UK cost of living is beyond miserable

[bookworm8500]

I'm just so sick of it and to read that council tax may be increasing where I live by 20% has sent me over the edge. I don't know where the government think people like us will keep getting extra money from.

It's pay day today (NHS). My pay covers our mortgage without much left over, so on 1st Feb my salary is gone. Both my husband and I have good jobs, but salaries have never gone up like other things have. Food, energy, mortgage, council tax, bills.

It honestly feels like we just work in order to pay for a house we are hardly in because our mortgage went up so much.

I find it all utterly miserable without a way out.

I don't need advice on how to make our money stretch further. We have a modest 3 bed semi, we both work full time, not alot of debt but everything has gone up to the point that it's utterly miserable. I know we are in a better position than many too

I remember being excited for pay day about 15 years ago, when my salary actually covered everything nicely and I had money left.

Anyone else find it relentless?

@QuimCarrey put it like this, our friends who are just 60 and 46 have bought an extended 70s style semi in decent nick in a reasonably nice bit of north east for £212,000 I believe, whereas we live in Bath and it would have been around £500k and even if you bought similar somewhere close like Trowbridge which is much cheaper than Bath - around £390k . That's a big big difference on mortgage and disposable income. I think people would be shocked at how many are paying mortgages or rents of £1800 plus in many areas- and whilst people always say 'move' - it isn't always simple as that- elderly parents and caring duties , jobs that are quite location or sector specific children's relationships with divorced parents etc -

my job involves taking disabled dc to and from school in a taxi, I was gobsmacked to find out what it costs the council each week to do this~ for the cost of me and the taxi driver it is £600 per week alone for 1 child, plus the fee that the taxi company charges on top and they have tons of taxi’s doing this. I can only imagine the cost of SEN transport to my local council.

What I find worrying is this is going to be the new normal for everyone now..there will be no going back to cheaper prices.That has been and gone, lost forever.

Plus all the new rules and regulations

@2dogsandabudgie
I'm a similar age to you, and I could not disagree more. 30 years ago the cost of houses relative to income was incomparable to now. The young people starting out in my profession are massively worse off in real terms than I was.

It's not just moving costs, it's stamp duty and estate agent fees and removal costs and VAT and solicitors fees and on and on it goes
If you move into a rental you need a deposit or a few months up front and a guarantor , it's all just neverending and so expensive to do.

"As for old bangers plenty of people buy used cars"

Count how many 10yo + cars you see today.

That used to be the norm.

Now most people drive 2-4 yo cars on PCP.

Yes, I feel I simply exist as a profit opportunity for everyone else at the moment.

This is exactly what it feels like isn’t it!

Don't forget to thank all the Brexit voters. It has contributed to higher prices in the UK due to increased trade barriers, customs checks, and supply chain disruptions.
We said this would happen and they called us scaremongers.
In the meantime, inflation in the EU, although high, it stays under much more sustainable levels.
We are the laughing stock of the world.

I've just come back from Spain to the uk - to my uk eyes, food, fuel and energy bills are incredibly cheap

@Zoflorabore yes- and as the other poster said , SEN and elderly social care is taking 50% of the budgets in many cases. We have to start making provision for this in my view totally separate to council funding - probkem us we need service providers to have capped charges and increases too otherwise if they think insurance is paying for it they will charge what the hell they can get away with - see USA for details!!

Same with my council, adult social care is the majority of spending close to 50%. I guess in those councils where there are millions pound houses they don't have similiar costs, wealthy ppl pay for their own care so the funding they need for other things isn't as much hence lower council tax.

I know my council tax would be lower if half wasn't going on social care.

THIS!!!

Cars seem to stop working at about the 13-14 year point these days. Which is great! For the car companies!

@Spectre8 it might not be lower but they certainly would have more to spend on necessary things that are being neglected and affect everyone , not just a section of their demographic - be it parks and road maintenance, police assistants, pavements, leisure facilities,

As it is they are totally strapped in most areas predominantly due to social care issues. With more women working longer and unable-'/unwilling to become carers ( and we all know it tends to fall to women) and people living longer but often with chronic care needs - this is vastly stretching local budgets over and above what local budgets were intended for.

