Anyone else feeling stretched with current cost of living?

[Cantgoonwontgoon]

I apologise in advance if this is overly moany as I know others have it much worse. But we can hardly keep up with cost of living these days. I grew up in poverty and DH comes from a working class family. We both chose careers we thought were stable and would help lift us up (nurse and teacher.)We have modest salaries and modest needs but I'm feeling so stretched these days. Every month just feels like a countdown to the next pay cheque. I've been saving bits every month in anticipation of the holidays (both DC, 3 and 6, have birthdays in November, plus Christmas!) but it just feels like I never have any breathing room. Not that we're especailly consumption oriented, have mostly free days out, etc. But still I'd always imagined if I trained for my degree I could give them a better life than I had. These days it feels like we're just a hair's breadth away from slipping into poverty.

Can anyone relate? I am sure others are sufering, how will we all manage? If cost increases keep up I fear I'll be on the breadline after winter.

It is hard isn’t it op. I think everyone is feeling the pinch and it’s hard with little ones too. It feels relentless and it’s sad that those with good jobs or careers are finding it so difficult to make ends meet.
I hope things look up soon.

Nurse and teacher are stable careers @Cantgoonwontgoon society always needs you - and whilst you might feel stretched you will both have a monthly pay packet and contributions towards steady pensions (I know this feels years away but their is stability in this).

Income helps.

I hope once the economy stabilises a little with some growth that public frontline workers get the deserved pay increases to bring wages closer to where they should be considering the decade or so of inflation.

Has H teacher looked into marking exams or tutoring?

Yes it’s ridiculous. Just nothing left at end of month.

We both work and are the same -
some months it’s really tight the summer has been very expensive for us.
onwards and upwards as they say.

I feel like it’s been like this for many years now.
I’m not feeling anything has changed recently, groceries have fluctuated a bit but remained high, heating oil is more expensive now because of President Fart though.

I feel you OP. Our household income is beyond what I could ever have imagined growing up, but I still have to think whether or not I can say yes to my children, which I hate. It didn’t used to be like this a year or so ago. A single ice cream in a cone from the ice cream van is now £3.50!!! Quick family meal out at a chain place, easily £80-£100. And I know how good we have it compared to others. It all feels so demoralising and hopeless at the minute!

@Buttons0522 exactly that.

Presumably you are only feeling like this because you have childcare for one child ( the 3 year old). It will be easier once both are in school.

As a nurse and teacher your income must be around 80k. You are not a hair breadth from poverty. That is comfortable.

I have a similar income to you but my H has gone from a well paying job to one just above minimum wage. We have no choice but to run two cars. That is hard. We can meet monthly expenses with some leisure money but when big one off expenses hit we are in trouble. I am dreading the reevaluation of council tax. We have a rundown house in a good school catchment. There is no doubt our CT will increase.

Life now is stupidly expensive due to housing costs mostly and utility costs secondly. Both of these high costs are due to successive choices by government ( thanks ard Milliband for consciously increasing our energy costs). But once nursery fees are over, you will be much more comfortable than most. You don’t even need to pay a private pension with your jobs. Or pay holiday club.

Same here. Nurse in fairly senior position. I have a lot of commuting costs and two teenagers which cost a fortune. Not their fault but they grow quickly, have hobbies and my son eats like there is no tomorrow (does a lot of sport). My daughter just needed a laptop to start 6th form, driving lessons are looming. There is absolutely nothing left to save, we never eat out or get takeaway any more. Managed a weekend away this summer which was great.

I am looking at university years very soon and can barely sleep some nights worrying about how on earth I can support them with that. My salary looks good on paper but there is literally nothing left every month. I don't buy 'stuff' unless absolutely necessary. We all get things off vinted where possible and sell on there too.

Scary but I know how lucky I am to have them. They are my world and I would do anything for them so just keep going and know that somehow we will all be ok. And I know this is trite, but we all have a great relationship and they ask for very little really. They know the situation and we are all pretty happy overall if that makes sense.

Yes it's ridiculous. I remember when my gas & electric bill was £300 a YEAR it was only fourteen years ago. Food would cost us a maximum of £200 a month now i spend £200 a week. A tank of £30 petrol would last me 6 weeks now it lasts 2 weeks. It's depressing.

@willowstar yes, that’s exactly it! Mine are young so unaware of our money worries but we are all quite close and enjoy our time together. In a sense it makes it easier as we’re happy with a picnic or a day out in a museum but I worry about any big costs and how we will support them in the future (I reckon we can’t, so that will be v disappointing for them, and for me.) I somehow thought at this point we’d have a bit more security and breathing room but every year it just feels more the opposite.

