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.

Have you checked your entitlement to universal credit? You can use an online calculator to see if you would be eligible now and then play around with the hours putting them up and down and adding childcare if you increase your hours, to see if you can work more but still get most childcare costs.

With 3 DC, you on 12 hours and your DH in an emergency services role, you might still qualify for a small amount and childcare costs.

That's how you'll make it work op - work more hrs. or look for another job. You seem to have customer service skills and a lot of those jobs can be remote.
A few of my friends looked for work in schools as they didn't have any childcare help.
Set up a savings account specifically for holidays and put money into it. You could aim to have a holiday every 2 yrs if yearly isn't affordable.

How is your meal planning etc? We manage on £500 a month for food with the same sized family and often have extra at the end of the week. That's for everything including packed lunches, toiletries and cleaning products. You need to get smart about shopping, buying more when there's the rare deals to be had on non perishables. We've cut out a lot of fresh veg too tbh, frozen and tinned are fine. Not quite as nice, but fine.

I find shopping online is easier than in-store, you can alter your basket. Change a meal to something cheaper if your spend is too getting too much. Click and collect from Asda is free too. Cutting out booze helps. For us alcohol only goes under treat spending never grocery.

Home made pizza, Mac and cheese, frozen mince curry, American goulash, meatballs(just skinned sausages in sauce) and spaghetti all cheap and lovely family meals. chicken is the biggest rip off at the minute, so minimizing that works well. Also bulking meals out with cheap things like tinned hot dogs. They're not dear, but add some cheap protein and make meals more filling.

£5 a person per day day is £25 a day. That's a lot of money for one days worth of food let alone if you are bulk buying. I spend £80.

I am a family of 5 including 2 teen boys.

Breakfast- Porridge with peanut butter (cheap asda giant bag lasts a week) or cereal and whole milk.

Lunch- Sandwiches, fruit, cheese square and supermarket breakfast bar and sometimes another type of snack. That's for packed lunch. If a weekend then its pasta or fried eggs with toast or leftover dinner.

Dinner- could be so many things. We eat a lot of minced meat based dishes so spagbol, lasagna, keema curry, pasta bake, meatballs and salsa, sheperds pie.Roast chicken. Battered fish, fish fingers. Then split pea soup, tagines a lot of Moroccan dishes.

Snacks- fruit, toast or whatever I bake. I use food thats on the turn to bake muffins.

There is no grazing. If they are hungry there is more lunch or dinner. My children sometimes struggle to finish their dinner so will eat 2/3s then they will reheat it after.

Go on asda delivery website and search essential. I will then get as much as I can from that range. I buy my meat with my child benefit on Monday and freeze it. We eat about 4/5 portions a week. Then fish, then veggie dishes.

Don't use low fat, the fat will fill them up and make then satisfied. Its also high in calories so they need less food. I rarely hear my kids say they are hungry.

Some of these comments are pretty nasty. Come on people, do you enjoy kicking people when they are down? You can’t give back the kids, yes 3 kids is a lot and costs a lot more obviously than 1-2 kids. I have 3, but quite a gap between 1&2. I’m a single parent, living in the SE, good income but I’m certainly not rolling in money. Maybe if I move back north I would.

how old are your kids? Once in school it gets easier obviously cost wise as childcare costs reduce dramatically when you’re working. I’m a civil servant and we are pretty flexible. Staff can take a late lunch and pick up kids from school and they can finish off another hour or two with kids in background watching YouTube? 40% office attendance. Obviously you couldn’t have 3 kids all day in summer hols at home whilst you worked but you could probably manage a day or two then some holiday clubs, council run summer play schemes? I always advise the civil service for mothers as they are family friendly, we have flexi leave too so parents can always go to assembly / sports days etc. We are recruiting a lot at the moment too (civil service jobs).

i don’t think £700 is particularly excessive for 5 people. You mention kids graze all day, I’d set some loose rules around that, kids don’t need to eat constantly and it’s expensive if they do. Snack in morning and one in afternoon if they have a later evening meal is sufficient. If you let them of course they will be tucking into everything you’ve just bought (I used to!!). Also yes people do put stuff on credit cards, pay off monthly, cars on loan etc)

£80 a week u should say. Not a day 😴

It’s really tough while the kids are young. We had two full-time jobs but the childcare costs were huge. It was only when the kids got to school and we were paying less on childcare that we started holidays etc.

mine thing that did make a difference for us, was focusing on the shopping bill - I found a Facebook page & website called something like ‘feed your family for about £25 a week’. There were recipes and shopping lists on there that really helped. I never managed to get it down that low as I wanted to keep fresh fruit etc on the menu, but it really helped me to cut back.

i also followed the forums on moneysavingexpert as well, I read all the financial advice and guidance that people received on there and that helped too. Good luck, it’s not easy but you are probably at the hardest point now - it will get easier.

They'd probably get more than they think. My friend has 2 kids, she and her partner both work in fairly low paid jobs, she was recently made redundant so she put in a claim for UC and based on her partner's wage they're getting around £1000 a month.

Those kind of things are where some people can save money though. Depending on what type of cereal it is it may be costing you quite a bit extra, those snacks. Branded cereals like shredded, honey nut loops etc aren’t cheap and don’t last very long as they aren’t that filling. There’s the extra milk too. You will save money buying own brand. But to really save money in cereal based snacks, buy porridge. Not the pre-portioned flavoured stuff in packs either. Own brand porridge oats. I have it each day for breakfast and it’s far more filling than a bowl of cornflakes. I don’t need a mid morning snack with the porridge but I would if I had cornflakes.

It’s hard , though, when it’s your teen kids and you want to just give them what they like. But until they live on their own and pay for themselves they have no idea about the cost of stuff, or the need to budget for some things.