Yes, we've essentially said that we're going to have social care instead of local government in a lot of places.

Admittedly I’m in mallorca which is probably worse than the mainland but I’m looking at my Aldi bill from this morning and the cheapest thing by far on it is alcohol! €170 for 2 people doesn’t seem cheap to me. Fish and meat are very pricey as is olive oil, and don’t get me started on pet food…

eek, I’ve just noticed €11 for 12 cans of Coke Zero!

Energy prices aren’t as bad as the UK but tradespeople etc are exorbitant. I bumped into a holidaying Brit outside a supermarket the other day muttering in horror over the price of food.

it’s quite normal to get a €300 speeding ticket for going one kilometre over the speeding limit too.

@whirlyhead

We went to Malaga in the spring and couldn't believe how cheap it was compared to home . We went for coffee and a toasted cheese sandwich and it was £2. Here you'd pay no less than £10 in the south . Bus rides were pennies . We did a supermarket shop of the basics and it was a fiver . IMO far cheaper than here .

The trouble with Sen is that we’ve got to where we are over the last 15 years of cuts and there’s no quick fix as for existing children we are where we are. My local council pay a mainstream school £8k a year for a child with the very highest level of need where it states in their ehcp they need support hours of 32.5 hours a week. School can’t provide a full time ta for £8k a year so a lot of schools resist taking on children with ehcps or where they have them the full level of required support isn’t provided, what happens then is that the child’s needs escalate as they are not properly supported and the school can no longer meet need. So instead of children going to school locally we end up with lots of children who’ve had failed placements being transported all over the county at great expense to independent specialists who charge £80k to £100k per child for fees in addition to the transport costs. Our council spent millions on outside consultants who came to the conclusion that there were kids in specialist thst could be educated in mainstream, which I don’t disagree with if they are supported properly, but instead of funding local schools to support properly they are saving money by naming mainstream for virtually all sen children and cutting ehcps and hours funding so mainstream schools get even less money for Sen.

I know of a child with an EHCP, he’s been out of school since September as the council are refusing to pay for a special school, the minimum is £67,000 a year and he could actually walk to that one. The road is completely blocked with taxis every morning and evening so you can add the £600 per week taxi cost for nearly every child there.

The parents are in the process of suing the council to force them to pay for a special school, the system isn’t working for anyone and between that children’s services and adult social care the cost is bringing councils to the brink of bankruptcy. These services should have remained in the public sector and the rise in council tax which is where we are all feeling it with the COL crisis is related to massive care costs.

And the thing is that’s not even uncommon I know of loads of sen children without school places as mainstream won’t take them and the la take their time with sorting forcing parents to go to tribunal yet got kids without sen or sen kids in school parents get fined if they take kids out of school!!

my son is in one of the few special schools that is still local authority operated in our area. The funding from the la is around £20k per child, independent schools for a similar type of child to my son are in excess of £100k and they aren’t providing anymore to the actual children than my son gets in his school, so much money has been and still is being creamed off as profits in this sector

the minimum is £67,000 a year

I'm not passing any value judgements here but that is a huge amount per year for one child, then that would be times however many children have managed to get a funded place, plus the transport costs. So not surprising that councils are going bankrupt or raising council tax by unreasonable rates - ours is going up by around 15% and we are really going to feel the pinch.

I don't know what the solution is for local authority funded SEN school places, it's clearly not sustainable without extra funding from central government but that seems unlikely to happen, so more and more children like the child you know will spend a significant time out of the education system. I know by law the local authority are supposed to pay for the school places, but if the money isn't there it isn't there. Sadly for the children involved, most council tax payers would rather that £67k or however much funds municipal services instead of an individual.

But they are cutting it in the wrong places. I said upthread in my area the la only pay a mainstream school £8k extra a year if a child needs full time support and the school is expected to fund the rest. That’s why mainstreams don’t want to to take kids with ehcps and even if they do they don’t provide the correct support detailed in the ehcp as they can’t afford it and so children decline over time and end up in a position where the only school place they can get is miles away and costs tens of thousands a year plus transport.

Sorry I think I am missing what you are saying - where should they be cutting instead?