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

OP you are an absolute saint to put up with a partner who willingly dropped £15k in salary and whose kids cost you £1.5k a month and prevent you from having your own.

Fuck if I would put up with that. He must have a golden dick. You’d be much better off single.

That's a scary jump in your mortgage, considering you have 50% equity.
Do you mind sharing the figures involved? We come off of our 5 year fix in June 😮‍💨

PS to my previous post which is currently above-but-two.

I forgot to mention Council Tax which, from next month, is £146.35, £151 thereafter, per month. I think that's for ten months.

I wish this was true but now our DC are at school our wages aren't keeping up with inflation. I like my job but the industry isn't well paid. I see senior jobs in my industry paying 40k (I'm talking Head Of, board or CEO level in some cases!). Ditto with my partner's job. He can't move as his salary would halve.

DP & I have corporate pensions, so we know we are very lucky, plus Pip as I’m disabled.
Decent lifestyle, some months we save & some we don’t.
Four DC in total, youngest about to go to tertiary education.
Can’t quite believe that we have successfully got through some really hard times, inc massive debts & mortgages, to be in a position where we are solvent - it wasn’t easy. (Would rather be in debt & have my health, but hey ho, thems the breaks sometimes)

I am retired and live alone. My monthly income is currently £2,348.95 (I know that because had to declare it recently). I'm on no benefits. It goes up next month. Outgoings are service charges (I live in a flat), approximately £4,200pa which includes water rates, building maintenance, cleaning of common parts, lift, building insurance; ground rent £548.60 pa; electricity which varies but last month was £27.00. I manage quite well, thankfully.

Retired and have a monthly income of £1550.
Still have 1 adult son at home who is currently in 3rd year of Uni. ( he has own income of monthly bursary and ADP because of disabilities he has ).
My monthly outgoings are
Mortgage £450 ( includes over payment )
Gas/electric £95
Council Tax £103 ( get single person discount whilst son is student )
Internet £32.50
Iife insurance £32.82
Tv licence £15
Mobile ( sim only ) £7
Netflix £12.99
Buildings/contents insurance £31.67

Total £779.98.
Have no transport costs as gave up car when I retired ( age 60 last year ). Have bus pass to cover travel throughout Scotland.
Spend approx £200-220 on food/cleaning/toiletries per month.
Enjoy eating out minimum of once a week.
Rarely buy new clothes unless its something needing replaced.
I manage to save on average between £300-400 per month.
Mortgage will be paid off by December this year so that frees up another £450 per month.
I dip into savings if anything needed in house and for occasional weekend aways. Did go abroad last year to celebrate 60th.
I would say I am comfortable on my income but did retire due to health conditions that can limit my mobility a lot of the time due to pain.

It is literally not possible to provide for the nutritional needs for a fully grown adult at £9 a week including cleaning products and hygiene essentials.

I suggest you look at some of the frugal forums- it's quite possible.

I meant frugally compared to people at work on the same salary as me. They go abroad 2/3 times a year, have new cars on finance, have bigger houses/ mortgages. I expect if I was doing those things I would feel less secure than I do.

I wasn’t complaining about my life. It’s exactly how I want it. The biggest things are obviously no childcare bills and a tiny mortgage. I’m glad I made the choices that I made in my 20s to facilitate that in my 30s.

If you read, I say one earning 80k and one stay at home parent. There could be an exception for single parents but this obviously is complicated by the fact that it’s difficult to track maintenance.

There won’t be a one size fits all..

"Live frugally" whilst having a holiday every 4 months, eating takeaways, paying for 4 extracirvular activities every week whilst overpaying mortgage...

I would say to OP and most of you - don't despair. There is a bit if a "U curve" with disposable income.

I felt like I had more spare money as a student than I did as a working adult.

Second hand clothes, no holidays, no haircuts, struggled for everything. Sinking into debt anyway. As soon as my job salary picked up a bit, we had kids, and childcare wiped out those salary increases so back to brassic again. Never been on a package holiday in school hols, or hen do abroad, never had nails done or any of the things other people seemed to take for granted.

But - once the kids went to school the childcare costs plummeted. That was the first time we'd had any money. Suddenly, holidays and meals out were back in the equation. Then our salaries went up through promotions. Then the mortgage got proportionately less as a result of interest rates and general inflation.

Now we still have one second hand car, a bit of a shabby home, second hand clothes, etc. But these are probably because "old habits die hard" rather than out of necessity. Mind you, our incomes dropped again when I lost my job. But somehow we managed.

Things get so much easier folks.

Must be the mythical mumsnet chicken lasting a month rather than a week 😂

There’s no way on earth I believe you spend £18 a week feeding two adults and buying household items and toiletries.

