Where is all the money going??

Oh bollocks it's all going on tax - you might pay a bit more than than someone on the same salary in England but if you're going into your overdraft when you have no mortgage or children then you're just financially irresponsible!

Visited recently France/Germany Austria, shocking how much. cheaper food is and I am talking about the really good quality food.
I am in France at the moment and I can tell you that really good quality food is not cheap. I have paid €1.50 for a cucumber, €5 for a kg of local tomatoes, €3.99 for a small locally grown watermelon, €8 for a piece of blue cheese.
Wine is cheap but nothing else is.

To be fair it's a bit of a nonsense thread when you are maxxng out ISA allowances.

If you are doing g this then the reality is that you have 20k spare and possibly 40k if your husband is doing the same.

You aren't in any crisis regarding your overdraft

Well what are you spending your money on???

You have no mortgage and you are both working???

Shot all your guns in the first few posts OP. You really need to do better.

It's not even £150, its only £114, or £32 for a 3 monthly cert.

Its a great point that paying more tax in Scotland costs than the one off fee in England. Why does no one seem to mention this or speak about it?

???
I don’t despise anyone who can make savings….not sure how you inferred that from my post.

Unless you are earning more every year, your quality of life will decrease with inflation.

I think that’s the problem a lot of people are facing - they can’t increase their salary enough to match the increase in their bills.

My nursery went up by ~£200 which means I need to earn an extra ~£4.5k just to pay the difference (!).

OP will soon be back to tell us she’s a net contributor/met someone at the bus stop who told her how much better she is on benefits/ met someone else who told how easy it is to claim pip/ works very very very hard and has an extremely worthy job in the NHS/knows for a fact that her neighbour is abusing the benefit system…etc etc.

Oh come on you are not struggling because ayae we pay slightly more tax in Scotland at all. It's just another anti SNP thread

Oh it’s one of those goady posts

Strike what I said. You’re just a fud.

obviously you haven't read what I wrote, too wrapped up in your despise of people who can make savings

Honestly, sit down with a monthly budget calculator (there are some really good ones available online). Plug in all your necessary expenses like mortgage/rent, council tax, food, fuel, gas electric, phone Bill and then see what you should have left over.

You might end up horrified about how much you spend on online stuff you don’t need. I know I was.

After divorcing my ex, I actually find I’ve got more money as I’m not chasing a dopamine hit to deal with how miserable the marriage was. So as someone who went from two incomes to one I’ve not seen a decline in my lifestyle. I just now spend my money on stuff that I actually need rather than crap. Plus getting a bit more savvy with switching deals.

Shop around for the best deal on broadband, SIM deals, gas and electricity suppliers.

With the cap going up, it may be worthwhile fixing your tariff for energy. You may find that a side hustle is not needed when you actually look at where you are spending your money.

At least you don't have to pay prescription charges that cost more than you can get the actual medication online for.

And you're not still paying off studuent loans 25y later.

Yupp

Oh really? everyone disatisfied with the quality of living in this country must be a farage fan?

Honestly if you're putting £1666 per month into savings no wonder you are running short, could you reduce to 1200 or even 1000 and accept a later retirement (I assume you're doing one of those FIRE schemes)
How are you pension contributions, could you reduce them slightly instead and change the balance of cash before/after state retirement age?
I think ultimately it depends on your balance of lifestyle now Vs retirement.

I don’t think anyone who can save £20k per year is a low earner or living in poverty…
clearly the cost of living increases affect everyone and I appreciate the challenges faced by people on low incomes, but the op isn’t one of these people.

It may be time to look at transferring utility companies, renegotiating/moving the mortgage? Same for mobile phone contracts? Most of these are sky rocketed (doubled) in terms of monthly payments in the last couple of years. We now do an audit every two-three years (the period of successive fixed mortgage periods). It’s amazing how we fail to notice that the spotify sub has doubled yet we’re not using it, or the £4.99 sub to ITVX that we took out because it’s only a fiver has been added to with Disney, ACORN TV on prime etc because there was a series we wanted to watch and we thought we’d just take the sub out for one month…

So what you are implying here is that if someone has the ability to make some savings they have no right to complain about the insane increases in cost of living? This is the sad pattern I observe on this forum. People do not take a stand against poverty or how much this is affecting low earners. They want to bring everyone down to that level. And the ones who are orchestrating all this are rubbing their hands in satisfaction whilst doubling and trippling their wealth.

Ahh so this is where the thread is going…it’s another thinly disguised benefit bashing thread: I work really hard, pay loads of tax and it’s really easy for people to get benefits…

I totally hear you, not got much advice. Similar position, haven't changed much in lifestyle but now the bank balance has become stresful. It is outrageous how prices keep creeping up with the inflation figure an absolute joke. Food prices have doubled and trippled and each week I notice yet another 20-25% increase. Visited recently France/Germany Austria, shocking how much. cheaper food is and I am talking about the really good quality food.
Higher tax burden, transport hugely expensive and unreliable, and I could go on.
There seems to be an intensified effort to push people into poverty here, equalising it across the board.

If you’re maxing out Isas, that means you’re saving at least 20k a year? Yet you’re moaning about the cost of living? Someone fetch me my tiny violin. Like others suggested, analyse your spending if you want to save even more than you’re doing.

I think a lot of people are in your position, and certainly not just in Scotland or even just in the UK. Brexit's definitely a negative factor, but not the only one. I'd look at how exactly the "small pleasures" are adding up, because while basic necessities have gone up drastically it's really the area in between basic and luxurious that has skyrocketed. Things like "treat" foods, snacks, coffees, eating out, travel, admissions to events, sports, hobbies, clothing, makeup, fragrance - all have gone up exponentially over the official COL increase. There are ways to mitigate or even eliminate some of these.

Also, I'm not sure a side hustle's the way to go but it'll almost certainly depend on what's available locally or what you can do as an entrepreneur; 100% online opportunities are pretty bad at the moment because companies have figured out how to smoothly use people in extremely low COL countries and so hourly or "piecework" pay is not sustainable for someone in the UK. The more impactful way to increase incomings would be for you and your husband to figure out how to substantially increase the salary from your main job - switch companies, move up to the next level?

ADP is quite difficult to get. You need a lot of supporting evidence