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.

Grr. 'of' the £1000...

Just had another thought that might (or might not!) be helpful. Could you try living on the 29k now and see how it feels? You might need to allow yourself a bit more to cover your London rent, but in any case you could try living on significantly less than you are at the moment. Then, not only would you get a bit of an idea how it would work, but you'd also have the bonus that all your extra income could go into an account to save up for your mortgage.

One other tip (sorry if I'm teaching grandmother to suck eggs here). If you want to save, make sure you set up a standing order into a savings account, and time it so that the money goes out as soon as your salary's been paid in. That way you don't 'miss' the money nearly as much. If you wait until the end of the month to see how much is left over, you'll probably find you've somehow spent it all...

"But, by cutting out ALL FOOD, you should be able to save up for a deposit in a few years' time."

Well, if you're not prepared to make the sacrifices should you even be buying a house?

Rent, Council Tax and utilities (gas, electric, water not phone) equate to about 16k pre tax earnings for us, so we too could live on 16k a year if we learned to live on fresh air, I suspect we're just not trying hard enough

My mortgage is £330pcm for a bigish 2 bed flat in a trendy part of town. So even though our income's low (£18k+benefits) we have a lot of disposable income.
If we rented this flat it would cost £550-600pcm. When we were looking at 3 bed houses to buy it would have cost £1200pcm.

It doesn't seem fair that the amount people pay for thier accommodation is so variable depending on renting/mortgage or when it was bought.

Last year we survived on £22k joint income and our working tax (child element) was really bumped up compared to when were earning more. So now easy to survive, but no abroad hols etc, posh days out etc. Actually had great time, went camping blablabla. Does make you realise whats important when you have a pay cut.

YABU - we manage on a hell of a lot less, i could only dream om 29k.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/10510360 you might find this interesting reading

Never follow a man. Always have your own career. Always out earn him. Then all will be well. Relying on men for money is the root of all evil.

Why would you follow his career and not yours? don't you earn very much? If not why not. That's what is to be cured, not his income. You are a separate person. Also you will have fewer future opportunities out of London and your children fewer life chances probably so you could be damaging all kinds of aspect of life and I don't think you want toleave London anyway.

Of course you don't have to agree to go.

We don't get any help, but then we wouldn't as we don't have a family yet and wouldn't claim anything as we don't need it. Our reduced salary is only for a year.

We bought our place for just under £200K last year, unfortunately we are in a very pricey area. However we had a lot of equity from previous properties (mainly DHs, I still own mine and it is rented out) as the husband had bought and renovated a few places including our previous home. The mortgage is in his name only as we just transferred it from the previous property and is on a very good deal due to his history with Halifax and hefty LTV ratio. We did some legal thing when we moved in meaning the house is mine as well even if the mortgage isn't in my name.

Xenia, there is a whole world outside London, which some of us consider to be a real sh**hole.

It's a good job we don't all live on "planet Xenia"!

"you will have fewer future opportunities out of London and your children fewer life chances probably so you could be damaging all kinds of aspect of life"
HA ha ha ha ha ha. How hilarious.

Meanwhile, back in the real world - 29k is fine for supporting a family, here in the Midlands in any case, and you won't be out of the earning loop for long.

If mortgages had stayed how they were years ago, with only the main earner's income x 3 counted, house prices would never have gone mental and most people would be able to afford to buy a home.

I was thinking the same about London, who knows how I managed to become a succesful adult without living there eh?! But I guess it does depend on what line of work you are in, there are some that really don't kick off outside of the capital. I wouldn't live there if you paid me however.

I thought it was crap, MrsMC. Sorry, but I did. I'd rather go back to Houston and live in my mother's house than there, and that is saying mouch. At least there, you don't get ripped off at every turn the way you do in London.

I used to work there 3 days a week, and that was enough. I was always pleased to get back on my train! Maybe I was/am too 'provincial' for it!

I found it filthy, too.

You see the thing is I do love London. I adore my life and constantly feel like I must be dreaming to have the life I have. But I know it has to move on to the next phase: we are both in our 30s, the biological clock is ticking away and I feel an almost physical desire to be a mother. Not owning a house has never bothered me up to this point. As I wrote earlier, none of my London friends own a flat as first-buyer mortgages are practically impossible in inner London. Let's say we could get a mortgage at three times our combined income: that would be about 300K. That will not stretch far enough to buy a 'family' type home anywhere near where we are. Also, where do we get the 25% deposit from? Even if we had been saving assiduously for the past couple of years, I don't think we could have put away 60-70K.

What I am trying to say is that I recognise that this life has to end, and we are seriously considering all our options. This Bristol job is a wonderful opportunity for many reasons. I am a natural explorer, and I love the idea of getting to know a new area. I've been to Bristol and found many things which are important to me: a thriving arts scene, an organic food culture, beautiful countryside, easy travel to London, quite an intellectual feel.
I've spent the weekend on Gumtree, Nestoria etc., and it looks like we can rent a nice flat in a central location for £800-1000 per month, which is less than half of what we pay now. Assuming it will be possible for me to continue to work several days a week in London, we would have considerably more disposable income. The trick will be to learn not to dispose of it!

