Gone from ‘Well Off’ to ‘Completely Skint’? Please tell me about it!

[BenignKipper]

I have had it verrrrrry easy and I knew it. Good professional monthly salary, able to throw stuff in my trolley at M&S Simply Food and not worry about what it would come to, nice wardrobe from Toast and Zadig etc. Are you running a marathon for a good cause? Great, of course I will sponsor you £30 etc etc.

But my circumstances have seriously changed. Salary the same but divorce means I am looking at £10-15 a day disposable income after bills and travel. I’ve pared everything back in my budget and I can survive (obviously).

But I know it will be a shock to my system, emotionally/socially - it seems scary. Has anyone done this? Do you have any tips to navigate it?

The benefits of being out of a bad marriage are priceless. It will be well worth it!

Exactly

Being single is more expensive because things don’t cost twice as much for a couple. Most of the utilities are about the same whether there’s two of you or one of you. Rent/mortgage is the same, two of you can split holidays and days out.

If the car breaks or the washing machine dies you can go 50/50 with a partner.

Being single comes with a big financial penalty unfortunately, that said I’d rather be single and poorer that in a crap relationship.

I think lots of good ideas have already been suggested - I hope you can ignore the unhelpful responses.
Here are my budgeting suggestions, sorry for any repetitions or extreme ideas!
If you have a landline and mobile, ditch the landline
Review all your contracts to see if you can get cheaper ones: electricity, gas, internet, mobile phone - check comparison sites like uswitch
If you were on unmetered water, now there’s just two of you, it will be cheaper to get a water meter
If you can, put money by for yearly expenses as paying monthly for things like house or car insurance is more expensive
And try and put a little extra by each month on top of this (at the beginning of the month) even if just a few pounds as you will have unexpected expenses that won’t be payable out of your monthly income … even if it seems impossible
You can usually get cheaper car insurance by changing providers, renewing with your current provider tends to be more expensive - unless you ask them to match a quote from another provider. Get the quotes about four weeks before renewal date as you will get a better rate (according to Martin Lewis on the money saving expert website)
If you have a very expensive car, it might be worth selling it and getting a more budget car - cheaper to run and it could free up some cash for an emergency pot
Keep the thermostat lower when you have the central heating on and as others have suggested get an electric blanket (perhaps for Christmas) and use this sometimes instead of having the heating on when it’s just you at home
For exercise, Yoga with Adrienne is a great YouTube channel and so is Lucy Wyndham-Reed
Keep an eye out for banks offering incentives to switch - moneysaving-expert site always notes these, you might want to subscribe to their newsletter
If you’re on a mortgage perhaps you could see if you can get your term extended so monthly payments are reduced
Don’t pay anybody to do things that you can do yourself.
Now for the really frugal stuff …
I cut my own hair but you might not want to go that far!! If you did there are loads of YouTube videos with instructions
To keep bills down, if you make a lot of hot drinks, just boil the water you need or keep the excess in a flask. Also if you have a gas hob, it’s cheaper to boil water on that than to use an electric kettle.

Also to keep bills down, do full loads in the washing machine and use an economy wash with lower temperatures. Try and avoid using an electric dryer, I use a small dehumidifier instead but you may not have one so
if drying clothes indoors on an airer keep a window cracked open to avoid condensation.
Good luck with your new lifestyle and enjoy your freedom!

Hard disagree with this, I really like her recipes and she’s helped me out a lot with budgeting and making a meal with no money.

I would go through my wardrobe & sell anything that I don't want/wear or fits. It sounds like you have a lot of high end labels which would fetch a decent resale price. I'd do the same for household items and save the money in a separate account. This will be your financial buffer if you get hit by any unexpected bill like a boiler breakdown.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/

High five, my money just seems ro disappear in a puff of smoke. So absolutely sick of spending the last week of the month with approx 17p to my name.

A lot of posters haven’t realised that OP has included food in her “fun money”, which she describes as everything after the direct debits are paid. Food is an essential, not part of fun money. This would make a difference to comments.

She has said that her son is away half the week. I may be mistaken, but If he is with his father, doesn’t this mean that the Ex doesn’t have to pay maintenance?

@BenignKipper maybe if you clear up these points, there would be fewer of the less than helpful comments.

You do realise the "leftover" £400/month money has to cover her and her son's groceries (and clothes) too?! How much do you spend on groceries a month???

