I earn £60k and I can’t keep my family warm

[Theyarellthesame]

Exactly that and I’m so, so frightened.

im 31 and I’ve done everything ‘right’ - went to uni, got myself a job and in 8 years increased my wage from £16k to £60k. We waited 13 years to have a baby until we’d saved up £20k so I could afford maternity leave, had £6k-ish left over after mat leave.

I live rurally in one of the cheapest areas in the country in a 4 bed Victorian semi, it’s not grand in any way. Lovely, but a basic 4 bed, 3 storey family home. When we moved in I had the loft insulated but we can’t have a smart meter because of something to do with where the meter is located.

My DH is a SAHP so no childcare costs for my 18 month old and he’d only be able to earn minimum wage so his take home pay per hour would be less than the cost of childcare, hence why he’s a SAHP.

Yesterday I got an email from bulb putting my direct debit up again from £290
to £470. It was £120 2 years ago. On top of everything else going up I just categorically cannot afford to pay that. There isn’t enough money by £149 a month to cover the bills for the household.

I think my options are to cancel paying in to my pension to free up that money or stop paying my student loan? Can you do student loan holidays?

mortgage is on a 5 year fix with 2 years left at 1.99% so that’s as low as it can go, we don’t have Netflix, sky or Prime anymore, we just have a TV license. We do have a Spotify subscription. Both our phones are on £20 a month contracts, we don’t have any debt other than student loans and the mortgage. We do have a dog and his pet insurance is £60 a month but it’s none- negotiable that we keep that going.

We batch cook using the instant pot to avoid putting the oven on, we do use the washing machine a lot because we use reusable nappies. I drive a plug in hybrid so the electric is high because of that.

We have 1 or 2 U.K. holidays a year, usually a static caravan or holiday cottage for a few days. Total cost of holidays per year is around £1k so I’ve already knocked saving for those on the head.

No chance of my wage increasing again any time soon, I’ve pushed very hard for the last 8 years to climb a very greasy ladder and there’s no where else to go from here.

WTF do I do?! There’s news all the time how this is going to get worse again in January and the only advice coming out seems to be ‘go and get a better paid job’ but I HAVE a well paid job! we want another baby but I’m currently telling DH no because we can’t afford it and need to save like crazy.

Im very very frightened, how much worse is it likely to get from here?

OP you need to stop panicking and get practical. The obvious instant solution is to fix your direct debit at a lower rate and drop your pension contributions by £300 per month.

The dog is non negotiable I agree.

Tattooing wooden instruments is extremely niche, and with your DH's wood working skills he could be taking on much more lucrative commissions for wooden furniture/treen/framing. We recently had some paintings framed professionally and the chap had a lovely workshop in a very rural area - I was very jealous! He was very busy with orders too.

Stay calm, you'll be fine.

I'm going to say I should have read this first!! I don't think you have to move so sorry for that suggestion. I agree with others on the pension, it's a big savings. And the other little savings suggested should help.

I agree with this, having seen the OP’s figure for energy. We have a detached 4 bed, so no advantage from being attached on one side, and our summer costs for electricity (everything except heating and hot water) and gas (non heating yet so just hot water). have been £95 a month this year.

Plenty of families have a parent who works during the day and one who works in the evenings. It’s not unusual.

Some of the replies on this are shocking!
-Husband work nights (then look after his child all day)
-Husband work nights then look after his child then sleep for a couple of hours when his wife gets home before his next shift
-Rent a room out (who wants a stranger living with them with a young child)

• husband get evening work (when realistically for the few hours he could work isn't going to make much difference financially but will make their lives a lot harder and business could and probably would rather hire younger people for this who they could pay less

The OP earns a good wage and has one child and in 2022 in England should be able to have a nice life, if people were more angry at this government than they are at each other we might not be in this mess.

I don't pay by direct debit. I just read the meters monthly and pay as I go. It's absolutely untrue that you can't afford to heat your home if you are paying £750pm into a pension though. Just cancel/reduce those for a while.

