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??

You’re the one speaking waffle. I’m the same age as some of these people and do not have the same issues with money as I made different choices. They made choices to live within an easy commute or close to certain schools. They could’ve made choices to have a longer commute or not live in such good catchment areas. 5 years ago is not relevant to this thread as the OP is in her mid-forties not mid-thirties or mid-twenties.

@Springiscoming2024 it’s fantastic to know that the cost of living has not impacted you, because you have made far better financial choices than those on this thread. However, you’re attitude is pretty unhelpful and tbh pretty unrealistic.

To everyone else, I’m with you. I’m actually heartened by this thread (although sad so many of us are in the same boat). Agree with what a lot have already said- a period as a single mum is horrendous for long term finances.

You're not getting it.

People live lives they can afford. They buy properties they can afford. And that's the right thing to do. Just few years ago houses you are referring to would be primarily bought by people on lower incomes than most on this thread, for exactly the same reason. And that is fine. What isn't fine is how squeezed we have suddenly become.

Just because you made these choices doesn't make it right. I'd rather be squeezed but have my DC brought up in a safe area and attending a good school. This isn't some kind of a luxury or a gift from God, I worked for it and I decide to provide for him as a priority. If your priorities are different then you do you.

Also, the fact that in the 90s a middle manager civil servant and a teacher could buy a house in a nice London suburb but now they are apparently overly entitled because they can’t afford a flat in a shitty area just illustrates how far our expectations have actually fallen.
In 1998 a 1 bed flat in zone 2 North London could be had for £75k. My entry level job in 1999 paid 15k so to buy that flat would be 5 times my earning.
An entry level job now still only pays, what, 23k? Same flat is I guess £300k?
standard of living has been slipping for the vast majority for years. We are allowed to be pissed off that we worked hard, took professional exams, extra training, interviews with 3 stages and hoops to jump through, and still struggling to have a comfortable life. Or even a life where money or lack thereof doesn’t occupy half our waking thoughts…

Nope. You’re not getting it. If people have such high mortgages that they’re struggling every month then that means they’ve bought houses they can’t afford and are living lifestyles they can’t afford. And what is considered a safe area and a good school are very subjective.

Ah you're one of those.

A mortgage that was affordable few years ago might not be affordable anymore due to a combination of increases in interest rates, energy, inflation, fuel and childcare.

There. Cease being insufferable, it'll make you a nicer person which clearly isn't on your priority list either. I'm nearly sorry for you, but nah, not really.

You know what, I think we all need to stop and learn from the financial guru that is @Springiscoming2024 .

Apparently when making her financial decisions, she was factoring in interest rate and cost of living rises far higher than any banks were stress testing for. Move over Martin Lewis!!!

Tbf OP has a slightly different set up / issue. Older son with SN from 1st marriage presumably, ds1 and ds2 from 2nd marriage.
I am a bit older, Our mortgage is larger than many but that's because it's ending soon ( and we extended it by 2 years to do repairs, eg putting in windows and doors throughout).

Is there much you can change atm op?

Everyone raves about how expensive nursery fees are, but in those middle years, when dc are in primary and then secondary, you're no better off actually. Then they start uni and you'll be paying quite a bit say £300+ to make up from minimum to max living grant. So realistically this isn't going to stop any time soon.

So something will have to give /change. What could you re-arrange?

Then they start uni and you'll be paying quite a bit say £300+ to make up from minimum to max living grant

Such luck. Ds will start uni in September 25 and I don't think £300 will touch the sides

Actually not having a takeaway or a holiday is pretty miserable. What are your biggest outgoings op? Something has to change here. Because that would make me miserable and we holiday and eat out a small / reasonable amount.

I could take on more work (I am back at working 4 days now, but do have a medical condition, and I was accidentally working 6 first the last 18 mths!) but choose not to, presumably you can't.

So something else has to give.

@Desecratedcoconut

I was trying to be polite! Many parents pay more.
Ds1 is at uni, we looked at what we could afford, he has a part time job, and he also has a paid placement as part of his course, so we got off lighter than some.

Max uni living grant £9,978 - minimum £4,651. Difference £5,327. £443 per mth , if divided by 12. £532 if / 10.

Has your ds/ his friends been able to get by at the maximum maintenance grant level? I've seen a lot of mnetters say that to get by, even without any bells and whistles, much more is needed. That makes me a little nervous, tbh, the question of how much more elicits the kind of air sucking between teeth that is only normally ever heard when asking a mechanic how much to fix the car. 😬

Yes, less than the maximum. But I'm not advising that!

With respect it all depends. Which Uni. Your child. How long is a piece of string?

With mn help (my lovely thread that I was part of for GCSE's, A'level's and now am still now whilst eldest at Uni) we all managed to book the absolute cheapest Nottingham catered accommodation ever, which was a steal. They get all meals, plus vouchers for lunch. They went to free night clubs, my ds went to a church with mammoth meals and homemade cakes on a Sunday night. (Clever!)

You can get by on not much. And have a heap of fun.

But some dc, are just ...,,, higher maintenance. More expensive!

Thank Oblomov, that's good to know. I need to hunt around for a similar thread, ds is fairly low maintenance, non-drinking, studious sort so I have a fighting chance!

This is so depressing. Is it really going to cost this amount forever?

I pay thousands and thousands in childcare (it costs double now to what we planned for when TTC, it's madness), children's clothes and shoes cost more than ever (and yes, I use Vinted too but not for everything) and DS does several additional activities. I honestly think by the time this and his food adds up it is £20k+ per annum, net. If that is the minimum of what this is going to cost me forever until he's a grown up then I might as well go live in a shed now.

