To wonder how people are coping?

We used to earn more than that and had a very good quality of life. The pandemic hit and wiped us out financially and we are still recovering! We have no where near that amount now and it’s been hard. Energy prices, our mortgage and food just wipes us out. I cannot understand how you struggling unless you have massive debts and a high mortgage.

She said 2 dogs and a cat! And that she has insurance, if she didn't the budget would make a bit more sense but still be tight

I had to stop my dog's insurance as it was getting to £110pm. What pets does OP have? Hamsters?

Fascinated that on that income (with clearly zero buffer) you thought private schools were an option. What are your savings?

I don't know how £100 would even cover that. My pet insurance is €15 per pet, and vet plan €20 per pet, so £100 wouldn't even cover those for 3 pets nevermind even basic food and bedding. But on £170k I'd hope the pets are also getting treats and toys!

I collect rainwater to flush my loo. Cheaper and saves the planet.

Tbh im surprised you were paying private fees on 170k combined. I know a lot of people on similar (naice south east commuter belt) and no one pays private

interesting. Do you think having a liveable planet is an extravagant expense?

Oh look, it's this thread again.

It's the thread in which the wealthy claim that they have no money, because they have no money left at the end of the month after buying a bunch of expensive things that they couldn't have bought if they weren't wealthy.

@CobbleWobble

Your expenses total £5970. You said your house has £6998 each month. £1000 disposable income after the essentials are paid for is generally considered very generous.

You are missing your pension salary sacrifice from that list. Yes, that comes out before you receive your pay, but it's still important information. For example, if you're putting 30% of pre-tax income (for example) into your pension, that would explain why you have less disposable income than expected.

Car expenses Inc petrol 300
Commuting 80 (we both work mainly from home but need to go in to the office twice a month each)

Why are the commuting bills and car bills separate? Are you not travelling to work in your car?

Is this one car or two? Is it including insurance, car tax, and maintenance? How much for each car?

Phone 30 (previously 60)

Is this both phones? If yes, fair enough. £30 for one phone would be abnormally high.

Professional memberships 250

£3000 a year for a regulatory body? Even if this is both you and your husband, £1500 for a regulatory body is still extremely high. I have never heard of any regulatory body charging so much.

Yep

Our household income is less than half of yours and we are not “rich” but comfortable enough. We live in the South and have a decent sized mortgage. I can’t understand how you could possibly be as “hard up” as you describe! 😳

Your utilities seem extremely high. We have a large 4 bed (utility room, extra playroom downstairs etc) and have the heating on 19-19.5c all winter and water on a meter and ours is only £55 water and direct debit of 190 for gas and electric (evens out as meter readings are less in summer more in winter)
Have you shipped around for prices (we are with octopus energy), changed tariff each time it runs out, got a water meter - if you don't they charge extortionate amounts for the "estimate", checked for leaks if your water usage is excessively high.

I kinda get it . We live in Dublin . No mortgage . I have just done our finances for October . 9 k coming in , 8500 going out .
Uni fees , food , extortionate utility bills , insurances, music lessons, sports fees, holiday deposit . 5 young adults / teens here though . Very expensive .
Decent lifestyle but definitely not wealthy and always run out of money before the end of the month ......

We're a family of 4, including two teenagers, with a mortgage, pets, and quite often other mouths to feed. We struggle on £40k (gross), but could definitely cut corners by sticking to a strict grocery budget and eating boring food. We've never been able to take the children abroad, but they always had one or two weeks at the seaside (camping) each year. We also paid in instalments for one to go on two brief European trips with school, and another to go to Spain and then a festival with friends. Both had music lessons and got into national groups. They couldn't also do every single activity that took their fancy (horse riding/ ice skating!!), but between them they did ballet, country dancing, recreational gymnastics, netball and art club. We also insisted on swimming lessons until they were very competent, but those were £5/week lessons in a group of up to 12.

Couldn’t agree more

Net zero will make energy bills cheaper not more expensive.

wind and solar power are far cheaper than gas & nuclear

I think that was the point she was trying to make in her OP.

I don’t know how you could have ever afforded private school for your kids unless you don’t have a very big mortgage!

I’ve started selling old stuff now instead of just giving it away. Shopping more at Aldi and being more choosy about which Christmas events we do rather than signing up to everything. Having more takeaways than meals out. We can still afford to eat out luckily, but feels hard to justify the increasing expense and the food seems not as good, and the service is lacking. Somehow when you’re spending twice as much your expectations are higher.

Also redundancy is a constant threat now. Think everyone is holding their breath.

I consider it spent as it’s in savings…meaning it’s not available to spend in the current account. We only pull from savings for certain things and emergency costs .

the savings is not leftover…it’s taken out first on payday and redistributed into savings accounts. Same with our personal spending. People talk about the lifestyle creep. We tried our best to avoid that.

I'm actually finding I'm putting more into savings now, the cost of things has got so bloody expensive I cant bear to spend the money on those things anymore. A large glass of wine in the pub is £12 here now, I'd rather not bother thanks! Saving me a fortune on meals and drinks.

magic circle lawyer working 20 hour days

they will be earning a lot more than 170k, partners will be on 2m!

Someone has said £800k buys a 3 bed terrace in a fairly crappy part of London

Excuse me! I said my area wasn't naice, it isn't crappy 😆

Looking at historic rates it didn’t seem impossible we’d be there again at some point.

Since the double figured rates of the past aren't too dissimilar to the recent 5/6% because of the cost of houses when did we historically have rates of 10% with current house price vs salary ratios?

That is a better analogy. I do worry very much about the future for the UK.

Yes, we could have upgraded easily when rates were very low (actually they still are, historically) I well remember a conversation along the lines of the difference between 2% and 4% isn't 2%, it's double, so we decided we couldn't afford it.