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? 🙈

If all the bills are £1200 then that leaves £700 for everything else for a month.

It's definitely enough to live on and have a few treats (depending how many kids you have etc).

It wouldn't be a luxurious lifestyle and there wouldn't be a huge amount of room for saving etc if you also wanted to enjoy yourself.

Still, it's enough money to live on and not be on the breadline.

Yes, some costs are out of your control but many people on MN stretch their outgoings to match their salaries without giving themselves even an inch of wiggle room.

Then they insist that all these outgoings are absolutely vital and that there's no way they could have made different choices.

Yanbu. But people on Mumsnet are generally higher earners. A few posts in and you already have someone trying to claim that gym membership can be an “essential” due to health reasons 🤦🏼‍♀️🙄 I am significantly disabled due to chronic lupus and other issues to the point I am on ongoing PIP at the highest rates (fairly rare) and I am a member of many disability groups. Those on a low income don’t have a gym membership. It really is a luxury. That’s it.

If you’re on a low income and you can’t afford it, you don’t have it or you get into debt if you need it; that’s the reality for many people. And then you have families like ours who manage with a combination of low wages, disability benefits and having been previously high earners so lucky enough not to have a mortgage (own outright), but we’re not well off compared to the Mumsnet core: dh earns £25k full time. We have two dc. We muddle through fairly comfortably. But £1900 after all bills would be amazing to us!

I think you're normal @Chunkythighss I guess people generally live up to their means and very often slightly beyond them. So when things get more expensive or your income drops, money feels tight however much you earn.
It's frustrating when people who earn pots of money complain though.
But, it can be very difficult in the short term to reduce spending.

Well it's more than I have before I've paid my rent, so it sounds like loads to me.

But then I can easily see how quickly that could disappear too, especially with childcare/ high commuting costs.

However I'm often surprised with what some people on here class as essentials. I can't afford the gym, so I don't have membership. Likewise sky TV, car, takeout coffees etc.

There seems to be very few MN contributors who are out working full time yet only earning just enough to cover all the bills but not entitled to a penny in benefits.

I am. Salary has just crept over the limit for tax credits. I am astounded at the number of people citing things I could only dream of as 'essentials'.

It depends what bills they have. I have one child in nursery 4 days a week and that comes to £1,100 per month. I also have 3 other kids all at school with wrap around clubs. So I’d wipe most of that out just on childcare!

They said their bills were 1600

So 300pcm spare

There’s always one who will argue that a gym membership is a necessity for health reasons. That is 100% bollocks. A Gym membership is always a luxury. Yes if you can afford it it is beneficial for health reasons, but if you can’t then you have the benefit of being able to go for a walk.
Similarly sky tv/netflix/Disney plus/Apple Music/Spotify, all of which many of these people claiming to be struggling on two grand a month have.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting these things. There’s nothing wrong with justifying having them. but if you’re struggling to manage with the money you have then those things are all luxuries which you can afford not to have.

I earn less than that and I live in London. And I have no choice but to live on it. And you know what? I manage not to have to plead poverty on it because the reality is that the less people have, the better they usually are able to manage their money. Because they have to.

It’s not £1900 after all bills, it’s after mortgage.

Food, childcare, cars, travel costs, parking, insurances, council tax, water, clothes, birthdays etc...it’s really not hard to see how it could all be spent for a family.

YANBU

But MN is not representative of the real world as it typically has a lot more higher earners.

There are nanny, cleaner, private schools or housewife threads on a regular basis which just isn’t a normal thing in the real world.

There are also many people who lie.

The average salary where I’m from is £24,000.

Do not compare yourself to any MNer (or anyone on SM).
You are representative of the majority, they are not.

Of course it's relevant

Even if you're on 10k a month, you don't need to spend that amount - it's a choice people make.

Someone on 10k per month can easily reduce their outgoings to make life more affordable - they may not want to but that's not the same thing.

Someone on 1k a month doesn't have the same flexibility.

I'm on £1300 a month with 2 kids and a disabled husband so yabu 🤣 after rent I have £750 for all bills and living.

I wish I had 1900 after rent but good for them. I'm trying to better my situation now so my kids don't have to live in poverty, it will take a while but I'll get there

YANBU Op

But won't somebody think of those poor people in big houses 😂

I’m on statutory maternity pay at the moment and it makes me wonder how my finances were always so tight the end of the month before. I mean I’m on a third of my salary and it’s a struggle, and while DH has picked up extra shifts, doesn’t make up the difference, but we’ve managed!

when I am back to full pay it will feel financially easier until LO starts nursery lol. But just makes me realise whatever we earn we will always make work. Lucky for us we get paid at different times of the month.
I look at what we earn and think wow we earn a lot. (When back on normal pay)
after mortgage , bills , child maintenance (DH already has kids) and soon to be nursery we will have about 800. And I haven’t included house insurance as I’m not sure how much that is. And I probably forgot some other things as DH takes care of all the bills etc.

theb there is things like swimming etc.

and maintenance doesn’t cover everything so school uniforms and stuff when the other kids are here - and visiting family - and we’re in a big family so birthdays etc etc
I buy all baby’s clothes second hand but still feel guilty every time I buy something lol
when I go walking with mum friends I bring coffee in a flask while everyone else buys a take out lol
oh and our oven just broke lol
every time we manage to save a bit extra something breaks lol
but somehow we always manage and we’re happy and we have a roof over our head.

bit it does confuse me to look at my salary and think we should be rich lol
my sister thinks I’m rich yet she seems to go out alot and her whole family wear alot of designer gear etc but she doesn’t have a mortgage..
we don’t go out much or go abroad etc,
but visit family other cities, and do a lot that doesn’t cost other than fuel, ie days out to beach/ forest / bike rides etc etc

Depends how you define "need", surely.