I totally get you. I am 48 and married, and me and my friends were just talking about this yesterday - we don't have enough savings or income to cover everything life throws at us.

In the last 18 months we've needed:

a new (second hand) car (£9000)
a new washing machine (£700)
Roof repairs (£500)
Plumbing repairs ((£300)
New boiler (£3000)
A will and other legal stuff (£1750)

That's just off the top of my head. And we will have to make good the repairs so redecorating at some point.

We have now found out out garden wall is falling into the neighbour's yard and it needs rebuilding, which will cost thousands - waiting for a quote.

The outside of the house desperately needs painting and the garage door fixing or replacing - it's been broken for years and something else always gets in the way. We need a new shed as it is falling apart.

This is all just house stuff - we have 2 dc 10 and 12 with all the usual expenses.

I have friends whose parents bail them out regularly for things like new cars, and my dad paid for half of mine.

I know we have made choices - we have two cars, and the house is Victorian so it needs a lot of upkeep. And I only work 0.8 (DD is autistic and DH works very long hours). So I try not to complain too much - but I totally understand, I would love to feel more on top of life!

We are the same ,but managing on one income .
We have 4 DC ,but two have additional needs and are fully at home have paid for on line school at home .. ,will never leave home ,and can't be left alone together for more than an hour or so .
I use to have a very good job ,till I had children
I just assumed all our struggles were because I wasn't working

My friends who don't have good household incomes (above 60k) are in debt. Their landlords put their rents up each month. More friends struggle now than when our children were little. So, if you are on a good income, don't feel embarrassed by what you can no longer do. Hopefully these tough times will end soon. Or we might just be poorer for ever. Perhaps the UK is no longer a wealthy nation?

@Desecratedcoconut re uni maintenance. I think the biggest factor is the cost of the city they choose for uni, and the spread of the costs uni accomodation. Everyone will choose the cheaper ones, and you may be lucky, but you may not, so it really is luck of the draw and important to check how expensive the more expensive ones are they might get landed with.

I urged both mine away from expensive southern cities towards northern cities. Oldest one listened, studied in Leeds and managed well within maintenance loan. Younger one went his own way, chose Bristol, is similarly frugal but massive, massive difference in what is possible. Housing shortage there, and prices are high. He applied for all the cheapest uni accommodation within 2 hours of the site going live, and still ended up being offered one he hadn't chosen, which was £13K pa. Completely unmanageable for this single parent family and many others I'd imagine. Older one now in London, and rents there of course similarly extortionate.

My tip is don't even visit the open days of places which would be wholly unviable in case they fall in love with them. Similarly I've urged both mine to have gap years and work and save hard during them, which has also helped spread out the years they overlap when I'd have to pay for both.

Another one raising their hand. Husband now earns circa £70k, and I'm on a similar age although part time (it I went full time we would be paying out childcare that would eat the difference, so no point). We are worse off now by many miles than we were when our circumstances were pretty much the same but our wages were circa £45k and part time equivalent. We are drowning here.

DD has applied to our local uni as first choice, it is not prestigious university but anywhere else we would struggle to afford, she will get the minimum maintenance loan as we are earning over the threshold.

Next challenge is getting a job after her biochemistry degree, she would like to work for the nhs, ideally local hospital but how often we get to have an ideal life....

@Minikievs I think we make similar lifestyle choices 😁 I've needed a new hoover* for several months, that purchase keeps getting kicked down the road to next month's pay.

In the meantime I have bought several houseplants and seeds tho!! No regrets
Disclaimer - hoover works, just not well.

I think the biggest increase is one that our household has managed to insulate itself from, namely the HUGE increase in housing costs due to the spiraling rent/ interest rates. We've managed to avoid that by:

a) buying in 2015 in a good area and getting a good deal on a fixerupper.
b) being handy enough to be able to do most things ourselves
c) absolutely hammering the mortgage pre kids and keep on overpaying about £150 a month to keep the same constant outgoing mortgage costs so even though the minimum payments kept on going down we still payed about £600

If for some reason you didn't manage to get a house in 2015, or have the ability to pay £500 a month extra for a few years then you would be stuffed. Our minimum mortgage payment keeps on going down currently £400ish but we keep paying £600 so should hopefully have it payed off a few years early. If we were to try to buy the house now even with the large deposit we had initially we would be looking at a minimum mortgage of £1500 which would complicate budgeting significantly. I think what many people don't realise is just how much houses have increased (ours is up £150k in 10 years) and that is in the North. I know I'm super advantaged that I'm able to save about £1300 a month (£500 in easy access, £500 in stocks and £300 in longer term savings) but this is only possible after buying a while in the past and overpaying significantly ( we have a £75k overpayment reserve) to keep us insulated from the spiraling housing costs. Our interest rates could go up to 20% and it wouldn't really matter because our balance is low enough that we could just pay it with savings. I worry about our kids though,so were building a deposit for them already so they can hopefully get a house one they're ready. I do think though that our greatest financal move was to wait to save (after building an emergency fund) and overpaying on the mortgage as the inital blast has saved us so much in interest over the years.

So I think yabu - the birthday party is an annual, expected expense that should never be an emergency. £140 is a tenner a month to save. Set up a standing order and spread the (completely predictable) expenses of birthdays and Christmas over the year.

Rugby trips are a luxury. If you can't afford it, he doesn't go. Not an emergency.

Woodworm is insurance, surely?

Boiler going bang, car breaking down are emergencies - with a graduate level job I would assume some sort of financial awareness that could begin to save for some sort of contingency fund for actual emergencies.

NB - I'm stuck at £28k due to circumstances limiting earning potential and this is how I manage.