Food is just getting worse. Asdas own cod battered fillets are 7.00 now.

Yes, a few years ago I did one shop each month online for £100 with top ups of fresh food each week, now I’m lucky if I can keep to £100 /week. (DC are also older and eat more but it’s still shocking.) I go to different shops, buy own brands, etc but it is my biggest outgoing (after mortgage) and I have absolutely no control over it.

Also packets have gotten smaller and quality seems to be decreasing as well. It’s quite depressing TBH.

On the food front there are fewer small food manufacturers so larger conglomerates can profiteer. Most things ultimately are made by a few companies who can even then off shore their tax liabilities.

Most utility companies are foreign owned now and have to satisfy their share holders as well as allow for the green tax.

Taxes are the highest they have ever been.

We are a high income family.

We don’t go out weekly and have friends to the house. We are mainly vegetarian so our food bill is reduced. We love on lentils, beans, ancient grains, eggs, yoghurt a bit of cheese and lots of veg/ fruit. That works out cheaper than buying made things. We mostly cook from scratch to stay away from value added manufacturing costs. Luckily we have underfloor heating throughout most of our downstairs so run our house at a lower temperature and our windows are new. I am thinking of investing in solar as well. We don’t spend a huge amount on clothes and I get things in the sales. We have few hobbies the main one is that we love lengthy walks with a picnic. I don’t really drink alcohol anymore and DH drinks non alcoholic beer. We only run one car and I often catch a bus.

I have never known life this expensive. DH is a higher tax payer and proportionately paying the highest tax he has ever paid. Tax free saving levels have not gone up. Taxes are interest are higher. The UK higher earners are paying far more than on the continent without the equivalent state pension so it’s a poor deal.

Basically there is something fundamentally wrong in the economy and the workers having to support too many people but what can be done. We have an aging population. We have inward migration into low paid jobs which don’t cover that persons and their family costs. The days of really really cheap imports are gone. There is wage inflation world wide. Large companies control prolong ams off shore profits to avoid tax. Billionaires can’t be taxed just the upper income making tax payers. Middle income and below are not net providers but net takers. You have to earn above £50,000 to be a net provider.

We no longer have huge oil revenues. We have unrealistic high expectations of life eg meals out, new clothes - these things would not have been realistic for a teacher and a nurse in the 1950s only in the prosperous 1980s.

We’re well paid and we have a decent amount of savings stashed away as a cushion but we are really feeling the cost of living now. Everything is so expensive. We don’t really eat out anymore as a family, and I’ve got a lot more conscious about packing picnics for the days out ect…

We spend huge amounts of money on the food shop now as we’ve three kids who are all very sporty and eat like horses. We also spend a lot on their extra curricular activities.

We actually just sat down last night to work out a proper budget together for the next 6 months, because it’s been such an expensive summer and we need to reign in our spending.

I think everyone is feeling the pinch.

I think that we have to accept that the era of the 1980 and 1990 have gone.

Why were those eras good.

Lower migration it was before the large boom in people ( most are not net contributors ie earning above 50,000)
Oil revenues
Before we had the costs of all the various Middle East wars.
Lower bureaucracy so lower costs
Fewer consolidation of companies into these large offshore conglomerates
More onshore British companies that remitted taxes to the UK - think of how much revenue leaches abroad
Fewer people remitting monies earned abroad to various countries
Fewer billionaires who pay proportionately little tax as they gain wealth that is never realised eg they refinance to release funds
Everything once British is now foreign owned
High cost of servicing public sector pensions. Private sector earn slightly more but they are actually paid miserably when lack of decent pensions are taken into account. The cost of financial advice is 1% of all pension holdings and £100,000 of pension pays out an average of £5,000 per annum so a £30,000 pension costs 600,000. As for self employed they live better before retirement but have dismal prospects on retiring hence many don’t.

Labour and Conservative Gov squandered oil revenues when they shoud have invested that money.

We have had pointless wars we still are paying hugely for the Ukraine. We are for alll intents and purposes currently at war.

So that is why life is not that great and it’s percolating quite high up the food chain.

As an example

There are many lawyers with poor wages - they start off as paralegals for several years on not much more than minimum wages and eventually have their SQE funded to progress and qualify but are pushing late 20s with very little pension. Out of London lawyers are earning 50,000 to 70,000 with little pension ( 5 % contribution from employers) Forget the few highest firms where you have to be extremely lucky to get in as well as have a perfect CV!

