To wonder how single people are meant to live nowadays?

Same position with dd the same age at Uni, I work two jobs, seven days a week. But still unable to stay out of my overdraft.

Me too. I’m top of my band now in the nhs and worse off than I was when I was on £32K working for a charity pre covid. I am funding an elderly father and brother which doesn’t help, but it is so hard being single and having to pay for everything out of one salary. As for pension and savings 😂😂😂. If I can get through the month and eat, travel to work, heat the house it’s a fucking miracle.

Sorry - to me it can across as smug and dismissive and maybe that wasn’t how it was intended.

well my Arabella earns a below average salary, is single and manages just fine!

I assume she is young - comparing a youngster scraping by (who ch is what Arabella is doing) with a fully fledged adult isn’t really a far comparison either.

Arabella isnt doing fanatically well, her salary is tiny and after her mortgage she only has about 1300 a month to run a car, buy groceries, pay council tax, pay back her student loan.

i am surprised she got a mortgage of that size on her salary. The proportion of her salary going to the mortgage is very high. I am single and have a similar mortgage (which I sometimes think is too large) but I earn three times as much as your daughter.

I can see how that could just about be manageable for a younger single childless person whose friends are all in the same boat - but she wouldn’t be able to build much savings therefore her car breaks down, boiler goes, could spell disaster

she does not have the financial resilience of a couple - the point OP was making. A couple needs a new boiler, the price is cut in half.

Thank you, I thought it was around £80k, that seems ridiculously low.

I know how you feel OP. I'm a single mum with a teen and it's become much harder over the last five years.

We did have a holiday this year but we don't eat out at all. I'm on 15k less than you but don't qualify for benefits.

I watch every penny, I've cut back on everything, I make my own bread, cook from scratch, have a log burner and cut my own wood to reduce bills, it's getting ridiculous.

Teen goes to uni next year (unavoidable for his chosen career) and I have no idea how I will afford it. 🙁He's already working and saving. It will have to be a team effort.

I often wonder how single people manage , particularly those in the SE. The chances are they are still living in their parents home . I have 2 friends who have adult children recently split from partners and are having to move back with parents because they cannot afford accommodation on their own . Affording life as a single is so stressful when you are responsible for every bill that comes in , no help , no sharing the load . It’s a stress in its own right . My electric has gone up from circa £80 a month to now over £300 a month in winter with all electric heating . Luckily I’m older now and have no money worries but as a young person this would have been an impossible hike . It’s not just the day to day that’s a problem , it’ll be a societal problem in years to come because people cannot save for pensions . It’ll be the tax payers of tomorrow shouldering this burden but then there aren’t enough working people coming through , so who knows how this will pan out .

When you are single you are undoubtedly subsidising the lifestyle of those who have made other choices. The biggest ripoff has got to be council tax which is supposed to be based on an average of 2 adults occupying a house and using local services. Therefore single people should get a 50% discount rather than a miserable 25%. Its even more annoying when there are adult earners living along with parents. You are subsididing these families and getting nothing back in return. It makes you want to leave a big bill behind every time you move house to another authority.

To be fair, the title got me. Single people... but her post was actually about single parents if you read to the end I didn't.

It is though, because the OP has generalised her question into asking how single people live on a not inconsiderable salary.
The title, and the OP are both asking about 'single people' being able to afford to live, not 'a small subset of single people'.

Is she putting a child through university? If not I don’t see that this post is relevant or helpful.

Yes. The market for one bed flats is pretty stagnant

I had the situation where DH was a high earner but lost that job when made redundant. Had to take a much lower paid job , about £20k lower and I couldn't see how we could manage . Ironically we had much the same wages at the end of each month as no longer in a higher tax bracket . Plus qualified for help with child care etc.

I would answer differently if you wanted to start a conversation about costs going up, but YABU to generalise that single people can't afford to live.

I suspect you are forgetting that most of the population of the UK don't live in London or the SE, to start with.
Then most single people aren't supporting a child through University.

I have 2 dc who each earn around the £34K mark who manage very well on their salaries. Both run cars, both go on holidays, both go out and socialise, both have hobbies. Both pay their bills and one over pays their mortgage every month, the other is saving up for some big work on their house. They would roll their eyes at someone generalising that you can't live on a slary that is CONSIDERABLY more that they earn.

