To not understand how other people manage whilst renting?

[mrscostello000]

We have rented for years, never could save enough whilst renting for any form of deposit.
Have had to move 9 times in the 11 years of renting due to rent going up / landlord selling / re letting to friends and family which is hard enough but how do people afford this crazy private rent??
In Surrey where we are, we are paying £1150 for a 2 bedroomed house ( 2 children so share a room and will be for foreseeable future which is not ideal as 1 boy / 1 girl and eldest is approaching 5 )
My husband earns £2300 a month so too much to claim anything and I'm a stay at home parent caring for my baby and pre schooler. How do people do it when bills / food takes up a good £800 a month which leaves us about with £400 a month for everything including petrol for the pre school run 2 miles each way 5 times a week so a good £200 a month goes in the car to get us around and we are then left with hardly anything.
Is everyone in the same boat or am I missing something?

Private rents are ridiculous, often more than a mortgage so you have my sympathies there. However I also think you could manage the walk to school, even if it's just one way or a few days a week. You also must be using the car a lot more than just the school run to spend that amount on petrol. Have you shopped around for the best deal on car insurance? It does seem very high even considering the incident.

Do you go to the supermarkets at the end of the evening when they reduce a lot of the food? We keep our food bills very low by doing this and storing it in a chest freezer from free cycle.
Have you considered an evening or weekend job that could work around your husbands hours? Bar work, early morning cleaning, cashier work? It may not be something you want to do but needs must.
£100 to see family once a month is madness as well. Get them to visit you, use skpe, phone, anything has to be cheaper than that. It's simply a luxury you can't afford.
Above all, do you need to be living in the southeast? I know it's a common argument and not all agree but people do have to move to where they can afford even if it does mean leaving friends, family etc behind. If you or your husband has any transferable skills then you should be looking at other places to live. You could be living in a 5 bed roomed detached house for that same rent where I am.

£100 a month is seeing both sets of family ( 2 trips to mum in London 1 trip to hubby's family by the seaside and 1 trip to my brother in Kent )
These are being reduced now as we can't keep them up.
Feminine,
Thank you. I don't regret my decision. It wasn't a hard one to make to be honest, it's just a shame that on a good salary we can't afford to buy when in reality out mortgage would be less than the crazy rent!
I did say a few pages back I've looked for all kinds of work but other than evening work I couldn't promise weekends as he's on call and usually that means he gets called! we can't leave as he's on a 5 year contract and for now at least we have a long let so that seems too risky.

Is the really nota cheaper rent?

I'm very pretty surprised by the rent, we pay not much more than that for a 3 bed house in surrey/london, yes it's more, but there's an extra bedroom, it's also within comfortable walking distance to lots of schools, train stations, shops etc. such that we do not need to have a car at all (and even if we didn't choose to have one for the getting to places for work etc. occasionally there's the car club handy. Getting to Wimbledon would be a bus fare. The total cost of living here would be less than for the OP even if they didn't get rid of the car just stopped using it.

Paying 1150 a month without any amenities within walking distance and rural enough that there are only fast roads to walk/cycle on or fields might make sense if you want to live rurally, but I don't see anything in the OP to suggest they do.

It's not a fundamental thing about renting that has led to the position they're in, but bad financial decisions, the people who can save while doing that simply don't make them.

Feminine - I admit to being a huge advocator of women continuing to work (financial independence being main reason) after having kids but everyone is different (states the bleeding obvious!).

In your case, with lots of international travel, I might well have made the same decision. Some jobs are just not conducive. I am lucky in that I have a 'big career' but I don't have to travel and my commute is 10 minutes so I have been able to take the children to school when younger and be home by 6pm.

Do you definitely not qualify for child tax credit?

That is actually a reasonable rent for a 2 bed even in the Surrey town where I lived - one of the cheapest ones in Surrey!!!

I don't think I made bad financial decisions my mum had to downsize whilst I was at college to afford to live so I flat shared before getting my own flat.
My husbands parents moved to the seaside when he was 19 so he did the same to stay near work.
No we don't love rural living, but we didn't want the children squeezed into massive classes like London have either so shen he lost the last contract we decided to move out of London, not for financial reasons but for the children to have a better shot.
This is one of the more expensive houses we've had however it's through a letting agency which does tend to bump them up but after 2 landlords who we found privately deciding they wanted to sell a few month in to our contracts and then gave us notice at the 6 month break clause mark ( I now get the agent to remove that or we don't sign ) it just wasn't worth the risk again for slightly cheaper rent.

thstsucks
Yes, it was the choice l had to make at the time.
My. Mum, (who took care of our eldest at the time) suddenly decided she didn't want to do it anymore. Obviously it was her prerogative, unfortunately it was done in a manipulate way.
We had always paid her, above anything she'd normally receive.
Mum claimed she'd do it, when she felt like it, and for no pay
It was a control thing as l needed overnight care, and my husband worked shifts then.
Anyway.... We are in a bit of a pickle now as l am 43, three kids and a very empty CV.
So, l agree with you about keeping going with at least something part time. :)
It is difficult, most families have a lot of juggling to do.