Get poorer friends. I don't know anyone going to Disney and I know plenty of people who can't afford to have a holiday this summer.

Two DC, DH, 2 cars, 4 holidays abroad this year. I work 2 jobs, in total I work 56 hours a week. Loads of debt. I eat very minimal - think omelette type dinner most nights. No drinking at home (for me anyway).

I get it OP .....I have a similar grocery spend for 4 kids. I don't know how people are spending so much less ?? I think it's NI..food costs are higher..no AlDI...there are fewer discounts. Free childcare is non existent..lots of people I know here have extended family to rely on while both parents work full time..holidays from here cost a lot more than some of the prices in this thread. Some of the people you know may have very low mortgage costs/ huge credit card bills... Hopefully when your DH is qualified he would have fixed shifts so you would work around that more ? Would you be better off training as classroom assistant..the pay is still poor but its obviously term time and more flexible also you have pension etc. There are free courses at the minute. Or child minding?

Do you mean he earns significantly less than 35k? If so, to answer your question, people who choose to have so many children afford it by having significantly larger incomes

I think some will have received money from inheritances or parents, some will be getting more free childcare (also probably from parents). If their children are at school, rather than nursery age, they will have more chance to work. And some of them might be putting it all on credit cards or going into debt.

I feel like everything is difficult for a lot of people at the moment and three children is very tough (I know because I had three as well). But I think it will get better at some point. You’re experiencing a cost of living crisis at a time when you have three young children and a husband who’s still training and might eventually get promotion, even if going from training to qualified won’t mean a particularly big increase. If he’s public sector, the wage levels will probably have been stagnating for years under the Tories and austerity.

Despite those talking loudly about their holidays and houses, there will be others in your position who are holding on quietly and not shouting about it. Hopefully things will turn round for you.

Where holidays are concerned - lots of people book well in advance, pay an initial deposit and pay off gradually throughout the year. Some people book on credit cards and apply the same principle - pay off gradually throughout the year. We have OK incomes and have had some lovely holidays abroad but it's certainly not every year and were funded by an investment windfall rather than regular income. The holidays the kids talk most about are our UK ones though - Dorset is a favourite place to go!

Yes, I'd be very interested in a classroom assistant job, however from research I'd have to do a year unpaid work experience alongside colleague, we don't have the savings at the minute to allow for that, but someday I might look at that again

700 is a lot on food. I find that I spend more if I go to the supermarket but if I shop on line I keep within a budget. It is very tempting to indulge in impulse buys when at the supermarket but if you are shopping on line you can plan each meal and only buy what you need. I always do a ‘cull’ before the final stage to take out what I really don’t need.

We both work full time, on shift in the emergency services. 2 kids 2 cars. We decided a third child would be pushing it so decided not to go there. Childcare's was over £1k a month at one point but we are though that now. We pushed to pay our mortgage off. The decisions we made years ago are lucky helping us out massively now.

Are you sure you wouldn’t qualify for anything to help with childcare if you were working more? I think a lot of people assumed your husband was earning more than he does but if you’ve said less than £35k that is at a huge amount to be supporting a family if you’re only doing 12 hours so not bringing much in. There was another thread where I checked entitled to for the poster who was on £40k and she’d have been eligible for £500 in universal credit with her childcare costs.

Well in my case it's work and not much else. Maximising my income. Single parent. There's two of you.

Yea I might be interested in a civil service job however all the job description really confuse me and I end up not really understanding what the job actually is where is the best place to look for these jobs??

If nothing else there's always the tax free childcare scheme, which would save something if you're not UC eligible. You have at least one parent who is paying tax and doesn't earn over 100k, so should qualify.

Some of the people you see will be living on credit cards. There were lots of longish 0% deals at one point. They can be used for finance, I knew a few people who bought really nice cars of finance.

My DH and I had a phase where we 0% used credit cards - we had a few good holidays in that time - but are now panicking about some that aren’t going to be paid off in time so have upped the payments and are really feeling the pinch on that and rising costs generally.

People we don’t know well wouldn’t know that though, you don’t know how people have paid for holidays or anything else.

We also have a generous MIL who has previously paid for a family holiday for us.

Also, on the holiday front, you don’t really know what families are paying (unless you are off to the Maldives or similar!)

There seems to be a misconception that holidaying in the UK is always a cheaper option that going abroad.

However, a family of 5 - using a free child place - can go to a nice little all inclusive in somewhere like Turkey in Greece for as little as £400 per person, or less depending on taking DC out of school at cheaper times. And not spend a penny on top of that while there as transfers and activities and all food and drinks included. I know this is still expensive in relative terms but some seem to assume that those holidays are more high end than they actually are.

To take a family of 5 away in the UK, taking into account the cost of accommodation somewhere like Cornwall, supermarket food, local attractions, ice creams for the kids.. there is no way I would pay for that during school holidays.

We also looked at Butlins a few years ago, in August, and it would have cost the same as going abroad, with a food package that wasn’t even all inclusive.

It is hard with young DC and trying to work, it really is. I am able to work from home now though, around the kids as I can just tell them “I’m in meeting upstairs, don’t come in unless there is an emergency” and it’s self employed work so I pick the hours that suit me and can take on extra work as needed.

If you didn’t know us well though, from the outside it might look as if I don’t work at all, as I am at school events, sometimes doing school run and always look scruffy so am clearly not heading off to an office.

We have just had a decent holiday (France not the Maldives!) and go out a fair bit. How are we managing? We earn a lot more and spend a lot less than you. Two well paid, full time jobs, no car and one young adult child (DPs from a previous relationship) who no longer lives with us. Our food bill is about £350 a month.

It's that simple.

Thankyou for the practical advice, I'm taking it all onboard x