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 ?

We earn over 100k between us (exact amount depends on the year) and don't pay childcare. We also had our son young (22) but we stopped at one as that what we could afford with a comfortable life. You say you don't want to increase your income but that's how you get a better life, when we had DS we were on the equivalent of about 60k between us so we had to work smarter.

I don't think anyone has the right to kids, holidays, mortgages etc just because they work. It's also about the level of employment, 30 hours in a supermarket is never going to get you a 4 bed room detached, holidays, designer bags etc

I think you’re the one that’s swallowed the propaganda whole. Or is the growing wealthy gap just an illusion?

Okay. Your in your 20’s so you’re earlier in the game than our family. But to put this into context, your take home is more than us. We rent. We have only one car. DH works and I don’t, and we are saving £500 a month towards a deposit for a (cheap) house. So your ‘options’ are only restricted by the restrictions you are imposing on yourselves. Your incomings and outgoings and priorities are your choice. They are not imposed upon you to the extent that you believe them to be.

there's a real issue particularly for young families with the wage stagnation, childcare & housing costs over the last decade or so. Can't see how things will improve unfortunately.

But to put this into context, your take home is more than us. We rent. We have only one car. DH works and I don’t, and we are saving £500 a month towards a deposit for a (cheap) house.

Did the OP say what their take home was?

The reality is, that OP and partner are both in fairly low paying jobs. They might not be minimum wage, but they aren’t that far from it.

Through history, apart from a short blip during part of the last 40 years, people on the equivalent wages couldn’t afford many treats and didn’t buy houses. The norm isn’t and wasn’t universal home ownership, but renting and generally struggling for the majority. That is where we are heading back to….the long term trend. Progress isn’t linear and we don’t keep heading upwards all the time. People feel it should do and understandably are disappointed when living standards fall.

The idea though, that people are setting out to rip OP off, is just a bit daft. Everyone is impacted by rising energy bills and cost of food. Rents are increasing because Landlords find their mortgage costs going up. It all filters through to everyone. The trouble is, some have more of a buffer to cope with the cost increases and others find there’s only enough for the bare minimum and nothing nice.

Rememeber, a lot of people don’t even have enough for the bare minimum now.

The question is, what are you going to do about it? Moaning, being bitter and deciding people are ripping you off won’t achieve anything. Action is needed and it won’t be easy, or necessarily pleasurable and it will take hard work and sacrifice over the long term. The question is whether you’re willing to do what’s necessary to change your situation. Most people don’t and remain pretty much where they were. Some do change it. I mentioned 2 young mums I knew who had kids young and had little or no formal qualifications, but in their late 20s and 30s decided to get qualified and worked their way up to having degrees and qualifying as a nurse and a teacher and then developed really successful careers. But they were driven and incredibly hard grafters. It wasn’t easy. But they didn’t just blame the world for their hard start but didn’t something about it. Amazing role models for their kids.

You can start by assessing your outgoings. There are always some adjustments to spending that can be made so that you can cut out things you value less and have a bit more of things important to you. It won’t make a huge difference, but might make life feel a bit better short term. But it’s long term stuff that will make the difference or not.

Aw. Another armchair socialist who looks at 1% of the population and thinks the the world has done them wrong. We have the richest ‘poor people’ on the planet. Every single working family in our country sits comfortably within the top 10% of all people on the planet. We bleed countries dry of their resources and their labour, and you expect a rational person to look at the richest people in the world and worry about how unfair it is that some of these rich people have less money that the others. Get some perspective.

Now, if you’re living in a shack and eating rice and beans, maybe. But if you’re banging away on a tablet, checking your mobile phone, puffing away on an e-cigarette, watching Netflix and feeding your dogs. You ain’t poor. Your just incapable of budgeting and uneducated.

I think this is a fair point.
You've got kids. That's a choice. Your work, and its salary limitations are to a certain extent choice. All these choices make living more expensive.
It will get easier but as another PP said, your treats are your kids. Other people choose not to as they either can't afford to or would rather do something else with their money (essentially kids for the first couple of decades are just expenditures)

I thought they said £50K between them?

Sorry. Not take home. Total

But still the same. I’m still comparing like with like. Ours is pre tax too.

Except ours has only one tax allowance because only DH works.

@ElliF I thought that was another poster. How do you save £500 a month?