@ILikeHotWaterBottles the pension contributions isn’t what is putting OP into poverty though. Her take home is still over 3k a month, plus a few 100 from her DH.
She should more than be able to afford her outgoings on her salary. If something needs to be cut it should not be the pension contributions first.

God the financial perspectives on this thread are awful.

No-one loses credit when a supplier goes bust, it's protected by the government (or OFGEM, someone anyway).

Remortgaging won't be an option as they're currently paying 1.99% and a new mortgage will likely be double that.

And how would he look after the baby during the day after a night shift

husband get evening work (when realistically for the few hours he could work isn't going to make much difference financially

£50 a day could make a drastic difference

Apparently it's special administration and credit is protected.

@Sunbun19 read my other responses before being an absolute bore

No it's not, but I'm pointing out she isn't as bad off as she thinks she is. She just refuses to prioritise and instead prefers to whine.

is your electric so high because of your electric car? I too am struggling to understand where your moneys going. Of the £350 of your husbands income covers food then it’s:

£3k income
2.2k after mortgage
£1.8k after bulb new direct debit
Then what ? Car insurance, council tax, water, dog insurance , house insurance incidentals like phone and Netflix surely can’t be adding up to £1.8k?

I would have thought you’d have about £1k spare from that for “fun” and savings.

As others have said, it's the pension. I'm the main earner too (35k so a lot less than you) and just coming back off mat leave. I opted out of my pension entirely whilst on maternity. I'll be going back into it once I get a 5k pay rise in April. Far from ideal but keeping my baby warm is my priority!

Paying extra into a pension, providing they can afford it, which they should be able to, is a really good strategy for the OP as it means they can keep CB that they would otherwise lose. Plus tax relief and potential investment growth.

For that reason it's probably better that they do it that way, rather than DH contribute into his own pension, for the higher tax relief and also that they keep the CB. If they divorced, the OPs pension would included as a joint asset anyway so he shouldn't be losing out.

So you are putting approx £22,200 per year into main savings (pension and holidays), you have a fully paid for car and that isn't enough?

DH needs to go out to work/expand his business (potentially in evenings/weekends when you look after the child) or you reduce holidays and pensions.

If SiL is there for 22 weeks of the year then at least in the Summer she presumably works and can contribute if you don't want to reduce savings. That is what actual low income families have to do - the double shift and student aged DC contributing. If you are choosing not to do that and also saving over 20K per year you are not short of money, just realism.

Not to state the obvious but your energy bill is high BECAUSE your DH is at home all day with DS.... heating, lights, tv, oven etc

We were 14 when we got together, stayed together through both of us going to Uni, lived with his lovely parents for 2 years when we both finished Uni and saved both our full time wages to buy our first house at 23. It was a total wreck but we did it. We then sold it 5 years later at enough profit to put a decent deposit down on the house we live in now. His parents basically raised me - I was in and out of care settings and foster families but spent most of my time at their house until I was 16. At 16 they fought for me to be allowed to live with them full time which I was. This is why SIL will live with us rent free for as long as she needs to, I owe DH's parents an enormous debt.

Your dp needs a part time job. For years my husband and I worked opposite shifts.

You've done really well to increase your earnings from 16 to 60k in 8 years - well done :)

It's good that you have a buffer of large pension contributions that you can reduce if you need to. And I think you mentioned in one of your comments that your DH's income was partly going into a 'rainy-day fund', so that's that also.

MSE used to have a great template where you could put all your monthly outgoings - it was much easier for people to then suggest ways to reduce. They also recommend keeping a spending diary for a month to see where all the small expenses go that you don't realise.

This is exactly the advice we had.

Income

3600 a month
3200? After student loan repayment

Mortgage 800

Leave 2400 for everything else

You should be fine - you need to work out what going wrong

Emotionalmessy, we're at home all day too, but bills over summer have never been more than £110 per month. We're not charging an electric car though - maybe that's the difference.

We have a huge mortgage, need to run two cars and live comfortably, but not luxuriously, on 60k.