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?

All you need is a minimum wage job of 12 hours a week to cover that. Your bloke could get something in the evenings for a couple of hours a shift. Cleaning would do it canny.

Yes this, or rent a room? Can your DH get a weekend job or do your hours not allow it? Yes consider putting less in your pension if able to - how much are you putting in? Are you giving DH any for a private pension?

Can he think of a side hustle while he looks after toddler?

Speak to bulb and ask them if you can pay less?

@Theyarellthesame
What happened to the £6K you say in your OP you had left after your maternity leave?
Where is your apparently healthy disposable income after mortgage, etc, going?
I'm struggling to understand the overall picture.

There's a housing crisis. Given the profile of your household, you could easily let a room to a single mum with toddler.

Can you rent a room out?

Could your DH do just a couple of eve shifts in a pub? A sat shift?

I would definitely tell DH to stop his hobbies and get a job in Tescos or similar at weekend and when you are at home after work in evening.

Bulb increased my mum's direct debit from £178 to £250 in March. After I told them she'd died and the house was unoccupied.

Call them and start doing monthly meter readings.

Dp needs a part time evening job.

as other posters have said, a 4 bed house for two adults and a baby is not "basic".
For context we're two adults and two teens in a 2.5bed.

It's not just the mortgage cost, but increased council tax, water, more to furnish and maintain, as well as obviously more to heat. Downsizing would save in so many ways, not just the mortgage.

That or your H works round your shifts. Evening work doesn't need to be all night every night, but a couple of evenings a week doing 4-6 hrs would bring £300-400 a month, which covers your increased costs.

I’m with bulb and they wanted to put our DD up to £470, even though we are £108 in credit and only used £175 gas and elec last month, even with the increases, there’s no way we shall use that amount.
so I have cancelled the DD, emailed them to tell them it’s extortionate and not fair useage and I will be carrying on
meter reading every single month and calling them to pay my bill over the phone with a debit card for my ACTUAL useage and not lining their pockets after they went into administration.
I suggest you do the same, that way you pay for what YOU USE and do not fall into debt with them.

OP no advice, but my husband earns the same (he works crazy shifts so I am a SAHP to our two young kids) and we can't afford our bills either x

we would struggle to attract anyone to rent a room in this area when we have a baby who still wakes overnight

Maybe you would have struggled before the housing crisis. But this is a 3 storey house with currently up to 2-3 spare bedrooms and plenty of storage space

See if you can change to a bill for actual use and do regular readings.

Hard to comment/advise w/o your full expenditure.
Bills have gone up massively, but someone on 60K should be able to afford to pay their bills.

I'm on a lot less and a lone parent. The increase stings but I am in no way struggling.

The OP has said that her DH already works behind a bar two nights a week and also has a side hustle.

If your DH does the uke thing does that mean he also plays instruments? Could he tutor in the evenings and maybe even in schools? I work in the arts and music tutoring does actually pay pretty well, certainly enough to cover childcare.

Having said that with an £800 mortgage and £3.4k a month before that goes out.... I'm struggling to see how you're struggling so badly. You've still got over two grand left after the proposed heating bill and the mortgage.

Other things you can do: if you live in a 4 bed I imagine you don't use all the rooms. Can you switch radiators off in other rooms and keep doors closed? Just heat the rooms you're actually using?

We moved from our 4 bed 3 storey Victorian house as the power bills were so high.

They were less than 1/2 in our new house.

I love that having a SAHP is considered a feckless luxury when all research shows that it is by far best for children in the early years to be cared for by a primary carer and not at a nursery or childminder. Do we really value children and SAHPs so little?

@spanishmumireland tbf I meant evenings rather than nights but they're both late 🤣

You appear to have about £300 per week after bills. Not seeing the issue tbh.

Ah great! Missed this. I wouldn't say he doesn't work then

I didn’t mean to offend anyone by calling my home basic - apologies if I have. What I meant is it’s not a massive open plan affair with enormous rooms that’s crazy big. The rooms are small and the 4th bedroom is a loft conversion.

The loft bedroom is my office, I work from home 2 days a week. The 3rd bedroom is needed for DH’s sister who lives with us when she’s not at Uni - DH’s parents died suddenly 2 years ago, there’s only the 2 of them and we used the inheritance to get DSIL through uni and enough for a house deposit when she finishes, and to set up the wood shop. We could downsize now, but the plan was to have another baby once SIL moved out and I HATE the thought of her not having a bedroom at ‘home’ after everything she’s been through - if we moved to a 3 bed, her room would be my office and it would be very difficult for the 5 months or so she’s here.

my take home pay is £3009 a month, I’ll post a full breakdown but our expenditure with the new prices is £3158 not including food which DH’s wage covers and I usually top up. DH’s side hustle is usually what we save for the holiday fund, we’ve been putting it into rainy day funds instead.

No one is saying that. I’m a sahm myself. But if your household can’t afford it then you can’t afford it. That’s a different thing entirely.

Agree that something doesn't add up here.

On the utilities, costs have doubled. It's not surprising that yours are high as you have a big house, that sounds like it might also be hard to heat. However, to go from £120 to £470 suggests that either the direct debit is too high, you were previously paying too little, so have built up a debt, or possibly both, so worth doing some investigation to work out what it should be, and talk to Bulb to pay the right amount.

However, you should be bringing in at least £3000 pm, possibly more, depending on student loan and pension payments. Plus you say your DH earns around £350 pm.

So say you have £3400 pm coming in. Your mortgage isn't huge for that income and you aren't paying childcare, so you really need to work out where your money is going, especially as it's likely your mortgage will rise at the end of the fixed term.

Have a look at somewhere like Moneysaving Expert to have a really good look through your budget, to work out where you're leaking money, and do what you can to turn it around.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/budget-planning/

Because if you can't your best option might be to consider moving to a property that's cheaper to run. But I don't think you need to do that, you just need to get a handle on what your fuel bill should be, and also managing your budget better.

Of course heating a four-bed, three-story, "character" home is expensive. But the government intervention in domestic bills means you won't see a rise in unit rate in January, so there's that.

Every single post about energy use focuses on the direct debit amount they've been quoted.

That figure is absolutely meaningless. Just work out how many kWh of gas and electric you've used in the past year, multiply by the current kWh rates then divide by 12 to find out what it's actually going to cost you per month. (But taking off the £400 grant we're all going to get first).

It really is that easy. There's no point in panicking about a new suggested DD until you know what it actually should be, based on your previous annual usage.