What is your household income, how much is benefits, and how are you coping?

PLease may I ask where these are in your budget: gas bill, water bill, council tax bill, house/buildings insurance, car insurance, breakdown cover, service/MOT, pension?

But you can hardly compare what you spend on food for 2 to OP spending £500 on a family of 6 most of the month.
Per person you’re probably spending more!

We have around £1100 a month from my OH pension and about £500 from my part time work,
Despite the huge increases in the cost of food and fuel we don't really want for much.
I save all my income and we use it for our travelling fund.
We have no mortgage or children, but also get no benefits.
I could only dream of spending £500 a month on food, £500 for everything else is also pretty generous, but it really depends on spending habits and what your expectations are.

To be fair I budgeted, saved, projected figures, bought a house, had kids and then everything increased by a huge amount.
I’m in the house I was in 8 years ago, now with 50% equity yet my payment has gone from £900 a month to £1900 a month due to the increase in interest rates. My oldest started nursery at £225PW, child is still in the same nursery it’s now £390PW for the same amount of time.
Energy costs, water, council tax has all increased by about 40% during that time too.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect people to reasonably be able to sustain such huge increases in a short period of time.

Not gone through the whole thread but 6k in and nearly 6k out is not sustainable. No need to bash OP but some serious budgeting needs to be done plus some risk management. My advice is to work our your expenditure based on a single income or work towards it no matter the sacrifices. No guarantee that life doesn't throw a spanner. Secondly, you can build a safety net and build a savings pot for you and your kids future.
Won't be easy but we live based on a single salary level from six years ago. As my salary increased we have had a nice foreign holiday but otherwise we're content.

The trouble is…. Who will employ someone with disabilities and health issues? It’s taken my DS 4 months to get a job after being made redundant! If he’d declared his ADHD diagnosis he would probably never have got another job!!

50k between us.
Mortgage and all bills approx £1200
Food shopping £500
petrol and parking £250
Money for 17 year old DS about £150
Paying my oldest DS’s share of his rent and bills £800 and it’s crippling me!! He was made redundant in November but starts a new job on Monday!! So I’ll be a bit better off next month 😊

Not being funny if you can take care of your grand daughter you can work.

I I know you have a lot of outgoings but I find it strange that you can’t afford a holiday I earn

2750
CB-280
Benefits-177

Total: 3,207

Rent 1400
Electricity 120
Life insurance 40
Internet/tv/2 phones 86
Bin charge 23
Apple 20
Disney 10
DS club 25

Total 1,724
Leftover 1,483

1483 goes to
300 food
240 fuel
200 savings
50 kids clubs/school trips etc
100 treats/coffees/takeaways
100 clothes/shoes
50 birthdays/gifts
50 prescriptions/medicines
150 holidays/trips (either as a payment off a booking or as savings)
I know this essentially leaves over 243 but it gets eaten up somewhere usually and if not it’s put into savings

so a holiday, trip is budgeted in.
Have you done a FULL breakdown of all outgoings? !

Seems not! We have an incredibly nice lifestyle because we have the lifestyle we can afford and didn’t keep having kids. This is indeed a tale of have the kids you can afford.

£352 housing benefits
£532.88 ESA
£434.20 PIP
£20 private pension
=£1339.08

£416 rent
£200 food (many food intolerances meaning I can only eat certain things)
£400 bills
£60 petrol
£456 care contribution
£110 disability related expenses
= £1642 (ish) I end up robbing Peter to pay Paul and eating food that makes me ill. Also none of that is including the extra cost of bringing up my 21m old granddaughter (who came to me with nothing) for 4 days a week.

I can’t wait for labour to start reducing my money, I’m so glad that they have given me the opportunity to kill myself. So grateful.

£45k single parent. No benefits just the child benefit. no Maintenance from father. I’m alright but have to be careful, no luxuries or holidays but we’re happy. Slightly concerned as I will need a new car in the next couple of years and that may change things!

Do people not do any budget planning before having kids, buying a house and getting a mortgage or making any significant purchase that requires debt that has to be repaid?

Or have savings for rainy day emergencies?

I am in a very similar boat to you OP in terms of income and outgoings. But no other children to pay for - just our own. I think people don’t appreciate how much it costs just to go to work (childcare and commuting costs!). Are you paying a mortgage? If so, at least you should be building up an asset for retirement. That’s what I tell myself when I buy all our clothes 2nd hand. And yes I agree, it sounds like this household income should go further than it does in reality.

What choices have resulted in large outgoings? There’s nothing on there that suggests an extravagant lifestyle.

Just read a few posts plus OPs. Honestly, this country! It’s increasingly an existence rather than living when we’re all scraping for very occasional entertainment like the theatre, never having holidays and haircuts being a luxury. And it’s not right to say every country is suffering - not to this extent! Surely general quality of life should be going up and not down? 20 years ago felt like the £ went a lot further… wages have not kept up with every other cost… why?! The top 1% or whatever must be creaming it. Time to strike, people. Only the system is so opaque that its made sure we can’t quite band together to target what exactly we’re striking against

ive been reading all of these threads and I’ve been too worried to comment as I know the kind of bashing I will get. But I’m so scared of all these changes and really need some advice.. or to know I’m not alone. It will be long (sorry) to give context.

My daughter was born with an autoimmune disease (eosinophilic gastroenterocolitis) and she has been on DLA since she was 2 (now 16). At the time I was caring for her and my elderly father. I was doing a degree in the hopes when she could look after her condition a bit more when she was older I could return to work.

