If you live in the south east and have a family of 4-6 (or thereabouts)

[PoodlesOfFun]

What would you say you need to live on as a family? And not be fucked financially?

Between us we're on around £75k, although DP makes most of this amount.

Two children, both primary school age, three-bed semi in furiously expensive SE city. Small mortgage as had big deposit (climbed ladder...third place we bought in seven years) and we have an OK lifestyle.

Two or three hols a year, with one or two abroad, gym, day trips etc...

BUT - I'm a charity shop queen and we shop at Aldi, Lidl and Waitrose (this last for posh odds and ends) and I simply refuse to pay retail prices for clothes. We're not v materialistic (our TV is ten years old, for example) and we could do with me doubling my earnings, but we're OK.

I think it's £ 8-10 per visit depending on your location/visits. she does lavish them with affection, and she obviously very much loves cats, but I've had other sitters who aren't as enthusiastic. Most important, it's a trustworthy person who has keys to your home while you're out of the country and you can trust them to look after pets and home security. Just have some sort of a code/key system so that should your home ever get burgled, there isn't another 20 keys next to addresses of homes that happen to be empty . And have a contingency plan for emergencies - ie someone else knows you're pet sitting and can either take over or call your clients. One woman I spoke with once was obviously doing it as a new, part time side job and as I was traveling long haul, I asked "what if - heaven forbid - you get into a car accident/there's some sort of emergency"... Didn't even occur to her to have a back up plan, so if she ended up in a hospital, the animals in her care might starve locked up as no one else would have known.

Ha! We earn 120k between is (I'm part time now) and we can't afford to buy a house. 40k is cloud cuckoo land. I used to earn 55k - take home just over 3j, rent would be at leAst 1500, take off bills etc and commuting, you'd be left with virtually nothing before nursery fees.