To wonder how people are coping?

Please do post the spending particulars.

I think there is a real mentality in London of people overstretching themselves financially to get the most house possible.

Because for many it reaped huge rewards. Loads bought on interest only/high LTV & it still paid off.

Yeah, me too.

170k 🤣

I'm on 26k and I am sure I'll be able to eat at Christmas.

what are you spending your money on? We earn 120k combined and have a mortgage of practically 2k and we still save 2.5k per month

Do you have dc? Pay for childcare?

I was saying I'd like to move to a bigger home but that would mean 1m plus & take on a lot more debt which we can't afford allowing for the cost increases elsewhere. My mum was like just do it, you can make it work. It's not the same anymore.

Disney + is 5quid, and you're on 170, 000??
Kin ell you're in deep do do aren't you op. In more ways than one, move up north 😂

If I interpret you correctly, you have plenty of money coming in, but you are spending it even faster. Any fool can do that.

I don't know what you are spending it on. Might be mortgage, gambling, drugs, carpet, pension contributions, new engines for the boat, helicopter trips, charitable donations, medical expenses if you live in a backward country.

Read Mr Micawber's theory of financial happiness

And draw up a budget to see where it's going.

If in London their mortgage may well be double that, which I suspect will be a major factor.

I am on a third of your income and a single parent of two teenagers. No maintenance from their Dad. I’m not struggling, but obviously no school fees. Your mortgage must be huge.

Not just in London, when we were buying our first home 10 years ago a lot of people were advising us to buy the biggest, best house we could afford as many of them did. In the end we went for something more modest and we paid the mortgage off in 7 years. Others we know bought homes they could only apparently afford due to record low interest rates and are now up shit creek.

I have a good salary for the UK and so does my partner, small mortgage. We manage to eat and live and go on holidays but can’t save enough, if I lost my job tomorrow I would be shafted! I can’t see how others are managing on lower salaries, people’s debts must be going through the roof. It’s not okay, the utility companies and supermarkets are still making billions, don’t understand why the government can’t collect more tax from them to ease the burden on the rest of the country.

what are you spending your money on? We earn 120k combined and have a mortgage of practically 2k and we still save 2.5k per month!

This is why there are so many threads about income and living standards where the posters can’t understand each others point of view at all - the cost of living is so wildly different based on age, stage and geography.

This & I think the average user of MNs is not young so many have no clue.

Very confused by this… we earn less than 60k combined and in 12 months have done;

• lake district for a weekend x 2
• Canada for 2 weeks
• France for 1 week
• Italy for 2.5 weeks
• Spain for 1 week

All in hotels, no camping. We have Netflix, prime, Disney+
It must be your mortgage, ours is £1.2k for a 5 bed

We earn around the same and don't feel rich BUT have one child in private school and one at uni, plus a £2k mortgage.

Without the school and uni we would be fine so I'm.not sure where you're going wrong. Although if you have teenagers they are just expensive generally with driving lessons etc, I have three and they have all got more expensive as they got older.

100%

OP isn't wrong in the sense that everything is seemingly going up
We've taken note of the increases and are "adjusting" spending accordingly.
That's life unfortunately and we fully own our spending choices - past, present and future.

🙄 and here we go.

Well al lot of people came off their cheap mortgage fixes three years ago. Right at the time energy prices were going through the roof too.

I guess it is true that people only notice things when it begins to affect them.

Presumably you have known about the significant cost in mortgage increase for a long time (since 2022) and have been putting money aside to cover it.

I can manage and earn way less than you

Indeed - with a 10% deposit, earning £170k household income, it would be 50% of your take home to pay the mortgage.

It’s very strange - the salary numbers sound so high… but the housing costs mean people’s lifestyles look nothing like they (or others!) might imagine.

This is why there are so many threads about income and living standards where the posters can’t understand each others point of view at all - the cost of living is so wildly different based on age, stage and geography.

I need to know what food order this woman is doing? Is it Harrods’s and feeding 500?

fake post

I think there is a real mentality in London of people overstretching themselves financially to get the most house possible. I never make a financial decision without asking myself how it would look if all of my outgoings (and the cost of the thing I am considering buying or investing in) doubled. It doesn't do to take what the bank will lend you as your starting point for what you can actually afford.