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 ?

The film is a digital plate. It costs 80K.

No chance of moving back in with family so you can save for a house, even for 12 months? Not ideal I know but that'd get you out of this stuck place you find yourselves in. We did the same for 18 months, admittedly before the children arrived so easier to house 2 people.

Thanks @BarbaraofSeville . I was begging tho thing the NHS was still stuck in the 80’s. It wouldn’t have surprised me, but it’s good to know they are trying to keep up with the likes of Spain and Morocco.

That said, they could save millions a year by checking people’s qualifications and references and sacking anyone who couldn’t be confirmed as having had an education.

Weed out the criminality and the profligacy and mismanagement, and you’ll find you can reduce their budget and give the nurses pay rises. I’m guessing they don’t want to hear that though, and it’s such a huge socialist organisation that they’ll never point the finger and take the blame for what they’ve been doing to this country’s National Insurance for the past decade.

So it’s not a consumable product at all. It’s a single purchase item. The running cost is paying someone to clean it who has a brain and the dexterity not to destroy lab equipment.

@Birdsbirdsbirds
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.
But those are all the results of choices we make. Why should we not take responsibility for the choices we make and the financial circumstances we find ourselves in, and fall beck on the Welfare State if we really mess up? Why should we be entitled to whatever we want regardless of our circumstances and expect other people to pay for it?
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?
We are not talking about minimum wage here, and there’s a welfare system and no end of handouts and programmes, and on top of that there’s an internet that teaches you how to budget, manage your finances, write CVs, sell, set up side hustles, reduce household expenses. There’s an endless amount of education online absolutely free for anyone who decides thay may want to take responsibility and control of their lives.
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.
I’d have liked to have had a second child. I left it too late to start because I didn’t have a house and our incomes were too low. So we have one. But it’s not the Government’s fault, and it wasn’t the taxpayers responsibility to make sure we had an easy life. If anything the fact that I never considered budgeting until I was 30 and I’d never been taught about budgets and income and rent and taxation and pensions and bank accounts etc. at school is a criticism I would make. We cripple our kids by teaching them garbage but railing to teach them about how money works in the real world.
We couldn't have foreseen this. And now we've missed out. Because we were sensible.
Couldn’t have foreseen what? Inflation? The decline in the standard of living across the entire western world? I saw this coming in 2013. We started inflating the money away in 2008 and we never stopped. We haven’t even begun to feel the impact of what we have done to the pound. They’ll try to hide the mess and the inflation with a ‘reset’ and a digital currency, and we will own nothing and we will be happy. Those of us who earn more than you and I no doubt. But yes, it has been written about for decades, all the information has been published in white papers and government consultations, and how much they were inflating our money was documents and published by the treasury when they did it for anyone who cared to look.
But again, if no-one ever taught you about money....
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.
So do I. That’s something we agree on.

It’s your age OP, I definitely couldn’t have afforded to have kids in my 20’s. Also you had them before buying a house. Yes absolutely housing is extremely expensive vs average wages but you obviously decided that you wanted your kids when you wanted them so I assume you are happy with that. You can’t control many things about the environment you are in and no voting in any particular party probably won’t make your problems disappear (I’m not saying don’t vote but for where you are today, right now it’s not helpful). But you can control some of the choices you make. Look at your budget and see if you can save somewhere to give you a bit more to spend elsewhere or build some savings.

I doubt life has ever been easy for people who have had kids in their early 20’s in rented accommodation. It will get easier though, it won’t always be like this and when you are able to pick up more hours you’ll start to feel the pressure come off a bit.

We're early forties and realistically buying a house is not happening, so just living life! When the older generation pass on their wealth maybe we can have a home. Get on an allotment waiting list, ours only took 2 years and it's such a nice community feeling. The more simply I live the more I realize connection and nature are the important things!

We're early forties and realistically buying a house is not happening, so just living life! When the older generation pass on their wealth maybe we can have a home. Get on an allotment waiting list, ours only took 2 years and it's such a nice community feeling. The more simply I live the more I realize connection and nature are the important things!

I feel the same way op. My husband works FT, I work PT at a job and I’m self employed working every spare hour on my business. We have two toddlers and pay some childcare. I often find we have very little left after hills and food and mortgage. It’s very discouraging after we both work so very hard for it too.

Shit isn't it 😞so sorry x

I don't regret my kids but I do worry I'm not giving them the best life they deserve 😢

A few people have said re working more hours I just want to state I do work full time as does my Husband. I also do a few part time hours doing nails and hair outside of my full time work hours.

