Life is too expensive and not enjoyable.

[buildingourdreams]

I am only 26 years old and I am tired

H and I both earn okay money both work ft and I sometimes do part time work too

We've 2 boys under 7 and After rent bills and food and petrol we have not a penny .
This is with our parents helping with childcare we don't even have to pay childcare for the boys thankfully 🙏

We Can't go on holiday. Can't even have a takeaway or my nails done

We rent and Can't save for a house to buy don't get any benefits other than the basic Cb about £200 month. (And I don't expect or want handouts anyway)

Is this our life now ? Don't tell me to get a better job as I might do as I get older but this is not the point I'm making . If someone works full time they should be able to afford a few treats in life and specially with 2 incomes!

I worry constantly that we are failing our kids and should I even have had them? And also Like, what will even become of people like us when we're old ?

If it’s OP, I think she said childcare was £200 a month. Rent was £1000.

I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make other than, don't work and be happy like me, it's just not a realistic option for most of us. Neither are ancient ways of heating whatever that means. I imagine with two jobs op probably doesn't have time for that.

Things are getting expensive and there's definetly not enough money for everything. I would prioritise what's most important to you, for example holidays. I've always felt that experiences are more valuable than things and cut out any expenses that we can live without. We don't buy clothes, makeup, hair stuff, anything for the house, basically just the absolute essentials, no paper towel or other disposable items etc. I own one pair of shoes, get my hair cut once every few years. Shop at aldi, all kids stuff and furniture is second hand from charity shop or fb marketplace. Only buy used phones and technology. We don't buy presents as my son gets some from family. I drink only occasionally and take the bus or walk everywhere. We still have loads of fun as a family, allotment on weekends to dig around in the dirt and get some fresh air, picnics, bonfires in the garden. Always looking for interesting free things to do! This leaves us enough money for trips to the pub and 3 holidays a year and a gym membership for me. We are renting a tiny house for 1100 and pay 250 childcare so I can work part time (same household income as you). We don't have the everyday 'luxuries' but I think travel and quality time with family is much more fulfilling.

This is why I am glad I've had mine early. I wasn't risking waiting until the mythical day I am well off and also own a house

Quite honestly I couldn't see this happening even if I had no kids, as I already work full time as does my partner (as I said earlier we don't pay for childcare due to family help)

Haha no one would have us

I was answering a question early in a thread in response to a woe-is-me AIBU.
Posters earning A LOT of money were asking me to explain how I was saving five a month. I did and posted a breakdown.

I understand that rich folks can’t visit the nail salon anymore or fly out to Disneyland. You cut your cloth accordingly. You budget. You cut back. These are the richest people on the planet. Top tier. Top 10%ers. The richest people who have ever existed in the history of the world.

Use wool blankets. They have worked for thousands of years. Wear clothes. They keep you warm. Buy hot water bottles. They’re a fiver. Half the people in our county are living on benefits FFS. I’m sure they’d love half an hour in the nail bar and a week in Majorca.

I realise you haven’t been following the thread and just jumped in, but budgeting is piss easy, and everyone knows the difference between ‘I want oh woe is me’ and ‘I need and I have a problem here’. The latter is an issue society need to address. Unfortunately as @TheLostGiraffe has pointed out, it’s probably not gonna happen. The former is a personal choice and an expectation. We all want stuff. Unfortunately we don’t get what we want.

I want a house, and a phone that as old as my kid, and a holiday, and a pension, and a 10 years old car, and horse riding lessons. I can’t afford them, but I’m not gonna ask for your sympathy.

A lot of that sounds familiar, but more crusty than ourselves. Rarely buy clothes, one pair of shoes, one pair of wellies. No makeup, no hair cuts, etc.
We buy DD Christmas and birthday though, but don’t do holidays. One wage. No gym. One old banger of a car. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, no meals out. Grow in the garden and DD loves it. Dream of having an allotment.

The experiences vs things thing makes you sound like you’re a young family. We’re not. We don’t have any time left to get on the property ladder and try to find safety before old age sets in.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/14/generation-britain-young-people-inequality

This article contains some information on “what could the government possibly do”.

A good old Robin Hood plan. Steal from the pensioners and give to the our kids. I’m all for that. I have no pension and no house. As with all ‘equitable’ solutions, if you study, work hard, and save, you have to pay more for the privilege, if don’t study, don’t work hard, and blow your money on your disposable lifestyle, you pay less in tax and don’t get punished. And your kids now get handouts from all the idiots who study and work hard.

As a stay at home mum with no pension, I’m over the moon that the proposals in the article will come out of pensioners pockets, benefit my daughter, and I won’t have to do anything. I’m starting to like the look of socialism. I hope they’ll go with that one where they lower my council tax and make the people in £200K houses pay for me too. That’s a good one. Maybe I will vote this time round.

Buy a mobile home. I was drowning in bills before I bought my mobile home. My bills have dropped over 70 percent, best financial decision I've ever made.

maybe we won’t feel as bad as those who lose the homes we’re hoping to be able to save and buy one day.