That's quite a short sighted perspective, as OP would lose a few years of work experience and career progression. Plus childcare is a shared cost, not just on OP.

If her role could be done remotely to save her the travel expenses then that could be worth consideration to save her costs on both travel and also booking in fewer childcare hours. Condensed hours/reducing to 90% etc can also potentially help her maintain her career whilst helping reduce bills.

I've seen enough threads on here from women with dickhead husbands to discourage anyone from leaving employment entirely for the sake of a few leaner, more stressful years.

Due to tax and child benefit cap, households are better off with two working parents learning less each rather than one high income and one low/no income. Plus presumably OP's husband would want to spend time with his baby rather than working round the clock!

Single parent, 1 dc, rent work 30 hours a week unable to do full time due to wrap around childcare, dont drive so no car bills.

Net pay after tax ni pension etc about 2100 a month. I get universal credit (they pay 85% of my childcare costs which enables me to work and my allowance is calculated based on rent, single parent, childcare and thats 1200 a month) child benefit 102 a month and child maintenance 100 a month.

Total monthly income including my benefits and child maintenance: 3502
Total monthly expenses rent (650), childcare (140 a week), school lunches, broadband, phone, public transport, electric and oil 1450 a month. I also spend an additional 70 a week on food on average, I dont drive so tend to pay overpriced petrol station prices as its nearby I can never organise myself for online deliveries or find food goes off. I manage to save, travel twice monthly to England for 2 days to visit partner with my child and can afford that. We have one holiday abroad a year. No designer items, house furnishings are basic most items got second hand. No spare bedroom and no plans for further children

We don't really keep track of outgoings, there is no need.

I guess that's a choice based on where you live etc.

Our household income was £70k and now, due to changes at my organisation, it's around £55k. We're feeling the difference, but we're going on a pricey holiday in December and a long weekend in August, and will probably manage a summer break in 2026.

The difference is we live in a 3 bed terrace in the North so our mortgage is £600 a month rather than £2k.

If mortgage+bills is 3000 and the mortgage is 1800, you have 1200 in other bills... can you give a breakdown on that? It seems high, but maybe you are including stuff in there that others might not count as "bills".

Self employed, 1 salary supporting a family of 4. Monthly income £15,000, but nett is only about half as £8,000 of that has to be put aside every month to cover our tax bill which is paid twice yearly.

Live in an expensive city.

Mortgage £2800pcm
Gas/electric £480pcm
Cars x2 tax, insurance, etc, £150pcm, not including petrol
Council tax £250 pcm
Water £80 pcm
Petrol £1-200 pcm
Commuting costs £500pcm
Insurances inc house, etc, £140pcm
Food/household stuff £550pcm including pet food
After all essential bills are paid we have about £1000 pcm left for discretionary spending /savings.

My dh has only been earning this kind of salary for about 5 years, and there were a lot of lean years prior to that, plus high start up costs that meant for the 1st 3 years half of what was left after tax went on repaying a loan.

Thank you for taking my question in the way it was intended @PalePinkPeony. I read it back and even I thought I sounded like I was trying to be provocative, which I certainly wasn't.

I think by answering the question you've shown how relative income and expenditure are.

My DH and I don't have dependent children, and our monthly income is around £3500, however, my DH is self-employed and so he only takes £1040 per month as a wage. The rest stays in the business account.

All of his work related expenses come out of the business account - petrol, insurance on vehicles etc.

So out of the £3500 monthly incomings, deduct £1500 for mortgage and bills (including mortgage overpayment), and about £280 shopping, and we have £1.7k a month left of discretionary spending. We live in the north and so this allows us a comfortable life. No debts. Once the mortgage is paid off that will be an extra £700 each month, and we are both able to taking dividends from the business account.

It hasn't always been like this though, and we've been on our arses financially. I'm 44 and DH is 50, so I just want to say to those with children that whilst things are tight for you now, once the kids have flown the nest, it will get a lot easier, and you may have a nice property that you've invested in which you can downsize from 😁.

You have high outgoings due to living in an expensive area, presumably London or South East plus commuting, childcare and CMS. The high housing and travel is the issue plus two families to support.

We have £60k per annum in pensions. No benefits. Two people but we do help out our adult children with holidays/meals out etc as they are probably in a similar position to you but they actually have more disposable income due to not living in London, children both in school and no CMS. We live comfortably.

Total Incoming : £1100 salary, £104 Child benefit & £300 child maintenance

Total outgoing : bills & food £900 (I like Waitrose & organic so could cut this way down if needed)

I feel rich most of the time!

Sounds like commuting, childcare & mortgage are the killers for you but won’t be like this forever.

You need to be earning way way more than 90k to justify a bill of 3k on mortgage and bills. I wouldn’t sleep at night.