How are people affording things atm?

[locomum83]

Bear with me.... I work 12 hours a Week, the rest of the time I look after our 3 young kids, DH works full time.
We can afford nothing at the minute, food costing us at least £700 a month (more than I earn) we run 2 cars as we live rural, and can't car share due to work commitments, our mortgage isn't even that much.
I'm looking at other jobs but we don't have formal childcare, just our parents, all in their 70's so not ideal, and to work more could mean having to pay childcare, so the extra money would be eaten up with childcare so what's the point?
this summer we haven't even been able to have any sort of holiday or even short break organised, we simply have no money left after bills, and often we have to take money from savings to help.
All my mum friends are chatting about their holidays to Disney, turkey, Spain etc, and their new build houses, etc.
My question... how do people do it?? Seriously, and not even people with really excellent jobs, those just with regular run of the mill jobs. Everyone around me is spending money, big money! And I have no idea how they do it.
Are people in debt up to their eyes, what kind of jobs are people doing? Maybe I can do the same! Really deflated at the moment and feeling totally useless.

You work 12 hours a week and have 3 children and 2 cars and are curious why you can't afford things like others can!

I have one child and I work full time in a mid management role. I made this lifestyle choice as I know this is what I could cope with.
You've made a different lifestyle choice where you have 3 children and work very part time. So you can't compare your lifestyle with others who have made different choices and so will lead life differently.

I've got three kids, I work full time, husband is a stay at home dad (was made redundant and hasn't found anything since, so not by choice). We don't have any luxuries either, summer holidays are at my mum's house in Norfolk. I don't think it's that unusual to not have luxuries but I guess people don't post about it on social media. That tends to be the people doing something exciting!

Definitely revisit the food budget.

PP said
It's less than a fiver a day per person
as if that's not very much. I think reducing that is perfectly achievable

We both work full time (of the three, my longest maternity leave was 12 weeks)

We have jobs that include things like a fuel allowance (DH drives a lot for his work) and my work pays a significant contribution towards education (school fees, nursery fees)

We moved to a country where we don’t pay tax and wages are generally higher

OP, you are comparing apples with oranges. I'm certain most families who seem to have more both work full time.

We have a family of 5 and can eat for a month on £500 if I'm careful. Why don't you pop your budget over on the Money Matters board and get some advice there?

Less children and two full time jobs. 1 car and live semi rural with good transport links (Train to work). wfh, older kids so can bring home from school. School holidays some GPs help (the odd day so Easter 2 days help, May half term 1 day help) but as I’m self employed take on less projects over the summer .

Wow, bit rude

As less children is no longer an option then work more than 12 hours a week

Quite a few people just have one child now, both work full time with nanny helping with childcare. I'm with you on the food front. My grocerys came yesterday, my husband commented on there not being very much. I'm ordering less, because I can't afford to get all we usually get. I've had to start making cheap meals like jacket spuds,(using the chicken carcass to make) soup and making the pizzas.

I didn't mean my reply to be snippy. Just saying what we do. Meaning it's very different form your lifestyle which is how we afford things. What I would say is they probably compare their time with the kids to yours! So while things are very hard and expensive right now don't be too hard on yourself.

Could you do a little holiday at home type thing?

Your DH needs to reevaluate his career plans. If his shift work means you can’t get a better paying job, and his shift work isn’t enough to pay the bills, then you need a solution as a family that allows you to earn more money. Also NI is rubbish for childcare, IIRC you don’t get free hours?

£700 is a lot, is any of that nappies/formula? It should be easy to pare that down by £100/month. Rural living is also a bugger, with higher transport costs and oil heating.

Partner works FT and is on approx 60k and can make more on the side as it’s a trade, myself PT.
Iv never had to pay childcare as I work 16 hours over 2 days and each set of grandparents have had the kids one day each.
They are now older (10,11) and I work from home so I don’t need them to have them anymore.
Youngest has a severe disability so we get a mobility car and my partners work supplies a vehicle too so essentially we have 2 vehicles and only pay for petrol for both. We don’t have to pay tax, service, MOT, insurance etc.

We also get High rate DLA for our son and that’s now £401 a month (I think). Most of this goes into his savings every month and Iv used it to pay for Disney Paris next April as he loves rides.

Our mortgage is much lower as we never went close to the max.
We still shop in Aldi and spend about £450 a month on food for 4 of us. Never through food away.

We went to Disneyworld/Universal last year for 3 weeks and paid for half of it with money my Nan left me before she passed away. I also got left 1k after she passed away and used that to pay for flights for Spain for this 6 weeks school break…

I shop around for deals on holidays … This 10 nights in Spain is costing £2,707 for flights and acc which includes breakfast. Iv booked private transfers both ways which is £140 on top. This is really cheap for 4 of us for 10 nights in Spain in school holidays and it’s a 4* resort on a beach

We also don’t pay for sky etc, we only have Disney+ which I was getting using the Tesco clubcard thing.

