household income is similar. Our mortgage is £537/month on a 3 bed with a garage and garden. We choose to live here - “here” is a small town in Essex with a lot less going on but also where DH grew up so his parents and school friends are here. We chose this for the affordability and support network. The side effects are fewer employment opportunities and less to do.

I work in local govt, my husband at the local university.

A plan needs to be made as that rent is going to be increased at some stage, or the landlord may decide to sell.

If the op lives fairly centrally and her rent is £1800, that's not bad. I just had a look at two bed flats in zone 6 down the road from me and they are going for £2k plus

You live in one of the most expensive cities in Europe. You know what the answer is.

Agree, you just can't afford to be cental in London.

Very few families who are not rich can afford to live in Central London. We have an income that is way way less than you and yet have a better lifestyle.

London strikes me as a very nice place if you have plenty of money but really grim if you don't. - summed up by a previous poster. Time to start looking a bit further afield, where life and costs are more within the bounds of sanity.

You both have CVs full of public sector experience.

You need to get out of London and look for new jobs where house prices and the general cost of living is reasonable. Try a market town in Midlands or S Wales or north of England.

Living in London is a drain on your lives in every possible way. Get out from there. Start making plans/looking for jobs/researching housing costs and schools.

Your current situation is unsustainable if you all want some decent quality of life.

Hang in there and stay on the lookout for ways to make things better - higher paying jobs, an opportunity to move, a side hustle whatever.

You're still in the survival years of child rearing - as they get older it definitely gets easier to think clearly about other steps you can take to improve your situation. My kids are 11 and 13 and my living setup is nothing at all like it was when my kids were 4 and 2 - it's amazing the difference a few years can make if you're open to opportunities.

You're doing fine for now, so don't be too hard on yourself.

This has always been how normal life is though, The difference is that now you compare your life with others because of social media. Life was actually much harder in the past for average families.
in the case of the OP though, you are incredibly lucky to be paying 1800 a month and had no increase for 9 years! Thst is the most concerning issue, If your landlord sells (and lots are now because of the new government’s hatred of landlords) you won’t find anywhere central for that!

People go on about all the culture and everything London has to offer but if you're scrimping that much I don't imagine you're actually enjoying or able to take advantage of those things. As a foreigner, London strikes me as a very nice place if you have plenty of money but really grim if you don't.

Midlands to Manchester was scrapped.

Those between Midlands and London are still very much living with the disruption of it being built for very little benefit.

OP may I ask how part time?
Is it days per week or hours per day?
Is there any opportunity to top up your part time work, and not affect your child care ?

I don't think it's fair to blame parents for living where a large chunk of work in the UK is based.

The saturation of businesses being based in one tiny circle of the country is not the fault of the employees.

But people have made a deliberate choice to go into a career that constrains them in terms of movement, and that has obvious consequences.

I'm sure that many people would like to access the career opportunities available in London, but they don't because they can't afford to live there. Everybody cannot live in London. Business need to branch out to other regions.

It's partly the government's fault because they need to invest more in other regions. Ridiculous that HS2 was scrapped for example.7

This. Having young children has always been expensive so you should expect that your disposable income will be limited during these early years. However, you've made it harder for yourself by living in London.