Are you 44, in a graduate career, and also unable to afford basic emergency stuff??

[FeelingPoor]

As new user name and title suggests:
I am middle aged
Middle income
Employed in a fairly specialist field (postgrad, professional membership bla)
Rocked by unexpected bills

We have woodworm. This month it has cost £420 to sort (not done yet). So not a huge amount
Adult son with additional needs has found a better living situation. I will need to lend him £500 for this.
Younger son's birthday party - £140
First payment on child's rugby tour - £75

And that's our meagre savings gone. I thought at this age and this stage in my career I could absorb these things more easily. Its just a bit shit when you have so much responsibility, work so hard, and are still scraping along.

We are lucky - fed, clothed, have lots of nice times... But today feels moan-worthy! Anyone else in a similar position??

So because some can’t have them, no should?

That's not what I said at all

Whah I'm trying to say is that we see so many things as necessities whereas they're not, really. They're just "nice to haves".

But our standards are so high that we expect them all as the default.

My take-home is £3k a month above average but
single parent.

I've done a breakdown so people can see, costs are annual.
Car is over a decade old, owned outright, no costs included for haircuts for anyone, holidays or any days out/meals out/school trips or any house repairs/birthdays/xmas

Total from breakdown = £26,309
Total per month = £2200, so loads of money right? Read on...

Basic costs breakdown
Car + house insurance= £850
Car service/MOT/road tax £700
Sewerage and water £420
TV licence £159
Council tax £2100
Heating £1680
TV apps £180
Mortgage £13200
Food £4080
ASU insurance £1200
Dc hobbies £900
Petrol £400
Broadband £330
Phones for all £110

More costs...so slightly out of basic
summer holiday = £2400
One Meal out/takeaway a month (just me) = £360
Birthdays for DC = £300
Family birthday/Xmas/visits = £900
Pocket money for DC (too young for jobs) = £250
Haircuts for all = £200
School/hobby trips = £650
Clothes/uniforms/shoes for all = £700

New monthly total = £2672...so £224 a month for unexpected which may feel a lot to some, but isnt in reality and not particularly a luxury lifestyle and I have been conservative on some costs.

During and before COVID I felt fairly comfortable, now I resent that I could easily be put in debt by something going wrong inspite of working hard in order to get the house, then keep the house and allow some trips with school etc for my DC.

As i pointed out now that usually both partners have to work they are a necessity , they are time saving items.

I think if you haven't been a single parent, it's difficult to understand just how challenging it is financially. You are short of both time and money, you take a financial hit when the relationship/marriage ends, and you are often compelled to make financially disadvantageous decisions about housing. You also don't benefit from the mutual support and goal-setting around finances that many posters on this thread have described.

I often need to remind myself of this when I feel like I should be doing better than I am.

I get that I'm being pedantic, but they're not a necessity - lots of people manage just fine without them - even families with two working parents.

That doesn't mean they're not incredibly useful and convenient, though!

@HeresMyBreakdown thanks for a helpful (and brave) post. You earn a decent wage, but it clearly doesn't go far enough these days.

Yes, there’s always something else also.

We moved to somewhere cheaper. But to afford still bought old place, ie needed full renovation. Some was done immediately with savings, the rest have been trickling through.
We need new windows at the back, but there’s 5 windows and 2 patio doors so it’s really expensive. So another winter with single pane old windows in half the house, meaning higher heating also, so it’s chicken and egg.

Db is getting married soon. It’s abroad ( well from us, it’s in uk), so another round of family flights, hotels, car hire.. for a non holiday.

There’s a leak under the house which dh is trying to fix himself at the moment as we we were quoted €3500 to fix up. We still don’t have skirting despite laying new floors 2 years ago.

Yep - and I find for people in mid forties it seems to be one way or another, either paid off mortgages and money to burn on holidays (those that bought houses early!) or those that did degrees/post grads/started work later and bought later, have had to max out their mortgage capacity to buy a reasonable property despite decent salaries and now don't have any spare despite earning well. It's all down to the housing market.

