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.

YABU.

DH and I both work, and our combined income is less than that. We aren't rolling in it by any stretch of the imagination, but we certainly have enough to live on/buy clothes/go on holiday/pay for the DC's activities etc.

Unless you have massive debts you can absolutely manage on that. In a few months time I will have CB and nothing else to live on. That's when you worry.

Yes you will be able to live on 29k granted you won't be shopping in whole foods but you will live

We are four 2 adults ad 2 kids and we live on just a bit less very well in London

If you cut out Boden and gap for the kids you will fine.

this is a really interesting thread - I love reading what other people earn and spend. i think the key thing here though is not income but disposable income. DH and I have lived on the breadline for many years - illness, redundancy, business going bust etc. Right now we both work and earn between us £50K. Nice. But the previous years left us with a mountain of debt, one step away from bankruptcy and now an agreed legal debt repayment plan. We have that every month - couple of hundred. We have a "low" mortgage on our flat, compared to others , - £450 pm - but 5 of us are squished into a two bedroom flat with a leaky roof and old wooden windows which we can't afford to replace. We have two car loans for second hand cars becuase we live in a rural area and DH commutes 80 miles north=east everyday and I commute 50 miles south-west everyday. They are a necessity to enable us to keep our jobs. So the debt repayment, the mortgage and the car loans, plus life insurance, gas and electricity take one entire wage. Then comes all the rest - council tax, phones, petrol - fuck, currently spending over £300 a month - car insurances, mots, repairs, then food, household etc etc. The only savings we have are £160 in the credit union, no holidays, meals out, cinema (unless orange Wednesday).
so, my point is, that it is not the earnings coming into the house that you should measure, but how much has to go out. There have been times in our lives when we have been far better off in disposable income terms than we are now, but with much less coming in.

Good grief dh and I both work and only earn about grand
more than that jointly and consider ourselves comfortable (certainly not loaded but that is different to being able to pay bills with a little left over).

But then we are part of the over paid public sector!

YABU

Most people live on far less.

Tbh, I know it's cheeky to ask but I really don't understand how anyone can get a mortgage to buy a house on that income. Am I missing something?

Not round here (Hertfordshire) if you rented an ordinary 2/3 bed house - it would cost you between £1000-£2000 a month plus £180 council tax.

That's it gone right there before you've eaten a stick of celery.

x poxting

my mum and dad raised our family on £17k a year in the midlands and they own their own house :)
were currently starting/raising our family on £22k in liverpool and ill nevr know how my mum and dad did it on £17k!!!!!

Around here you can buy a 2 bed flat for just under 60K. There are plenty around the 80-90mark so at a salary of 29K you could get on the property ladder. However almost nobody has jobs

17K how long ago though? And where in the Midlands? You really have to compare like with like, which most people are not doing.

Rents here are about 900 plus a month. But a slaray of 17k, which we are on, covers the rent. CTC and CB is what you eat with.

I earn much less than that and I live in London. DD and I manage perfectly well.

Serenitysutton - you have to buy what you need rather than what you would like. It depends on your outlook on life I guess but there are lots of things that we would like to have but if you look at it honestly, we don't need them. Downstairs cloakrooms, ensuites, spare rooms and big kitchens etc are luxuries but I don't feel deprived if I don't have them. We have one family car, a roof over our head in a reasonable area and money for days and meals out so in that sense we are lucky. But 'dream' doesn't enter the equation when house hunting!

What about council tax? Water electric, gas, tv license? Travel money (we spend £500 a month and that is to get to our jobs..) it might be possible but the op doesn't want survival, she wanted to buy a house and bring up a family. I had no idea you could buy a flat for £60k and I work in property- even the props we're desperate to be rid of up north and in the midlands go for more than that usually.

Feedthrgoat I wasn't questioning the choice of house, just how you can get one at all for less than 90k. Obv you get whatever comes at the price, there won't be any choice or downstairs bathrooms (unless of course the only bathroom is downstairs lol)

Sent you a PM serenity

You could get a three bed terrace with a lovely long garden in my neck of the woods for around 130k - and choose road carefully the schools are OK, nice sense of community, all the benefits of a city and good transport and rail links. I think a bank might give you a 120k mortgage on 30k salary if you could raise 10k even (small beans in mortgage terms although I appreciate would take some time to save up), so all possible.

Renting the same sort of place is 400-600 per month I think.

Hope that gives you some comfort - obviously no use if you're NOT looking at the Midlands!

Obviously depends where you are then as you can buy 3 bed semi's with a garden for 9oK.

I am trying to sell mine at moment (to downsize as we are not confident about job security being public sector). It is a 3 bed semi with front and rear gardens, garage and conservatory. I might be biased but area is classed as nice with catchment area for one of best secondary schools in area and it is 130 k. We could buy a 3 bed ex council house in the same catchment area for around 90k. I guess those that 'have' don't fancy yorkshire!

It depends on where you're moving to and what you're planning on renting.
The difference in rents for different houses in different areas is unreal.
I earn your husband's salary. (My monthly take home is £1600ish.)
I live with just OH in a 2 bed terrace, but we would really struggle without his much higher income. And that's all mortgage related. We (choose to) pay through the teeth for locationlocationlocation. But I have friends a few streets away renting a 3 bed with garden nice house for £600/month.
So no I couldn't support a family in this house on that salary - but I'm sure it can be done, and without too much hardship. Good luck.

ps. feedthegoat, I am a nurse (nhs) and live in Yorkshire. Don't include me in your generalisations.

We live on far far less than that. Dh earns about £1600 per month. We get tc and cb and I don't work, we have a car, contract phones, debts in order. But we live in a 2 bed terraced council house. And we wouldn't be able to fund a private rental or a mortgage. Its good for us.

So yes yabu.

To put things in perspective my OH earns £12k. So much lower pay is the norm outside London. I have to work too obviously but we manage.

I'm not making generalisations rubbersole, everyone has to make their own choices. I'm just pointing out, that in my opinion, it is possible to have a reasonable standard of living, in a nice area with good schools on that kind of money in certain areas of uk. Other posters had doubted that it was possible to buy property on that kind of money, I just disagree that is all (based on the fact that we have!). But, it is about where you are prepared to move to.