You say you “work your arses off in 3 jobs for absolutely fuck all” but it’s not, is it? It’s to put a roof over your heads, feed your family, have a car. Presumably you have phones, tv, internet too.
I agree with others that at your age, you’re doing quite well. At 26 I had more disposable income because I was in a shared rented house, but spent most of that on nights out, takeaways and clothes. You made a choice to start a family early.

There’s a lot of expectation these days that everyone should have annual holidays abroad, weekly takeaways etc. Growing up we had caravan park holidays in the UK and a takeaway probably every few months. Certainly no restaurant meals or regular expensive days out, no theatre, cinema probably once a year in summer holidays. Everyone we knew was the same. I do wonder if social media has a part to play. We see others gallivanting to exotic destinations and trying out new restaurants and wonder why we can’t do the same.

I know a family where the entirety of the wife’s take home salary is the exact same as nursery fees, so although people have suggested she be a stay at home mum, she wants to stay working to progress her career, keep up with technology changes, not have a career gap on her CV, which will reap benefits in the long run.

You need to count your blessings and see if there’s any way to shave even a tiny bit off your outgoings to start saving. If you have Netflix, do you really need it, or will Freeview do for now? Could you switch broadband providers to save a few pounds a month? Could you reduce birthday / Christmas budgets even a little bit?

While you feel entitled to certain things you haven’t got, you will feel bitter.

The thing is, being in work doesn’t entitle you to takeaways and having beauty treatments. The fact is you have 2 kids and had them young when you didn’t earn much, so there isn’t a huge amount to spend. You think your salaries are good, but actually they aren’t far beyond minus wage. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s the reality of why things are hard for you. Add in the cost of living crisis and it’s much harder still.

It is naive to think you can be in your mid 20s in fairly low paid jobs, with 2 school aged kids and live a life with many luxuries. If you think you should be having that, you’ve possibly watched too many TV programmes or read magazines suggesting it. Or perhaps you’ve looked at people’s lifestyles who earn significantly more, or I suspect, know people who are single and without kids who have much more freedom and disposable income and feel a bit jealous. You haven’t worked out why they and others have some stuff you can’t afford. But when you think about the cost of kids etc, it’s not surprising.

Most people are finding it harder and cutting back. Some are having less holidays. Some less takeaways. Some are having less meals full stop, be glad you’re not that final category.

Get real about what’s possible on your income, your age and fact you have had kids since you were 20. Totally your choice not to wait to 30s and having a sense that’s too old…..but also understand some of the possible financial consequences of it. Most people can’t have everything.

Take Home 2,800
Rent 700
Council Tax 150
Gas 150
Electric 200
Mobile A 7
Mobile B 15
Internet 28
Audible 8
Diesel 200
Milkman 24
Food 600 (incl. pets, sanitary, cleaning etc.)

I’m sure these’s something I’ve missed but those are the main ones.
In regard to clothing, gifts, road tax, car insurance etc. these we pay annually out of our budget surplus. We have no loans. If we need to fix or buy a car, we do it out of the savings pot, but we try not to use it because we don’t own our own home and need to save up a deposit, and getting a replacement car is a big dent in it. But having a few months money aside trying to become a house deposit is also a big safety net if DH loses his job.

I guess we look poor. We don’t have a nice car, let alone two cars. We don’t buy new clothes all the time, or have new mobile phones. We don’t go to restaurants and we don’t go abroad on holiday.

The problem OP faces is if they need two cars, or even one nice pretty car that comes with a nice pretty car loan, and insurance, and road tax, and fuel. Better off a stay ant home mum with all the time with the kids, and none of the stress of the office, the office politics, the expectations, the bitchiness, the commute, the coffee habit etc. But it’s horses for courses.

We have a written budget and we follow it every day. People succeed at what they focus their attention on.

Without switching on the PC and checking the spreadsheet, those are just the things I found remember off the top of my head.

How strange. You seem to acknowledge that our current standard of living has come off the back of exploiting the rest of the world, but still seem to be sticking up for the system that is responsible.

You say that we should shut up, stop thinking too much about it and just be grateful for what we have, while seemingly ignoring the fact that we’re definitely on the downward slope of the hill and that things are gradually but undeniably getting worse, mostly because the money is being funnelled to the top in ever increasing amounts (because that’s what capitalism is designed to do).

Why should we stick with this system again?

ElliF , do you always display this level of empathy?

