To wonder how people afford to live with these jobs

[Dreamer14]

I have worked in the private sector for nearly 20 years. In a high paying industry too. However… I’m bored. So very bored.

My Monday dread starts on Friday nights. I’ve changed company and the feeling is the same. I feel isolated because I work at home all the time. I don’t feel like I’m being the best version of myself. I’m grumpy as I’m unhappy etc.

I’ve thought for years, I’d love to go do something completely different. Each time I try… I give up because I simply can’t afford to work 37 hours (with all the childcare I’d need) for £20k.

I would love a job helping others. I look at NHS and school jobs, council jobs, charity jobs etc. but the pay simply isn’t enough. Am I doing something wrong? Have I missed something?

We would like to move in next few years but if I went to bank and said I earn 20k they wouldn’t lend me nearly enough. I don’t have a rich husband! I’m the main earner.

I'm working 37 hours a week and hate every moment. My dream situation would be slightly less hours so I can pick my kids up one day a week and something I love that involves a bit more human interaction.

This is the sort of conversation I've been having with DH, we're both PMs, a lot of the labourers who we know are being paid £10-14ph from the companies they work through.

I don't know how they manage it, and even more so I think its a crying shame that many of the people on our sites are working 7 days a week to try and keep up with costs (that 7 days isn't necessarily with us, they pick up extra shifts through other sites)

Don't we always want, what we don't have at the time.

In 2020 when I worked in an office on my own for 16k - oh how I longed for a higher salary and to work in a team.

2022 I have now achieved a well enough salary to survive, (personally I'm fearing the job has no longevity, here today, gone tomorrow) but everything has a target, you are on the clock and as for working with people, when it gets competitive, it is no fun.

I just had a bad dream toward end of last week, spoked me right out, almost feels like a premonition that the job I've got into now (recruiting more permanent staff unexpectedly, doubling a team) isn't so lasting, the three people on the team who do not have the full-scale household bills are saying oh it's ok it will be because of Christmas...

But Christmas comes but once a year and I cannot believe that the times we're in where people are going to be short of money, they are really going to keep buying so record volumes of parcels continue.

I wish I could be more positive and here's hoping I am very wrong, but I do wonder if a high salary can be indicative more of a danger risk acceptance.

Are there really that many people who need you to intervene in their lives, telling them what they have got wrong?

I think the grass is always greener….

I agree that everyone can feel sad and miserable and cry about their lives. Crying in poverty is usually harder than crying in wealth. As the previous osier said, they cried at a bus stop and in a orchestrated and crying in a orsche was better.

People forget how poverty grinds you down. Struggling to afford bills and worrying that your boiler might break can sap all the pleasure of doing a ‘worthwhile’ job gives you. A bit of boredom in a job is far less serious than poverty which takes over your full life. As others say, get more fulfilment out of the multiple other hours outside the 37 that you spend at work OP. Do some volunteering, find some decent hobbies, get out and spend time with people and be grateful for the fact your job pays you the wage that allows you not to worry.

To be honest, some of this thing about ‘happiness’ is a mindset. Some. People will be miserable and unfulfilled regardless of whether they earn big money or little and regardless of whether they have a so-called satisfying job or not. If you’ve got enough money and only have to work a basic 37 hours for it, there really is plenty of time to find joy in life. It could be that if you switched job, all the benefits you think it would have would t be there, plus you’d have far less money and find you now had two struggles and not just one.

And that little pep talk is to me too. I often moan about not liking my fairly well paid job. I think I need to listen to myself and recognise I am fortunate in huge amounts of ways and actually it is perfectly within my power to use the rest of my time better than I do now to bring more fulfilment to my life. Haha! I’ve just said something that has spoken to myself oerhaos more than anyone. Lightbulb moment.

I know what you mean. I took VR from a well paid job 10 years ago, and pondered on a total career change. Looked in to ambulance work - just couldn't make the salary work.

I now work for myself, working from home, and yes, it's boring and quite lonely, but I earn very well, and I just cannot afford to take a job elsewhere which would pay so much less.

I'd just stick with what you're doing. I know WFH can be boring, but you'd soon get fed up with the restrictions imposed by being in an office/shop for 37 hours pw.

People on really high universal credits must have childcare or high rent included, I get no where near as much and I get a higher premium due to having a child with a disability. My rent is only £400 a month though and I don't have any cc costs

OP couldn’t walk into a clinical band 7 but she’d be a strong candidate for a non-clinical role like project/change/service manager.

It’s awful, given how poorly a lot of clinical staff are paid, but salaries for non-clinical skills can be pretty decent in the NHS.

It depends on how many children you have, how old they are, etc. Our rent isn't mega high but we have 3 children and two have SN, so our amount is higher. Also, people who don't work very much have a benefit cap in many cases, so they don't get as much as they would otherwise be entitled to.

