to be so fed up with working so hard and still having no money

[slipperandpjsmum]

I work full time 50 hours plus. I was paid on Tuesday. I have just checked my balance and I am £12.00 overdrawn, which means as I have a month to go I will be up to the max on my overdraft by the time I am paid again. I feel like all I do is work and then still can't say, well at least we can afford to have nice holidays etc. I am so fed up with being broke!!!!

If you are struggling now expatinscotland, you are fucked when the cuts actually start.

I'm getting to the stage where I'm thinking about inviting the ILS round just to create more heat or using MIL as a draught excluder

Thanks for that, ccpcpp.

Between us DH and I earn about 40k gross a year and we're managing fine on that but given what people are saying here I worry about what will happen next year after our first is born. Is it really that hard to manage on 50k? I'm not being snide, it's a genuine question.

Once I go on maternity leave our gross income will drop to 27k. I will be getting only the minimum maternity allowance (due to a complicated working situation) and once that stops in September it's unlikely that I'll go back to work until some time in 2012. When we looked into all this it seemed perfectly feasible but now I'm concerned. I know most people writing here have more than one child so that's obviously going to raise costs but I'm just worried that I'm being unrealistic to think that we can survive on just DH's salary.

To Writer: Don't know,our household income at the mo is 16k (I'm on stat mat pay and will be staying home for a while and dh is retraining) and we're ok. 1 dd (baby) and 2 dogs. We've culled one car,menu plan, etc etc. Our combined income used to be 80k before switch,but we're still comfy. Big diff for us was not taking biggest mortgage we were offered when we bought SD we wanted to be able to afford it on one salary if needs by. If we'd bought based on 80k thing would beach tighter.

To writer - why not just take 6 weeks at 90% pay and then go back full time then your income will not drop the same fashion and you each then pay half of one childcare bill.

I remember paying 12% mortgage interest with 33% basic rate tax and no tax credits or childcare help in the days Lord Young was talking about but no one likes to remember that. They just think thre was some golden much easier period, a land of milk and honey of dead easy times now gone.

Writer: No it isn't hard to manage but 'manage' is all we do. We aren't struggling to meet the costs of day to day life but there's almost nothing left once we've done that. I've come to the conclusion that the cost of living has risen so much that my idea of what level of salary gives a comfortable living is very dated.

so agre with the OP. I am over my limit already and am now having to scrabble for money.. the fees on my overdraft will then put me in the red again next month. I'm working more but it's fucking shit at the same time.

No, Xenia, don't think they do. Is just bloody hard now, so whatever it was like in the past really doesn't matter. If your income doesn't cover your outgoings (without luxuries) it is hard, whether you live now, 20.30.50. etc years ago.

Xenia I won't be getting the 6 weeks 90% pay at all, it'll be SMP right from the start. I don't want to go back to work until 2012 at the earliest as I want to stay at home with the baby. My concern is that I won't be able to do that because money will be too tight.

At the moment we seem to have far more money than we need. We've managed to save a few thousand pounds in the last year or so (despite me only working for the last 8 months) which will come in useful when I am on maternity leave. We rent so we don't have a mortgage, and ideally we'd like to save up for a deposit so we can buy sometime in the next two years. I'm just really surprised that people are struggling on what appears to me to be quite a large income. Are your mortgages very high? I don't mean to be nosy, but I would be very interested to hear what people are paying on their mortgage each month as this would give me an idea of what we can expect when we buy.

We currently pay 650 per month in rent.

Oh god! I'm sorry for you I remember that feeling of being in a financial pit and thinking you were never getting out.

Not there now thank fuck but it was terrible and it lasted for years. DH finally got a better paid job and as he was working school hours it meant I could go back to full-time work again.

Writer- smp is 90% of your weekly earnings for the first 6wks, is there some reason you don't get this? Lots of companies offer longer on 90%. Where do you work?

Writer - our mortgage is double what you could expect to get for this house in rent to give you an idea. And if the boiler blows up on Christmas day as it did in our last rental property it's you paying the £500 call out fee not the landlord.
I wouldn't be in any rush to buy the house prices aren't rising any time soon.

You have to be working for a certain length of time for them to be required to pay you the 90%. The whole thing is being sorted out at the moment, but it looks like the agency I work for (I'm a supply teacher, but I'm currently actually working a part time role through them) are going to use every loophole to get out of paying me. I will challenge it but I doubt it'll get me anywhere. If you don't qualify for the 90% you just get the standard 125 or whatever it is per week.

Yes, it doesn't matter how hard the past was people live now.

Charles Dicken's Mr Micawber summarised it best:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

As for what are mortgages it just depends what amount you borrowed. My ex husband got nearly £1m so my mortgage is over £1m but obviousyl I am delighted interest rates are so very very low at the moment compared with the last 40 years when we've had 10%, 12% etc.

Not sure if this will help anyone but the old style money saving board on money saving expert is something I find really helpful!

forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=33&order=desc

There a really nice bunch on there as well.

I never had many maternity rights and you know it was a huge advantage. I took 2 weeks annual leave adn then went back full time and 20 years + onwards I make quite a lot of money precisely because of the lack of the rights. Their absence ensures women are not pushed into sexist roles and are able to take the best bits of being both a parent and a worker, just like a man. Lucky me.

But back to Dickens - yes it's always been hard

You must have had a great birth Xenia, to be back that quickly! I see what you mean about not taking time off, but I'm not hugely invested in my career and I'd rather stay at home with the baby.

Do you nkow how hard it is at home with a baby, a toddler and a 3 year old, minding them, looking after them, feeding them? It is 100% times harder than sittingo n a train for 40 minutes reading a book and then being served at a desk all day. Obviously it depends on your work but in my view childcaer with babiesi s hard physical and terribly dull labour and having it instead for a few hours a day and work too is a much much easier option.

But yes plenty of women choose a life of poverty and being a housewife. Goodness knows why they like it but some do. Surely it's better to pick work you adore and have a nice family.

Anyway on money saving it's more fun to earn more instead but if you're into saving then one tip I have - I only drink tap water. It's cheap.

I'm a teacher so I'm usually knee-deep in kids! I do enjoy working and I may go back at a later stage, but I enjoy being with family and taking care of my home more. I've looked after kids in some form or another all my life (younger sister, 35 younger cousins) so I know how dull and difficult it can be. Money isn't a huge incentive for me and really I suppose I've spent most of my life in what other people would term poverty. Maybe that's why I don't find living on what I have a struggle. Really I'm amazed that we often have more than a thousand pounds in the bank (before bills start coming out of course).

I'm not sure how serious you're being with the tap water thing. I don't ever buy bottled water. Ever.

I suppose I was just drilling down to the fact that probably most people always can save some other money. I happen not to like hot drinks or alcohol so it's dead easy only to drink tap water (and I mean 100%. I literally don't drink anything else).

Somne people will always be over their income limit whether it's £20k a year or £100k as they fail Dickens' test. Others are good with money and some have so very little mnoey life will be a struggle for them.