Really you could say no one "needs" any income at all because we could all sit in the dark and live on only supermarket value noodles.

The vast majority of people could drastically reduce their outgoings if you are only looking at basic survival.

The point is it "drastically impacts their life".

If I remember correctly, that person in that post you are referring to was talking about cutting their family’s financial cushion right to the bone. That’s not financially sensible for anyone, no matter how much you have coming in, because it leaves you vulnerable to financial shocks.

It is easy to judge people who work with a larger monthly budget than you do as being ridiculous and out of touch, but then again there is always someone lower on the ladder who thinks the same thing about you. The reality is that people budget according to what they have coming in, and when the expenses go up but the money coming in remains the same, it’s going to be a struggle to recalibrate. The poster wasn’t asking if £1900 was objectively enough. They were asking was if they would be silly to load themselves down with a massive mortgage which, in addition to their current outgoings, would leave no cushion for savings or things going wrong. The answer to that would be yes.

The richer you are, the bigger your house, the more your bills... its all relative. Some people have never been poor and just can't imagine how they would possibly make their money go further and the value of money to them is very different.

£1900 after mortgage would leave me with £500 after all essential bills and petrol, food.

That £500 would have to cover DDs activities, all our clothing, savings, emergencies, spending money etc.

It isn't a lot. We tend to have between £60

To answer your question - No, you aren't massively poor. But you ARE poor.

The argument that if you have a lot of money you find a drop in income just as hard as poor people tells me that a lot of wealthy people waste huge amounts money, have very poor planning skills and no back up plan. If you have £10k a month coming in and haven't bothered to put a chunk aside that will cover your costs for at least a year in the case of job loss, you have nobody to blame but yourself. People need to learn financial responsibility, living within your means involves making sure you have enough savings to see you through short term financial upheaval.

2,000 after I paid the mortgage isn’t what I would define as all bills. I would struggle to pay childcare and the food shop with that, never mind the rest of my bills!

The point is it "drastically impacts their life".

If having to cancel your gym membership or stop paying for SKY "drastically impacts your life" then you need to get a grip, quite frankly

It's not poor, but it might not be the luxury lifestyle some on lower incomes imagine. I grew up poor, very poor, hand me down clothes from others, no holidays, walking everywhere because bus was more money than left for the week, beans on toast for dinner while mum said she wasn't hungry. Forced to have a prepayment meter because bills were so far behind. Dad working 60 hours a week in a manual labour job (and cycling his commute on an old bike someone gave him,), mum working two or even three jobs to get by and then if something went wrong and there was an unexpected bill or cost we were screwed. I was lucky that by the time I hit my teens my mum had done some qualifications and had a slightly better job, and dad was just a machine who worked so much overtime that things weren't quite as precarious.
Having said all of that there are people better off than we were then who are still struggling to make ends meet.
Our council tax is £200 3 bed semi, water £76, life insurance £50 home insurance £45, car insurance, tax , fuel £180 and we both work locally, out car is ten years old and not on finance but it's cost us £600 in MOT service and repair since January, we got rid of the second car during Covid. We do pay around £60 for TV broadband and phone (which could come down a bit but not by a huge amount), £400+ for nursery on top of funded hours, groceries including cleaning, laundry, toiletries etc £6-700 plus we used to have pet costs but the cat died. You can see that £1900 might not stretch as far as you'd think. That's without things like the glasses DH needed before Christmas, £100 for two pairs bogof even with his work discount, mine are more due to the prism lenses I need, school uniform, shoes for a child whose feet seem to grow exponentially etc.

We earn more than that and are comfortable, but we don't have extravagant outgoings and it's easy to see how £1900 seems like it should leave you comfortable but by the end of the month you have nothing.

If someone has a 10k a month income and a 2k mortgage and lose their job they will be screwed. If a person has a 1k a month income and pays £400 rent and they lose their job. The government will step in and pay their rent. The higher your income the bigger the impact. If a person on a higher income loses it their kids will be pulled out of all their activities and sports a person on a lower income their kids won't be doing horse riding, piano lessons learning French. On a higher income the kids would most likely have to change school again this wouldn't be necessary for someone on a lower income

I would struggle with 1900 after mortgage and before bills. I wouldn't struggle to the extent I couldn't make it work and would complain to everyone but it wouldn't be easy or particularly enjoyable. It's all relative.