My Dad died and I threw myself into a Masters degree. During this time I met my now DH. We fell pregnant with our son. He has a Feto Maternal haemorrhage and lost 70% of his blood into me. He had a stroke and they diagnosed him with cerebral palsy. He said he might never walk.. but when he got to 18 months he did start walking and we were over the moon. We thought he was going to be ok.

I had completed my Masters and did very well, I was offered a place for PhD and I had been putting it off while DS was little. I fell pregnant again and we did want another - we thought because our first son was going to be fine, we would be able to handle it. DH has a good job and can earn good money. We decided to have the baby and when they both went to school I could return to study.

little did we know at that point my health would start to decline. We also didnt foresee our sons issues as the doctors had said only his mobility would be affected. He now has Cerebral palsy, epilepsy, ADHD and possibly autism. His epilepsy medications exacerbate these conditions and the household is a very stressful place. He also gets DLA.

I started getting recurrent pneumonias, allergic reactions, joint swelling, just lots of things I ignored (like you do as a mum). Until my hand was swollen twice the size. Long story short I’m battling my own autoimmune disease (lupus or rheumatoid) they think was triggered by my son bleeding into me. I’m on very strong immunosuppressants and it can be difficult to mobilise. Currently my hands are covered in blisters from the sun. It’s debilitating.

Obviously throughout all of this, my partner has been able to work less and less as he needs to provide more support at home. He works half the hours he used to.

Originally we had started saving for a mortgage. I had been renting privately for 10 years and we both wanted a forever home so we started to save in 2018.

in 2020, the first eviction happened. Our landlord was selling. As it was Covid and there was so very little on the market we were completely stuck. Council won’t house us. They advised us our best bet was to get another private rent otherwise we would end up in temporary housing indefinitely.

The amount of applicants to each house was awful. And obviously nobody wanted to take someone on benefits (at this time I was just my daughter’s carer) over other applicants both working. We were turned down and discriminated against time and time again. They’re not allowed but it happens.

People were literally trying to bribe letting agents with 20k cash and we couldn’t compete with that.

we were forced into a much higher rent (£1800) miles away from their schools. The commute was terrible and I was in and out of hospital at this time. This obviously ate into our savings.. especially as my partner couldn’t earn as much anymore.

within a year the landlord tried to increase the rent to £2000. We got it down to £1900 but then he told us he was selling up. We were getting evicted again. This time we had to cover all of his legal fees and it’s left us with nothing.

We were forced into a higher rent again.. in a horrible area.. not great house. They handed us the keys and gave me and my son gas poisoning. There’s mice in the garage. Landlord won’t repair anything. They even refused to have it cleaned before we moved in it was filthy. For £2000 a month. We are terrified of rent increases. Terrified of eviction again. My health can’t take another one.

we will never be able to save for the deposit with bills this high and there’s just nothing around and we are never chosen.

Our medical costs are ridiculous each month for the three of us with health issues. Especially my son with epilepsy equipment. But his DLA, my PIP and my daughter’s DLA has to go on the rent and bills.

Ive read so many posts on here people bashing benefit claimants so this was hard to write. We are completely trapped in the renting system. Completely trapped on benefits. We get our home ripped away from us every other year at the minute and the stress is crippling.

I don’t know how to get out of this situation. No one will or can help us. It’s awful.

I also thought it might make others feel better about their finances. We have nothing left over, always in the red. And we have to go without medical equipment and medications etc to pay the rent some months.

I guess I just had to get it out. I’d give anything to go do that PhD and not be riddled with disease. To have a mortgage, give my kids security and be like all of you. I really would.

You’re spectacularly missing the point, there aren’t people on 1/10th of OP’s take home income at all. Because anyone earning £600 a month is huge propped up by an array of benefits! So someone on 1/10th if OP’s salary does not actually have 1/10th of the money in real terms.

Same income annually but bills are more like £3500.

we get child benefits have to pay about £300 back annually

we can afford most things ie holidays and days out but there are months where we barely save ir even dip into savings if there’s a large bill (£1k car repair for instance)

I do feel like I don’t quite live the life I want to though and we can’t afford to move

£115k household income, zero benefits. About £6,700 net per month.

total bills (inc mortgage and food, vehicles, fuel) is £3800, discretionary spend c.£1000, the rest into savings.

Combined 140k, no benefits (quite rightly), we spend a lot though so not a lot left each month. We have horses, if we didn’t we would have lots of spare cash and smaller mortgage, but that’s our lifestyle.

Literally the point is that you still have a £100k salary. I can accept that makes life more expensive, and you therefore end up with less in real terms, but imagine complaining about being on £100k when there’s people on this thread with a 10th of that.

I’m not at that cliff edge, but really do think that some just need to get some perspective of the hardship that other, lesser paid, people face and be a little more humble about their first world problems.

Maybe trade down and buy and buy a smaller house to decrease your outgoings?

@SleeplessInWherever Probably, they’re also earning more.

Literally the point is there’s a huge cliff edge just above 100k where if you have preschool children you’re actually not earning more than someone on 10’s of thousand less in salary.

Absolutely this. Every month something ‘additional’ to try and pay for.

Im a single mum who doesn’t take home anywhere near what you do (roughly 1,700) but I own my house and so I have no mortgage/rent.

Everything this month has gone up in price. And whilst it’s only a couple of ££ here and there, it does still add up. I’ve needed to pay for a school trip, an overnight stay where my parents live (they’re late 80’s and sometimes my help is needed), and I’ve needed new tyres for the car and I’m trying desperately hard to pay more into my pension.

I do survive, and we are able to do nice things now and then - but we by no means live a luxurious lifestyle.

Oh and I’m in the south so things are more expensive!