Xenia: thank you for your post! I have to say I do agree with your base sentiment, although I may not state it so stridently. Trust me, I am not 'following' my husband. I currently outearn him by a good 30K or so (maybe even more - I am not sure exactly what my income is as it chops and changes all the time). I imagine I will continue to outearn him due to the nature of what each of us does. This is fine, but it is a little inconvenient that men cannot carry a pregnancy, give birth or breastfeed. I have always wanted to be a very hands-on mum, and exclusive breastfeeding is very important to me, so this will necessitate taking a few months, if not a year, off work. We don't have any family to help out with childcare. These are things we need to consider, and looking at some numbers, I think we might do better financially in Bristol than London while we are dependent on only one income.

So, we are leaning more and more towards taking the job and going - gulp! The decision is not made yet, and we still have much talking to do, as well as research. For example, I need to explore some terms I have come across on this thread. I do not know what tax credits or child tax credits are, so I need to do some research. You must remember that I did not grow up here, so this terminology is all new to me. Also, I just assumed that as I am not employed by anyone, I would not be eligible for maternity pay. (I come from a country with no paid maternity leave). I do need to find out if I have any recourse to state funds as I am not a British (or even EU) citizen.

ElusiveMoose: thanks for the thoughtful tips. Your post actually made me think a bit about numbers. It would be an interesting exercise to try to live on 29K now in London - but impossible. Our rent alone would be 24K, without factoring in any bills! That is a bit insane, really. Time to go, I feel.

It has been fascinating hearing from you all. Thanks everyone for your honesty, and your YABUs.

I too am in a position where I earn a lot more than my OH. Not a problem until you come to think about pregnancy and maternity leave etc. If our salaries were reversed it would be easy to think of having couple years at home/part time but as it is it's impossible. I do sometimes wish we had a more traditional set up! OH has no desire to be a stay at home Dad and would be fairly isolated as he doesn't drive (epilepsy) and we have very poor public transport and not much in walking distance. I'd love to stay at home but the figures don't add up.

I am currently pregnant, so money planning is on my mind as well. I live just outside London but not so far outside that it's considered a cheap place to live. That said, ANYWHERE outside London is cheaper than living in London. Ridiculous, but the difference is huge. With that in mind, yes YABU, but I do understand how scary it can be to take a drop in income. I earn much less than your DH and I am about to become a single parent (though my baby's father is very involved and earns about £23k). It's doable to raise a family on my wage alone here. It would be tight, but it's nowhere near impossible.

If you're TTC in a few months time, adding on pregnancy time, you're looking at becoming a mum in perhaps a year from now at the earliest, which gives you a year to save like crazy to give yourselves a buffer. Depending on where in the country you are heading to and what your outgoings are, you could amass a decent amount in that time.

Sorry, only just noticed your Bristol post and your own income. I understand the fear, but on that kind of money in that location, you really are going to be perfectly fine. It's scary to change, but you've got very little practical (financial) worries with this.

And FWIW, I only know my best friend because when she was 11, her parents moved out of Central London as they were vehemently AGAINST raising children in the city. It's not all it's cracked up to be when you've reproduced!

Actually until DH was made redundant we did very well on £30k: it depends where you are, we're in Wales

Rent (long story, we did own) for gorgeous cottage £600 pcm; meal out £50[; we liked camping anyway so 7 trips away a year- pretty great life

oh and we're only 20 miles from bristol btw

Anyone can tell you are N. American, I'm guessing American, but lengthy posts and emphasis on planning and research. It's not hard.

I'm American myself by birth, but never fit in because I've never been one to count my chickens before they hatch and have pretty much not planned anything, but taken things as they come. I was always far too lazy to make a good American.

Anyhow, with regards to tax credits and child tax credits. I honestly would not factor these into any budgetary considerations you are making because, although the current government plans to cut them off entirely for people earning £50K or more, it's assumed they will lower this threshold. A lot. Soon.

A person with indefinite leave to remain in the UK may claim Child Benefit on behalf of their EU/British child, but if not then the British parent may claim it on behalf of his/her British child. The amount has been frozen by the government.

There will be no grants available to people on your income, either. There used to be a Health in Pregnancy grant for people who were over 5 months along, but it will end in January.

So base everything on your income as it stands now and go from there.

Oh and BTW the real teick to making a Bristol job pay?

Do what we did (DH worked there): rent over the bridge! Lovely part of MOnmouthshire or area (say, Usk, Caerleon old village, Ragan etc) cheaper to live in, great schools mainly and Dh used to have no more than 30 minute commute, fab!

Mortgage advisors and banks have good detail of what the "average" person spends etc. When we did our latest spending review for our mortgage, the advisor said that our outgoings were spot on the average for a family of our size, living in our area (how dull!!) But it could help alot.

Also, it is useful to think about the consequences of moving and the ups and downsides and also factoring in the short term and medium term impact of having a child will have. You might be able to make changes in the short term to your financial situation while you are not working or you may be able to pay for some home help and / or business assistance while you carry on your business after a short break rather than stopping completely which could have a significant impact on your business in the medium term.

Good luck, thinking of all the options will make the change alot easier when the time comes.

Expatinscotland: nice guess but a long way off - I am antipodean

Thanks for the advice though, gratefully received.