Partner and myself puts all our fuel in a Tesco and get a child amount of points to pay for things.

WFH doing something like transcribing audio files (as you're a secretary)?

Is your degree in anything that could lead to something practical but online?

What about being a virtual assistant? You can do admin for people from your own home and around the childcare. But you’ll need to graft hard to get clients - get a decent website up and running and start touting online for business.

Got one child.
Two cars.
One house.
Work full time...
DH works full time...

I work three shifts a week in the pub in the evenings and even then it's tight.

We were lucky and saved during Covid - no going out, still working, no holidays. That def helped as we still have it as a buffer.
Both work now but I only work p/t although we have a property we let which brings in another p/t equivalent wage.
DCs are uni age, one starting in Sept and my wage will need to cover both their rents. Although obviously a bit offset by no child being home so food/energy bills will decrease.
We do live quite modestly - older cars, I don’t drive much, holidayed in uk this year (still about 2.5k though w accommodation and going out and about), live in new build so don’t have renovation costs, I don’t buy that much generally. I do spend on food though, that’s my ‘luxury’.

KPMG employ fully remote EAs. Salary was around £30k when I was looking (which is a pisstake in my view, but that's by the by).

It was a bit but to be fair the wording implied the OP was looking for explanations rather than advice and I think the answer is right there: more hours, fewer kids. The MN myth of the free third child has thankfully died off a bit in recent years but people used to constantly post things like “ oh once you get to two the rest don’t cost much because hand me downs” like the only cost of a child is clothes and toys. A third child is often a financial game changer.

more years of childcare with an incremental cost, unless you have a nanny and just a longer period when you have a child that can’t be left alone which limits employment options/hours

may need a bigger house, depending on sex of kids, but in any case, 2 can share, 3 probably can’t in most cases due to age gap and size of room

bigger car because can’t get three car seats across the back in smaller models

less chance family or friends can offer childcare as people rarely want to have more kids over than they have themselves. GPs are always older when the third one is born and likely to have less energy or ability to care for a little one plus two more.

holiday- hotels and packages designed for 2 plus 2 so more expensive as you need an extra room or have limited choice.

plus food- kids don’t cost that much less than adults to feed IMO.

Don’t let posts like this make you feel bad. It’s not your fault childcare and everything else
is so expensive. In your shoes I would look for seriously low cost recipes that you can make double of: hearty bolognaises padded out with lentils, oats etc., you can easily make twice the amount to do two meals instead of one. Baked potatoes. Go down a brand. Bake your own flapjacks etc for snacks instead of shop bought snacks, oats are one of the cheapest things you can buy x

Honestly it’s so tough out there at the moment, don’t be too hard on yourself or think you ‘should’ be able to afford more!
We live quite frugally, no big holidays or anything like that, are rural and I’m a SAHM (kind of). The only reason we are okay (not flush, but okay!) is because my husband works long hours, often 100+ a week at the moment as quite seasonal to a degree, for our own business, for which we’ve had to put all our prices up fairly recently and I do all the paperwork, billing etc. it sucks, I really miss him and it’s hard doing everything alone, but he’s doing amazing keeping us going!

2 kids (1yr and 3yrs) and we both work FT. My DP is emergency services like the OP's DH. He's qualified in something related to that so works several other jobs that he can pick and choose when/where he works. He's also just started his own company to take on other extra work. He still does his fair share with the kids though.

I work FT but have to travel around the country often. Honestly I'm struggling to keep up and end up working for free late night/weekends. Like OP, I don't really have any other skills/qualifications so would struggle to find a second job due to this and the fact my DP works all sorts of shifts that I need to work around or take leave to cover. I sell quite a lot on eBay in my spare time - anything in good condition that is surplus to requirements is sold.

We can just about afford 2 days in nursery per week for the kids due to DP's extra work but have to take leave or work around DP's shifts to sort childcare. We have no one that will help out with childcare/babysitting.

We keep food costs and other bills as minimal as possible and buy nothing that's frivolous. I guess we're lucky that the kids aren't old enough for activities yet but there's nothing where we live anyway. Can't wait until we don't have to buy nappies!

No holidays as we can't afford them. We do rare days out if we can get a massive discount/freebie.

We need to get a second car as it's really not working just having one and we're semi rural in an area of shit public transport. I've held out as long as I could as it pisses me off massively that I don't feel I need it enough to justify it yet there's not really any other way to get around it due to my family not being willing to help out once every month or so. It's going to stretch us badly.

We've been trying to grown our own veg etc which is something DP has always done to cut back on the food bill but the bloody wild rabbits take most of it. This week they've had all the cabbages and peppers 😑.

Maybe look into online chat support? Lots of service providers motor trade specific or otherwise who are looking for cs coverage outside of normal working hours.

We have 3 children but spend around £500pm on food. So that is a saving of £2400 a year and pays for most of our summer holiday.
We only have one very cheap car.