Accountant trainees with eg first class degrees even start on about 30,000 and it goes up really slowly over 3 or 4 years and that is in top firms. Once qualified they earn the princely 55,000 ( about 60,000 in London) despite having done 15 post degree exams and not having much free time

Juxtapose that with earning in the US where starting salaries for those professions are 4x as much and it shows we are really poor comparatively here.

The biggest factor also is that we have a mushroom shaped aging population from the population boom of the 1950 and 1960 hence the need to import people but it’s a false policy as that will in turn fuel the need to import more when they age like some giant Ponzi scheme.

Sadly we have to become poorer to recalibrate or increase productivity in this country but we can’t seem to do that .

Even with AI, wealth will be concentrated in fewer people so the rest of the normal population will get poorer. In the future, there will be no middle clsss. There will be extraordinary wealthy in large compounds snd the rest poor.
People will react and have fewer kids ( except some religious minorities) and the population of the World will dramatically reduce / start halving each generation as people will no longer be needed by the very wealthy anymore.

Once they are three you have so many funded hours i personally found it wasn’t that different. I was waiting for that moment of relief, but once you add school holidays clubs, activities, swimming lessons etc (admittedly OP won’t have that due to one partner being a teacher, but most families do)

Thank you for the replies, honestly it helps to know that even higher income families are feeling the pinch. It's really quite distressing, I spend so much time loading my bank app and staring at my current account wondering how the money goes so quickly. We don't eat out, no takeaways, no coffee, and nearly everything is second hand. We have been vegetarian since our student days, don't smoke, DH has a beer in the weekend and I hate to deprive him of that. No expensive hobbies, no gym memberships. There's really nowhere to trim down any further. It's really just the bare essentials these days and I'm literally couting down until the next pay cheque by the middle of the month. I do save a bit each month for an emergency fund (our boiler is likely due for replacement soon) so I know we're better off than others but...I thought it was bad a couple of years ago and I'm just shocked at how much worse it's gotten. It feels extremely unsustainable, for all the reasons you've mentioned, @Noras .

If you want to stop all this

Don’t buy from Amazon
Dont go to a high street chain shop if foreign owned
Look at what you buy eg cheddar made by a US or Irish company masquerading as British made, crisps masqurading as British when the company is actually American, cleaning products from a once British company now American owned. TV programmes once made in the UK now if made in the UK for a US company so profits remit to them.
Energy provided by foreign owned companies.

We are basically leaching any wealth abroad. So the future is really really bleak.

And I do feel fortunate that we have AI-resistant careers and are both stable. I know we have it much better and easier than some. We have no credit cards, no overdrafts, no debts (besides a mortgage with a not-great interest rate, which is perhaps part of the problem.) We have worked hard and continue to work hard. But before the pandemic it felt like we had some breathing room and now it's just claustrophobic.

The cost of clubs and activists for kids and teens is out of control. We have had to pull back a bit on them but as ours reach secondary age this feels like it will become one of the biggest costs (hopefully swimming lessons will have stopped by then!)

i totally share this feeling - we were relatively well off pre pandemic, now my DH earns a lot more than he did and I earn similar despite working PT post second child and although we aren’t struggling like some we are not making enough savings. We are older parents and I worry dreadfully about retirement costs. We don’t have enough saved (private sector workers with poor schemes).

and both our careers could be obliterated by AI (although I think some of the doom in our sector is over played tbh)

Tax the wealthy would be great but it’s impossible as they will just avoid it by setting up shop elsewhere.

In the old days people could afford things like private schools for their kids on well paid professional salaries. Now they can’t even easily afford a house without parent support.

I think that part of the issue is that everything has become more expensive and killed productivity. Even Government is crazy expensive with eg endless enquiries costing millions and endless special advisers. Once upon a time someone could open a business on a wing and a prayer and create a profitable thing. Those days are long gone. Any business is struggling with costs eg fuel costs, rents, insurance costs ( also from oversea companies in the main ) business property taxes, higher wages, more administration.

Large overseas businesses will govern us. The large invisible conglomerate/ companies now have more sway / influence than governments.

Everything is also governed by the bond markets.

Influence is centralised into the hand of fewer and fewer people ( many not even in the UK) so our votes are pretty worthless.Frankly whoever is in charge of Gov makes little difference and it’s just rearranging the deck chairs.

So sadly everything is going one way.