to think you cannot possibly support a family on 29K?

[AliceBlackwell]

Please please please tell me I AM being unreasonable! My DH has been offered a wonderful job which he would love to take, but the pay is only 29K. Taking the job would mean leaving London, and while I do appreciate that salaries do drop outside London, I really fear that this is just not enough money to support a family.

Back story: we do not have children yet, plan on TTC in a few months. I am self-employed; when we have a baby I will have to stop work (at least for a few months) and will have no income. We have no savings, having recently finished paying off debt (credit cards, old student loans etc.) and do not own a house. This will mean moving to a new city, renting, trying to save for a mortgage, hopefully starting a family - all on 29K!

I have namechanged to prepare for inevitable flaming. I don't mind being told I am being unreasonable/ridiculous - I hope I am! It just seems such a huge drop from what we are earning now, and believe me, it doesn't feel like we are living the high life.
Please tell me money goes much further outside London, and that it would be possible to have a comfortable life on this money. I didn't grow up in the UK, and have only been living here a couple of years, so don't really have any point of reference apart from London. I know that we haemorrhage money just opening the front door here.

Looking forward to being told IABU.

Forgot to say HA property rent would equate to potential mortgage costs in some areas.

ffs op - its more than enough - esp. for twp people.

I'm with Tyler and Fiona.

I don't see how it's possible, but then I live in London.

People talking of getting decent 3-bed flats for the £200K mark - that is a complete and utter pipe dream where I am.

Fwiw, our combined salaries are around 33k so take home is around 24k (not in London). I'd jump at the chance for my OH to earn 29k but I still don't think the op is being unreasonable in considering whether this is too much of a sacrifice.

In the current economic and political climate I think it's important to consider wages and wages alone, so these posts about surviving on x amount aren't all that helpful as they rely on tax credits etc. It's great that these things exist but I wouldn't put myself in a position of being dependent on them if it's not a necessity.

Alice

You sound just like me pre-move to the sticks (where opps to spend are much more restricted) and pre-children (where time/money is much more restricted).

I worked in the City. I must have spent a tenner a day on my coffees, pastries, pret a manger salads and all the rest of it. Yes, whatever took my passing fancy on Amazon, "one click" order, and it was mine!
I spend loads and loads of money!!!

Now, with DD (14mths), I have neither the time nor the money. I have £5 a week spending money. I take my coffee in a flask and sandwiches. There is a book I really want to buy but have to save up for it (and its only a tenner).

There was a period of feeling deprived but you quickly grow out of it. You don't need all that clobber/stuff in your life! You don't need all those coffees at £3 a pop. You'll want to save what you have and spend it on your DC!

Honestly, I wouldn't go back....

And Bristol is hardly the sticks! Lots to do there.

Alice: yeah, we sound pretty similar.

The money you're currently spending unconsciously (coffee, eating out, sale clothes, books and music) is probably the difference between your relocation working and it not working.

I love all that stuff, too, and I am still struggling to view it as expenditure in the same way I do a gas bill.

But when I had to go back to work 9 months after having DD (which felt shit) and realised that my more forward-planning friends had kept £2-3k aside to cover the last 3 months, I felt pretty ashamed of myself.

Do you have a decent accountant for your business income? There might be ways to squeeze a bit more out of that ... ?

Agree re Bristol: it's a pretty good place to live.

PS

If you are planning to have DCs, you need to think about what sort of life you want them to have and what sorts of schools you want them to go to. These things all count as well as the black and white numbers.

EG, if you are on £29k, but you are in a safe community where you can let your DC play out, where there is a nice primary school and a secondary school with a good OFSTED report, this stuff counts for a lot when you have a DC. Its difficult to think about before you actually have them, but it is possible that you will feel very different when you have a DC to provide for.

I don't want to offend the Londoners, but it is true that many couples do move out because they are not confident about the environment and the schools. We lived in Hackney pre-DC which we loved. But my god am I glad DD is not growing up there.

Of course if you are mega rich like my best mate who lives in Hampstead and sends her boys to smart prep schools, its a different story! London must be fantastic if you have plenty of cash!

Where you live in Bristol will make a big difference to your housing costs. North West Bristol (Cotham, Montpelier, Redland, Bishopston, Westbury and Clifton) are v popular but expensive. South of the river your money will go a bit further (Southville, Bedminster). If you are planning a family, just to say some state schools in North Bristol are very over-subscribed.

Great to know I am treading a well-worn path. The last few days have really had me examining what my expectations of life are, and how I will feel if they are not met. I think a large part of this may be due to my past. Let me give you a bit of background:
I grew up a privileged child in a vastly wealthy household. My parents never had to think about budgeting, so I guess I grew up with no concept of money, as silly as that sounds. I lived at home while I did two degrees back to back, worked for a while, then went backpacking around the world for several years, did some post-grad study overseas, worked for a bit, then did the antipodean thing of moving to London. Enjoyed a great lifestyle, met and married DH, great lifestyle continued - now I feel I am suddenly faced with growing up and 'settling down', whatever that may mean. It is a bit scary.

