To wonder how ppl do it...afford it all?

[wishywashyy]

How do ppl (I mean the average joe!) afford everything? I know, I know situations are different BUT in general
Mortgage
Car payments (usually 2!)
Childcare
Savings
And general living

It doesn't add up
Mortgage/council tax on average would be what? 700-800?
Car payments x2 600?
Childcare (let's just say one lot) approx 1000
That's 1400 alone at least!
Saving? I suppose that's depending
General living? Another 800-1k
So That's 2k
Then there's other bills which would be 500ish
That's 2.5k in total

That's a take home of about 40k! Gone! And no savings!

I'm baffled and freaked out at the thoughts!!!

We live very comfortably on a household income of approx £58k with a mortgage of £900pm and council tax of £250pm.
I work part time 3 days a week and husband works full time
We both drive second hand cars that are 10 years old bought outright 4 years ago. We barely spend anything on them bar new tyres and services. Our car insurance and road tax are dirt cheap.
We have 4 children with our youngest in nursery but the 30 hours now covers that
We go abroad every year and manage to save about £6k ish a year on top of that
We eat really well and spend loads on food and the kids go to clubs etc outside of school and we spend a lot on Xmas and birthdays
I think we are comfortable because we have never paid out monthly on newer cars and we just don't buy a load of crap constantly. We buy clothes when we need to and I don't spend a fortune on hair and beauty. I just have my hair cut probably 4 times a year and I find that skincare etc lasts for ages
I have friends and family who have assumed we are on much higher incomes (most of my friends and family have higher household incomes) as they can't afford holidays etc but then they drive much newer cars and spend much more on things like coffees and lunches every time they go out. They also tend to take on expensive hobbies quite regularly and buy all of the gear straight away which costs thousands.
I have a friend who has been paying family membership at a very expensive health club for about 2 years now and she just goes there to have a coffee. It costs over £150pm in fees!
We have also never really upped our spending habits when our salaries have increased. We have been paying childcare for the best part of 11 years now with 2 children in nursery at the same time at one point but the price wasn't astronomical as it was only ever 3 days a week. Things were tight at that point but now we don't pay anything at all and we save the £500 a month we were paying
My husband is starting a new job soon and he will be earning approx £500 a month more than he is now and the extra will just go into savings

Newest car I ever had was 8 years old.

I work nightshifts only so no need for childcare now (we swap places with DH) but there was a time it was taking a big chunk of money.

Economise.

Whatever can be 2nd hand, no take aways, meals out or coffees.

Yellow sticker food when available,big chest freezer and batch cooking.

Shopping around when possible

You literally haven’t added your own list up correctly, but I think you’ve also underestimated the cost of living in many areas, particularly mortgage. So I think it’s considerably higher.

I don't really understand the question? People live to their means. If they could t afford the outgoings you list then they wouldnt have them.

I don't have a car and I have no where near £1000 to spend on whatever

@Jmaho

We live very comfortably on a household income of approx £58k...

Do you mean net or gross?

We live comfortably on a household income net of £3000 a month.

I'm a single parent. Just added up mine and take home £2800.00/month in total. This is a mixture of my salary, Tax credits, child allowance, PIP for DS1 and maintenance from XH.

I live very comfortably on that, admittedly no holidays even before covid. However XH who has now remarried - who has the same monthly income plus his DW income - struggles.

He has ALOT of debt (he racked it up when we split) which I'd imagine is £££ in repayments each month, where l have none. They also rent which is twice my mortgage payment.

I do feel guilty that currently I'm not struggling and they are

DH works full time and I work part time, we work around each other so no childcare costs.

My car was bought outright, DH's was on a loan (not finance, bank loan was lower interest rate) but is paid off now. Both cars are over 10 years old, we have no problem with that though as it means we can both have a car.

We bought a house before we had kids (saved while living at home), it was a cheap doer upper that we spent all our time and money on doing up and made enough money to buy our forever home in a lovely area. Our dream home then went up in value really quickly after we bought it. Mortgage is just under £500 per month.

I think to other people we seem to "have it all" but we have always been very careful with money, thought through every financial decision, avoided debt as much as possible and had quite a bit of luck tbh. We aren't well off but our outgoings are low. We go without lots of things we want to have other things because we want/need them more.

Generally I think that people who "have it all" are either in mountains of debt, make good financial decisions and have had good luck or earn a good wage.

[quote SofiaMichelle]@Jmaho

We live very comfortably on a household income of approx £58k...

Do you mean net or gross?[/quote]
Gross. Husband earns £40k I earn £18k but did forget to add child benefit for 4 children on top of this
I know my husbands salary is above average or mean salary but we are early 40's so he has years of experience and it is actually very low compared to what a lot of our friends and family are earning.
I know it sounds a ridiculous thing to say as like I said we are very comfortable, but our friends and family all have household incomes of nearing £100k and more

I struggle. I worked this out the other day.

I have a take home income of 2150. My fixed outgoings (mortgage, council tax, bills, etc etc) is 1450.

That leaves £700 -a month for everything else. I have a teen at home and I'm a single parent. So although £700 seems ok it goes so quickly.

Food, toiletries (teen girl!) clothes (teen girl!) etc.

On an average month I can manage. As soon as there is a school trip or something else that costs is an an extra cost im screwed.

"Having it all" is only possible of you have an income that supports it. You don't. Therefore you can't "have it all". You have to prioritise, and go without what you can't afford..

Two cars, car loans, clubs, activities.

It makes little sense to spend 12 K on childcare Plus 3500 on car loan Plus car maintenance insurance petrol to get to work. You're not earning 20 K; you're bringing home about 60 quid a week.

If one person stayed home they could save more than that on your food bills.