The jobs you seek are exactly the ones people are dropping like flies from both mentally and physically op.what they have to do compared to the pay is rediculous and not substainable for sooooo many families.
so now op you’ve got to control your controlsbles.what can you do with your mindset.what can you do with your hours.what can you do with your spare time.
what can you add to your days that can bring you joy now.yes you can’t change your job.but what can you change.
I think volunteering is such a fab idea.
man’s I’m going to use the phrase but self care,make sure the free time you do get is spent being kind to yourself and doing the things that fill your soul.whatever that might be.
could you make a mini goal.maybe get on that plane next year for a holiday or plan to go somewhere in the uk you’ve always anted to go.could you sell anything to make that happen?
what about taking some weekend trips.
totting up some experiences.pottery.hiking.picnics.just filling up the good life list instead of it being what you feel you’ve missed out on.

It doesn't have to be either/or OP. Surely you can find a private sector job that you don't hate, that pays you enough to live and gives you a bit more flexibility with your hours?

It's all about time. I started as a a teacher on 20 thousand. Now 22 years later I earn 50 thousand. You have to put the time into these jobs. You won't walk in on a high salary.

Single parents who have a mortgage used to get a proportion of interest paid, but none of the capital.
People who rented and got housing benefit were far better off, as the homeowners often had a shortfall on their mortgage payments until they could earn more money when child/ren were older.

You work from home

I know people who would love to swap their existing job for WFH

Zero commute, Zero cost
Zero spend on work related clothes
Zero spend on office collections, charity days
Zero interruptions from colleagues
You can complete odd jobs at home, whilst working

Can you be more social during your non working time ?

The grass is not always greener

@Totalityloss you’re hilarious.

£25K ish is the starting salary for a nurse role. In London they’ll get a high cost area supplement, depending on where in London the Trust they work for is, this ranges from 20% (inner) to 5% (fringe) of base salary with a maximum pay of about £6K a year (otherwise someone on a higher wage getting 20% extra would be laughing)

same for the most junior of therapists (psychological well-being practitioners), speech and language therapists, social workers, and so on.
Some junior doctors are on £35K. Unless a doctor is a consultant, they really don’t earn much at all, defo less than the OP.

This for an ICU nurse (so not newly qualified):
beta.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9379-22-9726

Third sector jobs are the lowest paid

I can confirm that some third sector employees are paid over average for their skills. Healthwatch for example, basically burn through their funding with higher than average salaries. And then beg the government for more money

They paid my colleagues and I £10k over the regional average for my role!

I started on £12k 22 years ago and over took you 20 years ago, The proportion of your life that you have to dedicate to this nonsense to achieve anywhere near a livable salary it’s just disproportionate. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that you are far more qualified and your expertise have developed over that period, you certainly haven’t been rewarded accordingly though.

@spookyjupy

I think a factor is probably kids going to uni saying they want to be a teacher or a social worker they see £20-24k starting salary and think "woah ill be rich!",

I work in a secondary school and almost never hear students saying they want to do these jobs. They all want to do law, medicine, finance, engineering. Jobs they know will be higher paid than public sector ones.

Yes, but it won't be comfy when my benefits stop. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't last forever.

UC is more generous when you work.

The point is, UC doesn't last forever. If I'm still only on £21k in 4 years time, when DC turns 18 and the UC stops, I'll be much worse off than you. You're in a better position for that reason.

Following with interest.

Have you been back to an office post Covid? They are not what they used to be, many have implemented hot desking with part time WFH, so you get all the noise of an office, without the cameraderie of deskmates.

The envious and those that decide benefits are too generous always miss the fact that it’s a small number who qualify for the higher benefit payments, and also that most of them will only get them if their kids are disabled or for a pretty short time.

The envious who have 2 adult workers in their families, forget that having 2 adults gives you more flexibility to earn more and to do childcare which single parent families lack. Plus they forget, that in the longer term, the single parent will lose most of their UC and won’t be as well off as the couple. But people like to just look at the short term and ignore the nuances and decide the system is against them as hard working people.

Nurses earn 27k. So don't lump them in with the 'how do you live on £20k' question! After four years in the same post they're on over £30k. If you want to earn well in the NHS then yeah, you're going to need a profession. And if training is out of reach for you then it's difficult.

People make it work. House sharing, relying on spouse who earns more, family support, living very frugally. Benefits top ups. It's hard to drop down to a lower wage if you're used to higher as your standard of living will be such that it costs more to maintain, but if you'd never had those extra things then you wouldn't know how it felt to have them if that makes sense. Someone living on £20k is unlikely to even consider running two cars or going abroad every single years or whatever.

I don’t know a single professional (and I include myself in this) who hasn’t uttered the phrase “fuck this stress, I want to go and stack shelves in Tesco”.

But they don’t, because they like the lifestyle that the professional job brings them and generally live their lives in such a way that they couldn’t accommodate a big pay cut even if they wanted to. Big mortgages, car payments etc.