Am I stupidly poor? Or living in the real world?

[Chunkythighss]

Just off the back of another post…
people commenting that they will have to live off £1900 AFTER paying the mortgage and how this is going to be a struggle.

nearly £2000 a month extra.

This is more than I earn a month and pay rent, bills, etc… yet people are saying they’d struggle to live on this after bills?

Am I massively poor or is this normal? 🙈

Since I've separated I'm aiming to do all on about 1900 pm. No luxuries and 300 pm on food for the two of us DD (4) and me. The rest goes on mortgage, childcare and bills. Cost of living is really high right now and the much needed childcare that allow me to work full time it is a big chunk a month.

Yes, but for people with less disposable income it affects their life as in not being able to eat healthily or heat their houses, whereas for the higher end they might have to drop a couple of clubs for their kids or sell the bmw and drive something more economical. It's just not comparable.

Taking into account avg weekly food /cleaning shop for 4 is £120 so £520pm. Water £72pm gas & electric £320 pm 2x mobile phones sim only £16pm each Council Tax £268pm, fuel to run 2 cars to get to and from work/school /clubs £150, road tax £56pm, house insurance £20pm, car insurance for 2 car £52pm. Car park at work for just me 2 days per week £74, TV licence (can't remember the amount so say £13)
All essentials no luxuries total £1561
Leaving 339 to cover emergencies but yes we do pay for broadband and TV package so that reduces then add to it last week my glasses broke beyond repair so that was a couple hundred to replace don't get help towards, no help towards prescriptions yet heavy pain killers for chronic pain and eczema cream that's £9.35per replacement of prescription then dental no nhs ones near us with space me and DH go once a year because that's around £130 each visit for us so yes essentials I can see £1900 not going far, yes we live in a 4 bed house and yes we can downsize but council tax wouldn't reduce that much and while yes some of the other bills may slightly it wouldn't be significantly so why compromise to save maybe £100? Just cut our cloth in other places and contemplate working towards earning more

No you are not stupidly poor and yes you do live in the real world! Most of us don't earn that sort of money, budget and are lucky to have much or any left over to save. There are some who who do earn a lot and have therefore bought bigger houses, more expensive cars and get used to a lifestyle which costs money but can afford it so when the cost of living crisis hit us all they have also felt the pinch but not in the same way as worrying about how to pay bills, more extravagance 'necessities ' that have been accustomed to? We are riding the same turbulence but some are are in yachts, others small boats and others on a life raft! X

Afraid I am one of these that finds 1900 small amount. Just food petrol, water council tax,gas and elec comes to 1,600. That leaves 300 for everything else after car and house insurance. Dentist cost me 200 for 2 fillings recently. Had serve toothache, infection once from avoiding dentist as had no money never again ! My car tax is 40.pm old car I have had for 14 yrs can't afford to replace. Husbands is 7 yrs old no finance.

Not necessarily as the rich will fall into the middle ground with no support as people on lower incomes will be entitled to more help if they lose their job. I'm poor and when I was last sorting benefits out due to illness I was told by cab that I'd be financially better off leaving my job. There is a lot of help if you literally have nothing

No one said they were the same.

When you are really on a low income the majority of the list are luxuries. For a lot of people food is treated as a luxury. And gym membership, sky TV dental treatment childrens activities, dont even seem like possibilities, clothes shoes etc are replaced at the expense of other necesities heating or food and are kept to a minimum and made to last as long as possible. So if a family of 4 can't live on that amount of money after housing costs etc I am not sure how much sympathy I have.

whumpthereitis If you actually read the post I was responding to the poster compared the comparative drop in lifestyle between someone with £1000 or £10000

Not necessarily as the rich will fall into the middle ground with no support as people on lower incomes will be entitled to more help if they lose their job. I'm poor and when I was last sorting benefits out due to illness I was told by cab that I'd be financially better off leaving my job. There is a lot of help if you literally have nothing You compared 10K to 1K. A considerable drop, say 50% would mean one family having £500 and another £5000. Yes, the family with £500 would be entitled to help, but you have to apply abs it doesn't come immediately. Same as the family on 5k could adjust their lifestyle accordingly - cancel clubs, move from private to state, sell assets etc. Still not comparable at all.

But what I'm saying is the richer person's lifestyle will be impacted more. Its not much of a drop when your already at the bottom

I have not read the full thread but I'm so glad you posted this! I earn less than that a month and feel like I'm going mad when I see what people earn on here. A good month for me is if I'm not in my overdraft and that's not very often!

I can only dream about having £1,900/month to pay all my bills with!

I'm disabled, live alone and don't work, have a mortgage and all other standard bills to pay and have to do it all on half that amount each month.

I'd love to have £19/month spare to do with as I please, never mind £1,900.

Itwas income of two people though, wasn't it, not 1 person. Each on about 32-33k?

So not groundbreaking mega buck some people seem to think, actually 2 people on below average wage (since someone posted that 38k being average). I wouldn't call that rich. I am on few k below that and I am not some moneymakermiracle.

Again, people were saying it's not enough when their bills already come to 1600 AND they would owe 90k to family

Completely agree.

We bought our small house 15 yrs ago and have completely outgrown it, but to geta bigger house in the same area now would more than double our mortgage payments. So even though technically based on our incomes we’d be able to borrow loads and get a bigger house with a much big mortgage, we are absolutely not doing that because it would
limit every other aspect of life and we’d become just like those you describe- moaning about cost of living after deciding of our own free will to saddle ourselves with huge outgoings! Not doing it. Refuse to keep up with any Joneses!

You don’t own a big house or flash car, they own you.

Unless you need non weight bearing exercise.

But what I'm saying is the richer person's lifestyle will be impacted more. Its not much of a drop when your already at the bottom You're not understanding what I'm saying. When you're at the bottom there is no wriggle room and you are likely to be in debt already. You will literally not be able to heat your house, buy things like replacement shoes, could end up skipping meals to feed your kids etc. This isn't going to happen to someone on 10k who even drops half of their disposable income. They will have to adjust, but the most impacted will be the person who is already struggling and can't afford any further drop in income.

‘Charitable donations’? 😂

I don’t understand Chunkythighss why you would get pregnant a second time if you couldn’t afford food? And before I get shutdown we were in a similar situation years ago so husband had a vasectomy.

Yea totally agree. I’m not rich but we’re pretty comfortable and both DH and I have a good, above average salary. We could scrape by on one of our salaries off the top of my head we’d cancel things like the cleaner, hello fresh subscription, foreign holidays, gym membership, I’m spending £200 pw on food with the price rises and we could trim that back if we ate less fresh fruit and veg, saved less money (I save for the kids too). There’s lots we could do before becoming destitute. If these price rises happened when I was single and less senior in my job I’d have struggled to absorb it as I was already living just within my means and things like the car needing work meant using a credit card. There wasn’t anything to trim back on.

who do you think donates to the foodbanks that so many people are relying on?

Op people who don't organise their money often struggle no matter how much they earn.

I kmow of a few hugely rich people who don't have mortgages who insanely worry about money and what they can afford all because they don't organise their money.

Quite.

But it’s not an essential outgoing. You wouldn’t get repossessed before giving it up.

You’re really out of touch to be surprised by this… NHS dentists for adults is pretty much a myth

You’re really out of touch to be surprised by this… NHS dentists for adults is pretty much a myth