I went through something similar when I took early retirement. I worked a long notice and took the opportunity to review current and future Financial situation.

i would recommend going through your bank statements to review outgoings and subscriptions. Do you need for example Spotify/audible/sky? I got rid of several of these and saved more than £40 a month without much effort or pain. Shop around for cheaper utilities, fix electric/ gas rates as they are predicted to go up in the winter. Anything you can do to make outgoings consistent will help with budgeting. If you use one of the comparison sites you can get free cinema tickets.

i stopped buying ‘stuff’ which was, after a month or two, very liberating. That ‘stuff’ piles up and ends up in the charity shop some time later, we don’t need most of it!

can you sell some of your unneeded clothes, Vinted is good and while it’s a faff it will give you a little guilt free fun money, if not then a car boot sale is also good. I had to empty the loft for repairs and found so much stuff I’d forgotten about. Managed to make £90 at a car boot. Not life changing but good for the fun budget.

instead of gym walk the local area with your son after dinner, great opportunity to talk meaningfully without tv/screens getting in the way.

you have got this, I know it’s hard but you will find in time it gets easier.

Roughly £100 a week to feed yourself and son and anything else that crops up that isn't a regular bill. I've lived on less before OP, but 2025 is the year food has cost the most I've ever known it, so I expect 100 now feels like 75 did in 2022.

My new current daily is £20, has a lot more breathing room but I would still give this advice.

• Things like slow cooker pasta sauce for dinner twice in a row will save you so much money. Fill the cooker with veggies, tinned tomato etc and have with cheapest pasta you can get. Add lentils etc to bulk it up. This can also taste amazing! Stews, soups, curries, sauces for pasta/rice are a godsend and I always eat the same meal two days in a row.

• Try to have at least two 'no spend' days per week. This actually gets easier and easier the more you do it. To do this effectively you need to really choose a realistic food budget for the week - probably £70 would be reasonable. Then your £30 weekly is for anything else. That's £6 a day (ISH). Every day you don't spend anything move £6 into a daily saver account. See what's in the daily saver at the end of the week. Transfer £10 of it into a proper ISA (the type you get interest on but allows perhaps 3 withdrawals a year or something). Leave the rest in your daily saver. This way you have a small pot of cash (daily saver) to dip into for the emergency new school shoes etc and are building real savings with interest too.

• Be totally honest with your friends. You will see real friends regardless. My favourite hang out is a long walk with a coffee. The takeaway coffee fits your daily budget and can be factored in weekly - or take a flask if you can't justify it that week. Similarly, cinema ticket can fit your daily budget too, but skip the dinner. Lots of us also just watch a film at home with friends - the rental cost of a brand new film from Amazon etc split between friends can be as little as £2. For older films it would be more like £1 between a small group.

You also haven't mentioned if your son is with you full time now? If so, at 16 and in full time education your ex should be paying maintenance. Be sure to pursue this through CSA. If this is joint custody then this DOES NOT mean he has him half the time but you pay for all his clothes, travel, uniform, school trips etc regardless. These items should be halved between you. If the agreement is anything less than 50/50 he still has to pay you maintenance, just less. Please look into this, he has to pay until he's 18 or finished full time education.

That will be very tight if including food. That said, I manage to eat quite cheaply now. Only have one DD at home (boys are older and have moved out) and she eats the same food weekly which she cooks herself. So pasta, cream, chicken etc. For your son i’m sure you can make a few cheap meals for you both and maybe make a little extra for lunches.

For myself for work I cook a pot of harrisa chicken and spinach pasta which does me for lunch every day at work. I buy one pre made salad and add a bit of cucumber and that does me all week too. Most evenings i’ll just have some french fries as i’m trying to stick to 1100 calories a day so helps me save money too. I am saving to buy a house next year when I can finally relocate back north where I can afford a house (currently in the South East) and need to get a 15yr mortgage as i’m already 48.

Good luck. Small price to pay it seems for your happiness. Hopefully it won’t be like this forever.

Had this as well post separation. It's scary isn't it?

I had to stop looking at it as an awful calamity and try to see it as a blib in my life rather than a permanent position. I was spending agonising minutes wondering if I should spend a few pounds for a cup of coffee so I could sit in a cafe. I was also becoming a bit of an arse talking about money to everyone. It was miserable and unnecessary.

The real difference for me was cutting out unnecessary purchases, making clothes last longer and meal planning. I found offers online and I borrowed items (like a carpet cleaner, drills etc) rather than buying them. I changed jobs and am looking to move home to a cheaper area. The bigger things count more than stressing about the cost of a hot drink.