So I'm already working full time plus extra

@ElliF

I thought I saw you mention Child Benefit as a part of your income. Do you realise that's a means tested benefit?

Maybe you should stop claiming if you feel so strongly about handouts.

It’s not a benefit that qualifies you for any of these government handouts to help with the cost of living crisis. I would love to have access to social housing, because I would love the security that a home provides. DD deserves to live somewhere that is our home, and not something we are renting from a private landlord who can just kick us out whenever he wants the property back.

Its £80 a month that helps with school stuff.

I’ve never said people shouldn’t claim benefits. That’s what they are there for. I only said that given the poverty and depravation in this country, it’s a bit rich people who earn way more than most people will ever earn, complaining about their nails and their holidays and they want this and want that and feel they should be entitled to more comforts, when they have never experienced poverty let along what real struggle feels like.

Try feeding you family on £20 a week, knowing that if it’s too hard you can just phone a takeaway of order a £100 Tesco shop the next day. Just try it, and you may find there is room to save in your food budget to get your nails done. Maybe, dare I say it, but a wool blanket and thick PJs for the kids and switch the living room heating off. It’s not exactly cold yet for the majority of the country.

We all know how much money we waste, even if we don’t know exactly because we don’t want to look, and don’t want limit ourselves to trying to plan what we’re going to spend our money on. I get it. But the world doesn’t owe you a living. If anything, we owe it to our children to help out those in society who can’t help themselves. We can pull society apart and all whine about our nail crises, or we can try to push society back together again.

Well, that’s how I see it. Sorry.

First of all can I just say I don’t like the negativity of some comments stating “well you had children young so deal with it”, can I just say how great it is to see that a young couple have had children and are doing things properly by working heard and not relying on the state, I appreciate you!

Yes you have had children young, but that shouldn’t be used against you. But it does mean that things will be financially hard for a while as you haven’t “established” a decent paying career just yet, but once the children have grown it will be a different story and you will be able to enjoy life a bit more with some extra income.

We did things the other way round, had my first at the age of 27 after working for years in Sales, and currently pregnant with second at the age of 32. Husband is in a decent paying professional job which has allowed me the flexibility of working part-time since I had my first, whilst I study to better my career prospects for when I am ready to work full-time again (when littlest will be in full-time education most probably).

I moved out at a young age so I have been where you have been, and it is tough. But I didn’t have any children so I can appreciate what you’re saying and I sympathise with you. But just don’t give up. You’re doing the best you can at the moment given the circumstances. It will get better. You’re setting a good example for your children, well done.

When you say you can't buy a house, does that also extend to not being able to buy a small 2 bed maisonette with reasonable service charges and no ground rent and maybe even share of freehold. I understand that outside of London, people expect 3 bed houses for families. But in London, people on 6 figure incomes buy flats and are happy to have 2 DC in them.And in London, even my MIL in the 1990s couldn't afford a house until she was 34 years old but she did buy a 1 bed, 42 square metre flat when she was first married at 27 (DH and I bought a 2 bed 53 sq metre flat at 27 &29 in 2019, now hoping to upgrade to a 80 square metre flat in early 30s so no better or worse than her as our 80 sq metre flat is around the same value as her house which is quite run down and in a worse area). My SIL who is renting a 120 sq metre flat in another country (for the equivalent of £1500 per month) and expects to rent for the foreseeable future was saying that my MIL was in a much worse position than her, being stuck in such a tiny flat. That may be the case but the difference is my MIL owns (and is now practically mortgage free despite an expensive divorce) and she doesn't, so the space is the compromise. But there are few people who can expect to buy such a large home near any popular area with economic opportunities on an average or below average income in most metropolitan areas unless there is some sort of government scheme for affordable housing (like in Singapore)..

it may be that London was ahead of the curve in the case of housing affordability. And now what is a London problem has now become a UK wide problem so people may have to accept what Londoners have accepted as default for the past 20-30 years.

*MIL was only in the small flat for 7 years. She did manage to upgrade eventually but the con of owning is that you may not always be able to move when you need to do MIL had 3 children in the 1 bed flat. Which is always the risk when you buy. They always tell you to future proof but it's easier said than done as often the cost of the larger property even if it's significantly further out is still higher than the smaller property plus the commuting costs. People used to be able to stretch when interest rates and inflation were low but now I think it's harder. which is why apparently demand for 1/2 bed flats in London is now higher.