This is just such an awful commenf. How can you wish that on people? 😔

Is it on one of those parks where they have you over a barrel for service charges and ground rent? Or is it on your own little piece of this beautiful island? I’d entertain that as a solution to my problem if it was my own plot of land it was sitting on.

everyone knows the difference between ‘I want oh woe is me’ and ‘I need and I have a problem here’. The latter is an issue society need to address. Unfortunately as @TheLostGiraffe has pointed out, it’s probably not gonna happen.

No. I think everyone's needs should be met. I don't think it is "woe is me" for people in a country such as the UK to have been able to manage to economy such that average people can also afford some of their wants.

Yes as we discussed it probably won't be restored to that, as it should be, by implementing sensible policies that would raise living standards for everyone, because neither the Governing party or the opposition seem to want to implement the policies that would achieve this. And they get away with this because their constituents aren't pressuring them to do so.

So yeah it probably won't happen. But then people need to acknowledge that this fall in their living standards that is happening and will continue to happen without those policy changes is a choice. I don't think it is "woe is me" to expect better.

This is all again just about fighting over the crumbs. Rather than increasing productivity so that salaries and wealth rise across the board.

Haha no one would have us

You can thank the Brexit loons for that.

Fuckers now trying to change it to 57.

If they keep moving the goalposts and messing around with pensions then people will out far less money into them and the state will end up picking up the tab. So foolish. You cannot expect people to invest in a decades-long investment if you start messing around with the terms halfway through. Utter madness to even contemplate it in a country where pension provision is so scant anyway and they need us to put more into private schemes. These people are utterly clueless, you've already crashed the current economy and now you want to mess with pension rules and screw the future economy too? I think they are completely deranged.

Well clearly a lot of their wants are already being met, just not all of them.

It's all very well people saying "your kids don't need things...they need you". Well I am working full time. I am working over half term as i need to spread my annual leave over the year. I did a 12 hour shift yesterday so got in at 9pm... luckily dd is 14 so can go out with friends but she dosn't see me much.

I work nhs...i have a 1st in my subject...newly qualified. . I earn 27, 000 pa and have to pay for my own fecking parking. I cannot afford to go part time as dd needs food, warmth, clothes, school stuff etc. Yanbu op.
It's all work, work, work.
I want to go for promotion but I'm working as hard as I can with not much energy to go the extra mile.

I do think us humans are entitled to some things though.

We are entitled to a fairer economy where hard work leads to a better lifestyle....not just the basics...otherwise, why bother? I don't feel that motivated. I feel ground down.

We are entitled to lead a dignified life whereby if we can't be economically active due to ill health or caring responsibilities, we get appropriate support from the state as we do pay taxes.

We are entitled for our taxes to go towards schools, healthcare, roads etc.

We should be able to eat, clothe ourselves modestly, find decent jobs. Why have an elected government otherwise?

We are entitled to a decent government who look after us.

People don't think the nhs is underfunded but expect modern healthcare. 1 xray film is 80,000. It can be used a lot but if it breaks ( which they do)they are hard to replace.

OP is talking about a two income household. Are you a 1 or 2 income household. This is exactly why I say households with incomes well above £40K should stop budget and work out the difference between wanting something and needing something, because the bulk of people in this country are substantially poorer than they are, and asking for pity because you can’t prioritise your nails and Disneyland is definitely unreasonable in my mind.

Nobody is asking to prioritise nails or Disney land. They're saying it's ridiculous that over two wages only covers the basics. And it is ridiculous. We shouldn't have to choose between having a second child or putting the heating on for the first one.

What is the point of a minimum wage that doesn't do its job? What's the point of a welfare state if it doesn't actually support those in need?

It's not okay! I would have liked to have a second child, and was sensible in that I didn't consider it whilst we had ft nursery to pay for, we are now in a financial position to do it years and years later, which leaves us with a bigger than desirable age gap, except now the extra money has been swallowed up with mortgage payments, gas and electric etc.

We couldn't have foreseen this. And now we've missed out. Because we were sensible.

I absolutely wish I'd quit my job, utilised the welfare state for a couple of years and had a second child because now I am left with massive regret for doing the "right" thing.

We live in a digital era where X-ray does not require ‘film’ at £80K a roll.
Its called poor management, profligate spending and waste.
If it were managed properly by intelligent people on reasonable wages, maybe things would be different.

The NHS was meant to provide good quality critical care for free.
But it doesn’t. It provides good quality critical and non-critical care for free in a very badly managed manner slowly.

Last time I looks, which was a few years ago, the NHS were paying £4 per 100 Paracetamol, and on top of that they were paying pharmacists to dispense them. They were 16p a pack in Asda at the time. If they didn’t pay a £900 call out charge to a third party service engineer to change a lightbulb in a hall, and instead employed a janitor or two, maybe the £180Billions budget would end up being spent on junior staff, auxiliaries and equipment instead of management salaries, the private companies consultants set up to bill the NHS through, and the sea of parasitic companies they pay for services.

Maybe someone should look at prosecuting mismanagement of funds by senior NHS staff. Do you have any clue how much unused and unusable PPE the NHS procured ‘because Covid’?

Like fuck does X-ray film cost £80k per roll, and it doesn't come in rolls anyway. People make up such crazy crap on here.

Medical imaging is just about all digital these days but the type of imaging has expanded massively in the last decade or two (CT scanners etc). That's where the money is spent.