This sounds nice and I’m sorry to be a bore but be very careful you don’t get horribly ill from wild swimming!! I know someone who was really into it until she caught dysentery and cholera and spent a month in hospital very very sick.

@BenignKipper late to the party but it’s the annual or irregular things that can trip you up especially direct debits. Examples for me: boiler service, pet insurance, pet chip, ring doorbell, Prime, water (6 monthly), breakdown cover, car service .. plus loads more. Include things like an annual haircut.

did an audit as best I could after getting stung by one and worked out average that I needed to put away monthly after cancelling any not necessary

i use pots in my banking to manage everything else so I put it all in the right pot (food, petrol, “things for me”) and it has a round up function that rounds up purchase prices and puts it to one side, which will pay for stocking fillers this year.

For me (and for many) it's housing costs. If you were splitting rent/ mortgage and all your bills, inevitably you are now going to pay the full amount if you are living alone. That is a huge cost. If you are in the same job you were before, you may not have the means to pay it.

Also please don't get into any debt, whatever you do

I agree, that is the worst trap.

While you are doing all this, I'd personally also in the medium term prioritise getting a better paid job or additional job/career plan/additional training/retraining and making sure you will have enough pension when you retire.

Did you not think about the severe reduction in spending money before you divorced?

I switched to aldi for food. Found most of it was fine. Removed meat from a few meals a week. A big pot of homemade soup was cheap, tasty, healthy and covered a few meals. A treat, instead of eating out could be an M&S meal once a week. Bulk buy toilet roll - the big £11 one lasts weeks. Cut but on cleaning chemicals. In winter turning off heating when not home or only keeping radiators on downstairs if wfh downstairs in the daytime. Lots of walks/free outdoor activities. Using the library more - even sitting doing a puzzle to get out of house in winter whilst not spending a fortune at the shops. Have one subscription movie package (instead of 3/4). You can do it. Think of what "i can have" instead of thinking about what you cant have. Finding a good tea/coffee to have from home instead of overpriced takeaway is a win. I like redbush teabags with the caramel milk from Tesco. A wee treat that costs pennies. Try not to overthink Christmas- so much crap is given/received. Treat your son and give him £50 to buy for you. I did that for my kids last year and was lovely to see what they picked for me- a lovely hamper of thoughtful goodies. (I go to other supermarkets for the things I cant get in Aldi, like coconut milk or for the things we dont like from aldi like cereal and most veg. You will be amazed at the savings). Enjoy this new chapter. You got this.

Helpful comment.
many do stay in abusive, unhappy marriages (not that op has said hers was) because they simply can’t afford it. It’s another knock on affect to the housing crisis.
sounds like the op did her sums, knows she’s got it, she just needs tips on the transition.

@BenignKipper

A bit similar in that I’ve given up
my career to the very minimum to care for my child with disabilities.

I’ve always liked Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need - thinking if I have the basics covered (food, shelter, warmth, safety) I can be happy. I like camping trips because they are some of my happiest times, and show how little I really need/how much is a social/class construct of what is needed.
I did private school for a year as a Mum, and found an enormous amount of social pressure to have certain things -e.g in a discussion about labelling school clothing, one Mum stated ‘don’t you have “a girl” to sew those in”. I think it could be a social jump as well, but I think you will find your truest friends if you need to explain that you simply can’t afford certain trips/parties.

No gym membership. Tennis in local park is good, agree with open swimming, jogging in nature, hill climbs.

I shop daily for food with an occasional bigger shop. That way I find I waste a lot less, buy discounted ‘use by date’ food. Controversial, but certain days I fast but I am actually a healthier weight as a result.
And the biggest bonus is that I am happy. I can support my child and I think my child is doing really well. That is my priority. My home looks more like a student house with naff carpets, 70’s decor, I need a new sofa. But it’s clean and dedicated to my child’s needs. If people are ‘snobby’ about it when they visit, then they are not ‘my tribe’ and I don’t care. My tribe come round to see me, not my naff carpet - and they can stay!
Focus on : excess money does not equal happiness. Your new life and escape from an unhappy situation WILL equal happiness.

Not trying to be nosy but have you got a fair financial settlement Op?
You have gone from £250 plus clothing to pennies
Was the property fairly split?
Equity etc

one other tip. I’ve got two Aldi’s and three lidls near(ish) me! They are not all equal. One is like shopping in Waitrose, all civilised, great fruit and veg. The other is like hunger games! So try a few if your locals A bit iffy. Mornings are also better than evenings