We'll because most households have either two parents being home a wage or no childcare costs because the parent at hime is providing that.

Very hard for single working parents and there probably isn't enough support but that's always been the case.

Different set ups really.

I think if you have the advantage of being able to live cheaply to save up when you are young that definitely helps.
Living near family who willingly provide childcare is another advantage. Probably having children after establishing a career would make sense too.
If you don't need a new car, buying second hand and outright saves a fortune in monthly costs, but the trade off may be less reliability, more unexpected bills.

It's all very personal circumstances really.

That’s £40k jointly
So £20k each

If it’s not joint then mortgage probably unaffordable at level your quoting

Eve if single- child maintenance should be covering some of childcare and kids living expenses

When we had our kids young I quit work as we couldn't afford childcare and went interest only on the mortgage and ran one car.

Now we have 2 full time incomes, no childcare costs but a £1500 a month mortgage and 2 car payments at £500 a month.

Household outgoings, including £230 a month council tax is around £1100.

We earn maybe £96k between us. It's not a lavish lifestyle, we still have to watch what we spend but its comfortable for us.

@2bazookas

"Having it all" is only possible of you have an income that supports it. You don't. Therefore you can't "have it all". You have to prioritise, and go without what you can't afford..

Two cars, car loans, clubs, activities.

It makes little sense to spend 12 K on childcare Plus 3500 on car loan Plus car maintenance insurance petrol to get to work. You're not earning 20 K; you're bringing home about 60 quid a week.

If one person stayed home they could save more than that on your food bills.

That's too simplistic though. Childcare is only that high for a couple of years, and it may be more beneficial to keep working, especially if you're likely to find it difficult to come back to a job at the same level. Of course "keeping working" might be part time as this will also reduce childcare. I don't understand how having one person at home would save £60 a week on food bills, unless the family are unnecessarily overspending on food, which they could stop doing regardless of who was working!

It is called living within your means.

You need to write down everything you spend and find out where you are leaking money, all the little bits add up quickly and then make choices. Maybe try a spreadsheet.

The middle class idyll is not had by all.

Simple as that.

A very VERY large number of people have none of it.

I am one who has none of it.

Renting a cheap little flat.

No holidays, ever. Not even a day out to a museum etc.

No transport, reliant on expensive buses.
Min £2.50 per bus fare although savings are available with an £11.00 weekly bus pass so long as one stays extremely local, as within about a four mile radius. Cannot even afford to run a push bike because of the never ending cost of puncture repairs.

If we had a baby, wouldn't be able to afford childcare at all. Well, we can't afford a baby full stop, it would end up with a nothing filled shit life apart from love. We can't even afford to keep a cat as a receptor of our spare love FFS.

The notion of spending £800-£1,000 per month on general living, is quite frankly, fucking laughable.

Having £500 to spend on utilities is the same.
It's called being cold and not talking to anyone using a phone. Limited to bbc news (only headlines and synopsis mostly), Mumsnet and similar web sites using an blocking everything but the content browser and one or two YouTube videos here and there on low res. No downloading nothing, no streaming nothing, nothing data intensive at all.

No eating out, ever.

No take away food, ever.

No booze, ever.

Pretending you're not ill with anything new, when you could really use a doctor.

No TV.

We're not on the dole (touch wood and whistle) by the way. DH works full time but I am too sick to work these days. Might possibly be better off if we were.

There are plenty of shitty elements but it's no use thinking what other people have. You just have to get on with what you've got.

I am still very grateful for what we have.

I am fortunately very good with my hands and have a good learning ability so can do a lot to make/do things cheaply. Cooking, baking, sewing, knitting and DIY amongst others.

I didn't work so no childcare, walking miles or on a bus. OH had the car old banger but cash bought. Took a calculator to the shops to help budget knew exactly how much money I had for food each week. Family allowance saved for shoes etc

Median full time earnings are 30 grand give or take - which works out to 24 thousand net. So for a couple both working full time that’s a take home income of 48 thousand. If one of them is SAHP or working part time then childcare costs will reduce accordingly.

Obviously half the full time working population will earn less than this, but it’s a clear demonstration that yes, lots of normal couples could easily manage annual outgoings of 40 thousand.

An awful lot of people appear to “have it all” because they use a lot of credit. I always used to wonder how people had so much and then I worked in insolvency for a while and discovered how much many people rely on credit.

You’d probably also be surprised to learn that many people get a car on lease/finance because they don’t have liquidity in their finances so can’t buy outright - it often is a sign that their finances aren’t in great shape rather than that they have lots of spare cash to splash.

To an extent it is all an illusion for many people!

Mortgage/council tax on average would be what? 700-800?
Our mortgage is £300 and our council tax is £125

Car payments x 2 600?
No car payments but if we did, they would definitely not be £600 per car!

Childcare (let's just say one lot) approx 1000
Older kids now but I worked part-time and used family (ok, we were very lucky here)

General living? Another 800-1k
We have £1800 to spend each month after mortgage, bills & savings have been transferred. I get this is a lot to some people but we spend a lot on going out as we have very little outgoings (small house, older cars, etc.)

Then there's other bills which would be 500ish
Our bills after the mortgage are £575

@NicknamesAreLikeKleenex lots of people do not work full-time or have two part-time jobs.
I do not know any couples where both earn that much, even if they both work full-time.

On the back of one of these threads - they pop up regularly - I downloaded the Emma app that uses open banking to track spending. Broad brush but free and easy to set up.

Agree with others, there are so many hidden factors. I never used to understand how my co-worker afforded to smoke. That was her priority over holidays, pets, cars etc.

Buy a cheaper (wreck of a) house with potential to extend in a area with good schools. Less stamp duty and improve it when and if you are able. As long as it's liveable you can wait.