Oh @TheBunyip has basically already said what I've said here, should have read the thread! I do think it's a vital factor though. Sadly I was on the wrong side of it - university did not pay for us, should have bought a house at 18.

13 years ago me and DH bought a two bed flat that needed renovating in town near the station (Brighton). It was our first time buy. I was 33, he was 32, the flat cost 230000. We did it up for about 6K (DH has a trade so did about half the work). 10% deposit of 23k. 5 K fees and moving costs.

I earned 27K and DH earned 35K. We felt very well off then we had nice clothes and shoes, eating out, travel, savings. I had a grad job and DH had a trade.

The flat is now worth 600K.

we bought our current house 11 years ago. A big detached wreck for 280 just outside Brighton.

Housing costs, food, fuel, renovation costs have sky rocketed in a very short space of time.

People need to stop blaming themselves. Its timing. We were both crap with money but to save a deposit and renovate didn't cost anywhere near what it does now. Its a different world.

People blaming the OP and themselves are being a bit naive about how much costs have risen in a really short period of time, no one can keep up.

Totally can identify. DH and I both have postgraduate degrees and good jobs. We used to be able to save around £1000 a month. It might sound like a lot but that go towards savings to do up our house. We struggle to save now to replace our carpet after the extension work last year. There's always something that gone wrong and all our money saved for renovation gone.

I posted on a similar thread recently and did the maths on what our first house cost in 1990 and our (mid twenties) graduate jobs paid and looked at what the house cost and the salaries are now. The house had increased eightfold and the salaries 2.5x. It was a 1930s three bed semi in a nice area of town (not London) and we didn't feel particularly stretched buying it and had money for eating out/holidays/theatre trips etc. We didn't have children until later but if we had had them earlier we could have afforded for one of us to be SAHP or work part time.

So wage stagnation and massive house price inflation are the main reason living standards have fallen. This also means that for many families you need 2 salaries to keep a roof over your heads and everyone fed - this means that the early years of children are saddled with crippling childcare costs as out government is too short sighted to see that good highly subsidised childcare is good for everyone.

Honestly, I could tell you of a lot of people, women I know in particular who aren't getting divorced now because they cannot afford it. If the same went on in their marriages 5 years ago, they'd most likely have been divorced by now. However, a single parent who is on a decent wage and God forbid owns a small property to live in is completely fucked financially now. I honestly don't know how I'd do it and certainly how I'd cope with the stress of it all. You really are doing hell of a job in these circumstances.

Oh I've found my people!
I'm 39 DH is 38. Both in the legal sector and worked incredibly hard to get here, but not employed in the big city law firms, just your regular high street lawyers. Both on £45k gross.
Got 3 kids and a fairly average semi detached house in working class outskirts of a big northern city. Not decorated much or done up.
No fancy cars, apple watches, Waitrose etc. My car is a 2005 Honda Jazz and we shop at Aldi. All clothes off vinted. Holidays are camping in the UK.
Don't get me wrong I have a great life, however when I was a kid, my mum was a social worker manager and my dad was a middle manager in insurance and me and my sister were in private school and had holidays to Florida, the Canaries, villa in Spain. New cars every few years. My boss when I was a trainee solicitor had the same and retired at 55 to play golf in Tenerife.
That kind of lifestyle seems WILD to me now. Is it wrong to want to aspire to what we were told we could achieve if we did all the 'right' things? I don't expect private school or fancy holidays, or early retirement, but just to not struggle?

Your boss would have been a partner though, surely? So not the same job as you. I’m sure that you both could expect a significant increase in income if you were made up to Partner in your firms.

@TimeandMotion Nope he was a senior associate same as me, and he did mostly legal aid work. The idea of a legal aid solicitor now driving a new BMW is unthinkable.

Yep, this is me. We earn collectively so much more than five years ago, and yet we are running a shortfall every month.

For us, it's council tax that's tipping us over the edge - we've shaved everything else down. The council pushed us into band G after we bought this house because it has a roof extension. I know it's the rules but it is just eyewatering.