Building our dreams, been there, life can be hard with young kids, when money is tight it can feel like a never ending drudge, it will get better for you, but you are right, it should not be beyond the means of two working people to afford to buy a house, or god forbid have some disposable income, are we all expected to live in tenements again? Scrounge for a loaf of bread? If people have no disposable income they can’t spend on cafes/ restaurants/ services, so should all those businesses close ElliF
The Tories are predominantly responsible facilitating the hoarding of wealth, and inflicting the clusterf* that is Brexit on the nation, that is before we get to Liz Truss helpfully causing mortgage payments to rise and the running down of public services.
I lived in England under Labour, quality of life was infinitely better than now

Im not sticking up for a system. I’m acknowledging that it exists and pointing out that you don’t understand it. No amount of schoolgirl politics will change what has already occurred, or what the results will be. The system is indeed failing. We cannot do anything to prevent it. We do not get to make the decisions necessary to change the big picture, and neither do our elected officials. The best that I can do is read, learn, analyse, understand and predict the likely coming events and do my best to protect my family and those around me. Capitalism is failing as a result of greed. Socialism has never succeeded anywhere on the planet and killed hundreds of millions of people under the guise of equality and redistribution.

The world is changing Andy it is going to be turbulent and painful for most of us. We have no home, no pensions, and one income. We are not in the best of health. I imagine we’re in a similar boat to many people and a good bit worse off than many more.

But I’m not going to play schoolyard, I’ll informed finger pointing politics at imagined demons and say it’s their fault because I’m not an idiot, and it does not solve any problems, benefit me or my family, get me a house or ensure that DH has a job next year.

I prefer to live in the real world and avoid believing whatever it is your telly or your newspaper is telling you to believe.

Fuck. I’ve known poverty. I don’t want to go back there. I certainly don’t want to take my kids there.

Yes, small businesses change in tough economic climates. Is it fair that all the local grocers and music shops, toy shops and news agents were put out of business by the big evil supermarkets and the despotic Internet? No. But they are gone, lots of people lost their jobs and society moved on. Where are all the little computer shops now? Where is C&A and Debenhams and all those big clothes stores? Is it fair that slave labour in foreign countries put more responsible clothing firms out of business. No. But that’s what the British people wanted. Did they care about all the lost jobs in the UK and all the starving children making their clothes for them in sweatshops in Bangladesh? No. So long as they get what they want they couldn’t give a F who suffers.

The world does not stagnate just because some people are rigid in their thinking and unable to transition into a new economic model, and the British people decide which businesses survive and which do not. The British people demand more money and the government prints it. Do they care that it increases the money supply (inflation). No, they couldn’t care less.

Have you looked at Europe? It’s a complete basket case. It has been printing money like nobody’s business, only none of the country’s get to stop the printing presses and arrest inflation unless everyone sits around a table and agrees. So Italy and Greece and Cyprus and Portugal all do exactly what Germany and France tell them to do.

Did you even bother to look at what we (Europe) did to Greece? Yanis Varoufakis, probably one of the most intelligent and forward thinking left wing finance ministers in the past 50 years was decimated by the political machine that is the EU. That had nothing to do with right wing politics. That was big government crushing a forward thinking socialist trying to save his country from economic disaster. And you think the EU is now some kind of Utopia because you didn’t read that part of history or actually understand how the EU government and finances work?

Who cares really at the end of the day?
Most people cannot separate truth from propaganda.
I know people who have only just discovered that the money in their bank accounts isn’t actually their money. Honestly, they didn’t know that legally the money belonged to the bank and they were now a creditor to the bank. That is how ignorant they were.

The best any of us can do is understand where this is going and take steps to feed and shelter our families. You don’t get to control or influence anything else.

Your just incapable of budgeting and uneducated.

Great irony

EU Government

No such thing exists.

Honestly, they didn’t know that legally the money belonged to the bank and they were now a creditor to the bank. That is how ignorant they were.

Oh dear me, supersonic level of irony. Perhaps you do not understand as much as you think you do.

The EU has a Parliament. Not a Government. Those are not the same thing, obviously!

You misunderstand entirely how banking works.

It was my first comment on the thread so not sure what you mean by "it's clear you are trolling now".

But carry on with your misinformation and made up nonsense, if you wish.

@ElliF you make your money work hard but I have to say your rent is incredibly cheap. I paid £500 a month for a house share at uni 20 years ago. Do you live in a very cheap part of the country?