How much would the car insurance be if you take it out as the main driver and add him as the additional driver?

Or can you drive him on the odd days he has to work rurally? I know it is a pain to have to take him and pick him up again, but if only you were on the insurance that would save loads.

That's something I didn't think about actually as if he had a job rurally on a day the kids had to get to school I don't know how we would manage that but something to consider as that would indeed save a lot

I hope you are ringing school admissions to clarify transport and add catholic school

Morning,
Well after a lengthy conversation with admissions they have agreed to change my first choice to the catholic school as even though we are not religious and the chance of getting it are very slim, it is much closer and walkable.
The second choice school is in fact 1.9 miles the way the crow flies although I'm disputing this as on the website it says 2 miles or over on the walking route which surely can't be across fields anyway

It's walking route they use to calculate distance.

Good and then when you get allocated second choice you should get transport.
Follow everything up by email esp highlighting the previous poor advice

Straight line measurements should only be used for applications not school transport. The posters on the education boards are very good though and know better than me.

big place, Surrey - but I can see decent 3 bed places for under £1000 a month.

rents are more than mortgage in some places at the moment. MN has no memory, but a few years ago it was the other way round. I rented a decent 5-bed place (have to say decent because most on here will assume it was a slum, as all landlords are by definition evil) for what you are paying.

ps and that was a very pleasant part of Surrey.

the only thing I can see is to look at your phone costs. there might be a way to do it cheaper but that depends on your use and whether you have a land line which could be just as expensive.

can you switch utilities? ( I am not sure if it is possible as the previous owners agents tried to switch on us after we had bought it!)

can you walk one way to preschool?

cheaper nappies? cut back on meat eat more veggie?

drop the soft play and walk to the park. mine only go to soft play for parties or birthdays. drop the cinema, and trains to things. just do free things or a rare treat.

you may have to consider looking for work somewhere cheaper to live... which is a bit shit if family are in london..

I think it is all about compromise. you get to live in a house with a garden, and do quite a bit of extras... in return for renting and not having security. I get to have the security (sort of, ex still owns half the flat) but live in a crappy flat, with only a shared garden and do not do many of the extras. I am lucky though as my mum pays for dd's music lessons which is a big luxury.

staying at home/working with young children is a choice that often requires compromise. (sometimes there is not a lot if choice)

I could be totally wrong, but using a google search it says income of £2300 a month is £35k a year. When you run your figures through entitledto website it says that you would be eligble for housing benefit of £69.31 a week! based on a 2 bed and due to your childrens ages you would only be entitled to a 2 bed house in local authority housing anyway. Why not apply? the worst they can say is no and you'd be no worse off, but potentially over £300 a month better off.

We rent, we pay £1050 for a 3 bed semi in Berkshire. This is also at least £200 a month cheaper than other houses in the area. I gave up my job in the NHS to retrain as an accountant and have been lucky enough to find a flexible job that fits around the schools and holidays. I am office based 9-3 which gives me enough time o drive to work and then drive back to school and I am then 'working from home' answering emails and calls until 6.30pm. I can also work from home if the dc are off school sick or during school holidays. It isn't my ideal job but I can't fault it for flexibility now. My dc are older at 17, 13 and 8.

A mortgage here would be significantly higher than the rent we pay and the deposit would be huge. We did own our own property but was tiny and at the time we didn't earn enough for a bigger mortgage so have taken the cash and ran, which is now invested and hopefully enough to buy a retirement property when the time comes, but will be a long way from the south east.

Soon To Be Six when applied for places at schools in Surrey within the last few years distance for that is as the crow flies not walking route - it even tells you with map they use and what point of the school it is.

Random yes applying for a school place is as the crow flies. Free transport is calculated as safest walking distance.

Yes indeed, I had misunderstood your post

mrscostello000 did you look at if you are eligible for housing benefit. It may not solve all of your issues, but at least might give you an extra bit of cash each month.

Also could your H look at additional agency work or more lucrative contracts? I know a scaffolder and he earns a lot more money in central London than your H.