I've put a breakdown of our costs on PG7. We have an income of around £15K at the mo because we're both retraining. (And I have finished work to have a baby, of it ever appears .) We don't receive any help from the state, own our own house in a very expensive area, have a loverly lifestyle and want for nothing despite a massive pay drop. (As previously said by others though, wanting for nothing is subjective as everyone needs different things to be happy.)

When I was a SAHM we had an income of less than that and we managed. But we did get tax credits and we had a low mortgage and lived somewhere cheap and grim.

I would in all honesty struggle now to cope on 29K. Sometimes a low middle income is very hard as you get no help.

I know that about 25K is supposed to be an average wage but don't most households have two wage earners.

MrsC2010, you met the first criteria of ridiculously cheap housing. The op is talking about renting, which is going to be more than 300 quid unless they opt for a room in a shared house, AND saving for a deposit. A totally different starting position.

Alice: again, I sympathise. I didn't budget because I didn't have to (thank you, Bank of Dad) and was also very used to small-ish, every day luxuries.

You're doing far better than I did: at least you are considering it in advance!

Yes it's the housing costs which appear to be the stumbling block. I've found some nice looking places on gumtree, at about 800-1000 per month. This seems amazingly cheap (compared to London rents) but then I have to make that fit into the 29K scenario and it starts to look shakier. We will need to be centrally located, at least to begin with, as we do not have a car. In fact, DH is such a London boy that has never learned to drive! Plus, I will need to be commuting to London at least 2-3 days a week, so it makes sense to be near the station.
I fear that our 5000+ books may make finding a flat difficult. We need to find one which can fit seven floor-to-ceiling bookcases. And no, we can't do without the books as we both use them for our work. We each do a lot of researching and writing at home, on top of reading for pleasure (we don't have a TV and have no plans to in the future) so unfortunately I can't see us moving into a sharehouse!

But you can't own your own house in a very expensive area with a mortgage of £300 a month unless you have loads of cash from somewhere else. By my reckoning £300 a month would cover a mortgage of about £60 - £70k over 25 years, depending on interest rates (calculating below 5%).

You're starting from a false premise.

Whoops - that should be 'that he has never learned to drive'.

Alice

If you are going to commute to London three times a week that is a LOT of money on railfares (£200 a week?). But presumably if you are commuting, you are working, and therefore you will have more than your DPs £29k?

draftywindows that's what I always think when people point out that the average salary is £25k. Not many families live on just that, there would have to be a second, at least part time, income to make ends meet.

Bumpsadaisie: yes, I would be working up until we have a child, which we are hoping to do soon. I know the train fares will be horrible, but I have to consider it in light of my London earnings: at one of the companies I do consultancy work for at the moment I can earn £500 a day. I don't think I'll be able to do that in Bristol, at least not until I've integrated myself into my industry there. I figure it's probably better to continue doing what I know brings in the cash while I can, and worry about setting myself up in Bristol once I have a child and will need to work more locally.

Well that's good - you could save your £500 a day to fund yourself while on leave with a baby. Even if you got pregnant tomorrow, you won't actually finish work for ages.

Then after your maternity leave you could carry on doing your consultancy work say two days a week in London (which would earn you £1000 a week) and employ a nanny for your DC two days a week. You could travel into London and work to get yourself set up in Bristol at the same time.

I work three days a week - one at home, and two days out of our office in a major city 2 hrs train ride away. It's perfectly do-able. The only difference is that DH also works three days a week, so I don't have nanny fees or logistics to worry about.

Between me and DH we earn just very slightly over that, have 2 DCs, but we live and work in London, we could have the option of moving out, but unfortunatley the cost of commuting would just be too much. We are in Council housing otherwise we would struggle. However I do think 29k is doable if your ouside London.

I was merely answering the question asked! Partly to demonstrate that not all of us earning lower amounts for whatever reason are not necessarily receiving state help. My apologies.

I used to commute from Taunton to London, 9 years ago and I wouldn't get enough notive to buy advance tickets (worked for a charity, we came when we were called)- worked out more than £100 a trip even then, return.

Commuitng is V V costly indeed if over that sort of distance

£30000 is more than ourr total, all in income now and it is OK. We have fears around what would happen if it drops but right now with a bit of sense we don't really want for anything. We also buy books (I am doing an MA and Dh his under grad degree) but anything we don't need to keep is noted and ordered via library for a quid; we don't weat out any mroe anyway (disabled kids = part of teh income issue) but we still manage to get out for a coffee together, or get in food to cook soemthing nice for ourrselves. Yes OK I remember the days of buying teh clothes I want or treating myself to a decent handbag but I much prefer what I have now- my Dh and my 4 beautiful boys- than what I had then, which was a relatively good salary for where I lived, a miserable Dh who hated his job and 2 kids I never really got to care for around trips away and holding down 2 jobs.

But that's my values: you need tow ork out your own.