My childhood was utterly charmed - private school, long-haul summer holidays, expensive hobbies. My kids are dressed courtesy of Vinted, fed by Aldi and holiday in a tent. That they mostly put up themselves.

We have happy times and I'm so grateful but I do worry why their future will be like and that we just can't give them the step up we both had in the 2000s.

That’s quite a leap from “significant increase in income” to “driving a new BMW”. There must have been partners above you both then, who were taking home more than 45k? You can still aspire to that, can’t you?

I’d be surprised if even 10 years ago a non-partner in a high street firm would have been earning enough to comfortably retire early, unless they had no dependants

Don't get me wrong I don't even want to drive a new BMW. But it's nowhere near being an option.
Obviously I don't know his financial circumstances. He could have inherited a load for all I know. But I don't think there's any point arguing me that the lawyers I was working with when I was 21 and they were 40 appeared significantly more financially comfortable than I am. They went on foreign holidays for a start.
Partnership isn't really an option for me at the moment, one of my children is disabled which makes marketing events etc very difficult to attend and that's part of the expectation. Partnership isn't an option for DH because he works in an ABS which is much more common now in his field than traditional partnership practices.

Well done! That sounds like very clever forward thinking.
please please don’t get your DS used to the rubbish McDonald’s food though!!! Honestly there are so much healthier habits/treats you can get him into.

Maybe here's the answer:
"Modest earners are being taxed “as if they were rich” because of Tory stealth taxes, figures show.
The 45p additional rate income tax threshold was 6.2 times average earnings when the Conservatives came to power in 2010.
Today, workers only have to earn 3.6 times average earnings to be taxed the highest rate – in part due to the threshold being cut from £150,000 to £125,140 from last April.
The higher-rate threshold – which kicks in at £50,270 and levies income tax at a rate of 40pc – was £43,875 in 2010, 83pc higher than average earnings. This figure has now halved to 43pc.
In 2010-11, the average full-time salary was £24,030. This had risen to £35,116 by 2023-24."

It's kind of a relief knowing many of us are in the same boat, I am 49, earning a 'good' wage. My phone is old and cracked, I will be using it until it dies like all my old phones. Cheap UK holiday every 2/3 years, we don't have game consoles at home because the games and membership are too expensive. My kids play free games on their cheap android phone. We only eat out at McDs or something similar price occasionally.

However, I am trying to catch up with my pensions as I work in a incredibly ageist industry so not expect to earn the salary once they made me redundant (matter of when).

The only worry is my children, how are they going to afford to live on their own? My 18 years old daughter is sharing a small room with her little sister, it's really not great if they can't afford their own place.

@Terraria My phone is also old and cracked 😂 I feel old and cracked myself quite a significant amount of time too!
If I'm honest, the only way my kids will get anything of any note from me is when my parents are no longer with us. Which is absolutely dreadful, and hopefully won't be for many years to come.
Eldest DC needs a new bike. I asked his Dad to go halves with me (my half would go on my credit card) He told me that he'd "have to see" as things are tight for him, what with him paying to take the kids to DisneyLand later in the year 😐 I am glad they get to go, they'll have a fabulous time. But it's difficult not to feel bitter as well as anxious about money. I'm talking future anxiety as well as current.
I'm dreading them turning 17 and asking for driving lessons etc. I can't fund a new car for myself, let alone two kids.

Yup, our household income is slightly less than yours OP, but we’re a touch younger and I only work 2.5 days/week to mitigate childcare costs (nursery age). We certainly don’t have loads of luxuries on finance, but at the moment simply have nothing left over. We have one 20-year-old car and haven’t been on holiday since 2019. We have SIM-only contracts and old computers.

We used up all our savings (plus gaining some 0% debt) to fix an unexpected leaky roof just before Christmas, so now we have no safety net at all. I realise we are lucky to have a roof though.

So many of us in the same boat, and so many of us consoling ourselves in the same way - at least I have
a home/roof even if it is leaky/rotting 🤣