15 years ago, my average take home was about £850pm and I lived alone and could afford it easily. That was rent etc too.
Now I am on less than that (UC) and it is a struggle, and I don't even have rent costs now.

I'm really sorry you are going through such a tough time. You could apply to your local council for assistance from the Household Support Fund.
Here's some information about it that I found online:

Who is eligible for the Household Support Fund?
The Household Support Fund is for anyone who is vulnerable or is unable to pay for essentials such as food and energy. It can also be used to pay for other items including phone bills, clothing such as school uniform, period products or help with essential transport such as buying a bike or repairing a car.

• You do not have to be in receipt of benefits to be able to get financial support from your local council.
• Your benefits will not be affected if you do get a payment from the Household Support Fund.
• Councils tend to give out cash payments or vouchers towards bills.
• If you have savings it is unlikely you will qualify for support.

I earn around 40k now as I’ve progressed in my career but I have a much worse quality of life than I did 5-10 years ago.

If you’d asked me 10 years ago what my life would be like if I knuckled down and qualified in a profession, working 40-50 hours per week, I’d imagine myself living in a nice house that I owned and going on holidays every year. My reality is very different as rent increases by a crazy amount (market rate apparently) and I haven’t been on holiday since 2019!

Back in 2019, I could afford a holiday once a year and although I worked full time, I didn’t work particularly hard and my wage was really low. Life was pretty easy back then and I had a lot of hope for the future.

The whole point of retraining and progressing was to give my child a better life and to save up for university for her but because everything has gone up, I can’t afford to do any of that.

I expect I’ll be in the same position as OP in a few years. It’s so shit and leaves me wondering what’s the point in trying? I’m encouraging my child to look at degree apprenticeships but I know they are competitive.

Even nearly 20 years ago I was paying approx £1,500 pm on rent/bills just outside London (1 bed tiny maisonette) and had a reasonably well paid job self-employed. But after all the petrol, travel, insurances, student loan payments I didn't have anything to save.

The UK is a very expensive place to live and we have little in the way of services to show for it and it's getting worse.

It's particularly difficult now but some of that is temporary. Your daughter won't be at university for much longer. To ease the pressure while she is, you could review your mortgage rate to make sure it is still competitive: the bank rate came down very recently and lenders have been changing their offers.Also, with today's longer maximum terms and flexible upper age limits for paying off a mortgage, you could probably extend the term temporarily to lower the monthly payments. This would give you a welcome breather and when your daughter finishes studying and starts working, you can catch up and start reducing it again.

How much is your monthly service charge?

That sounds incredibly tough. Have you visited CAB to check you’re not entitled to more support? I’m really sorry you’re in that position, I hope things start to look up soon.

£19k is a very low salary (stating the obvious, I know!), especially for someone educated. Could you push for more? We regularly recruit women with administration skills in their early 20s, starting salary is £25k, SE.

Have you looked at NHS jobs? Often good pay progression, opportunities to progress and good pension scheme.

But could you buy it now if you had to?
5 years ago is a long time in house prices land.

I'm on just under 31k, rental is going up for sale and rents have risen so much over the past 2 years, I'm really struggling to find something else affordable. I live with my eldest son who is currently unable to work, and whilst he contributes, I still have to sort him to a degree. If I had a partner, it would be easier financially.

Are you claiming benefits your entitled to?

I do think the repayment schedule affects it, yes. As people repay the loan as a proportion of their earnings, it’s seen as a cheap debt. Living costs weren’t as bad as they are now, up until a few years ago when interest rates increased dramatically and rents raised accordingly.

But also as another poster pointed out, in the UK we pay a high proportion of our salaries on housing and childcare. There isn’t much left to put aside for a lot of people.

Being a single person in the UK is now very precarious financially, a very risky situation as one salary can easily be lost through redundancy, ill health etc. Even those who have been able to save (very hard as a single earning household) may not feel able to hand over £££ to their adult children out of fear that money may be needed later in life.

Well I m a single mum too. My exh pays zero. I'm on 19k. Imagine my life.
Foodbanks, begging friends for money for milk and bread.
I'm an educated professional...
60k is my dream. Think before you post, OP.
Have you been to a food bank?

I don't sleep at night because we are hungry and I cannot afford heating bills. I live in SE.
It's horrific.