Anyone else on an incredibly low wage? How do you manage?

[Fruitandbarley1]

Luckily I have 2 jobs, one which pays better but my first job in a care home pays £11 an hour, so 58p above minimum wage. I am applying for one better paid full time job rather than having 2 separate ones.
I know it's poorly paid because it's seen as unskilled and as a 'women's job'.

For that wage I deal with daily sexual, verbal and physical abuse, people who are doubly incontinent, medical emergencies, people who are having psychotic episodes and so on. Often don't get the full (unpaid) break.
I know it'll never change so I'm leaving sadly as much as I find it rewarding and love the residents.

Luckily my other work pays better so I'm trying to do that full time.
I flat share with my partner but if I were to live alone I'd be spending around 65% of my income on a small one bed flat. It's wrong in this day and age. Partner isn't well paid either but is also going for better work.
I have £80 per week for food, toiletries, all socialising, any extras. I know it's more than a lot of people have though, and we don't have children. Just interested to see how others cope on a low wage.
I usually find with colleagues that they're married to a higher earner or also receiving universal credit.

Yes low wage here
teaching assistant: £10.90 ish an hour
husband is at Aldi £12.30 ish an hour

quite simply every penny is counted for , and yet we still never have enough.

we make good use of reductions and olio and a community kitchen.

I work 30 hrs a week and hubby does close to 50 most weeks .

it’s only going to get worse with the mortgage rate going up .

i am fairly well qualified, I have a BA hons degree, so potentially when the kids are more independent I could look towards moving to teaching/ a completely different job

however , I don’t think lack of working is really the problem in our house !

I am also on minimum wage but not entitled to any extra as I don't have kids. I really really struggle. I don't have holidays and eat bread for most meals that I make last most of the week.

Because of ill health/disability. (However this wasn't taken into account in the UC calculation.)

I honestly don't understand why you got nothing. Were your savings too high? Partner working?

I'm honestly shocked (and somewhat baffled) by these posts such as @garlictwist and @Beenhereageskeepchangingname

I'm trying to work out where the issue is in terms of living costs. It can only be to do with housing costs and also council tax (such a stupid regressive tax).

Obviously people working in min wage jobs (including me!) should be paid sufficiently, and skilled jobs such as care should be paid a lot more! But I hadn't realised that living costs were so high in some places that full time minimum wage was quite so dire.

What's your combined income if you don't mind sharing?

I have a fairly low paid job but it’s not badly paid (approx £32K a year). But I have investments and as a family we have rental properties which bring in an income. We don’t necessarily rely on the income but it goes into a big pot from which we as a family can take out extra if needed. My DM does take an income from it as her pension is less due to job sharing for part of her career as a teacher and then retiring on medical grounds.

When I had a mortgage I did struggle for a bit especially when food bills and energy bills went up but I just looked into how I could pay off my mortgage early and luckily I could do this. Also when I bought my first property I was paying more in rent than I’d have been for a mortgage so it was a no brainer plus I rented out a room to help with the mortgage (and it left me with a healthy profit left over).

From speaking to friends who earn less one retrained and took exams to get a better paid carer job. Her daughter who’s a nurse does as a PP daughter does and does gel nails, eyelash extensions etc on the side for extra money. I also worked with a receptionist a few years ago who was a beauty therapist on the side and a supply teacher did babysitting in the evenings. My DM when she was teaching but lived with my stepdad earned a good wage but for extra money did children’s entertainments at parties (clowns and puppet shows), private tutoring and drama classes on Saturday mornings - I don’t think all at once! Other people I know taught aerobics in the evenings as well as a daytime job.

I’ve known friends parents when I was young who had multiple jobs, in a supermarket, cleaning etc.

You are not in a low paid job ffs

@StAnthonysPA I was working part time and owning my own home meant I got nothing I think.

I don't have any savings, house is mortgaged, no children and I was single.

I didn't claim but I think I did the online calculator

@TomorrowToday

My apologies, I misunderstood your post and thought you were renting at £1000 a month. (Assumed you were in London somewhere!) I now realise the typo was "earning" not "renting".

So would I be better of living in the capital and not working lol? Asking for a friend

I didn't say anything about working or not.
My original point was that if you're on a low enough income you would be entitled to some Universal Credit to top up that income, even without DC. Much as I loathe to compliment the Tories on anything, UC is actually better for a single, childless working person than the benefits that came before.

Paying a mortgage always changes things though, so I can see why you were struggling yet not entitled to UC. If you'd been renting, housing costs would form part of the UC calculation. (The nonsense of paying private landlords' mortgages for them is a whole other debate!)

Not working at all would make you worse off, because of the way the taper rate of UC works. Moving to the capital and paying v high rent would also not make you any better off, as any extra money allowed would go straight on your rent.

@StAnthonysPA only because if you are evicted due to non payment of rent you go to the council for help.

It's actually disgusting that someone who's rent is £600 per month snd earns £1k is getting any extra £5k a year UC.

When I got a 37.5 contract, so 17.5 hours instead of 20, I got £1500 per month take home.

No wonder why a woman across the road lives in a HA house and doesn't work. No point...

Really boils my piss that the government realise NMW is not enough to live on, so they top this up, yet the companies people are doing their NMW jobs for make huge profits, meaning the government is effectively paying into these profits rather than forcing the companies to pay a fair wage in the first place.

It's not always topped up
If you're single/no children/have a mortgage

If they increase the NMW than so does inflation.

Absolutely.

Can you look into retraining as hgv driver? The money is great

21k a year, was 18.5k until s couple of months ago. Live in the South East, I survive by renting a room in someone else's house where bills etc are included. No other way of doing it, no extra help as single and childfree. Will be moving 4 hours North soon to try and have some sort of quality of life

I work for the frontline emergency ambulance service (so attending 999 jobs and driving under emergency conditions etc) I earn £11.50ph, slightly more if I work unsocial hours. It’s really really tough and I’m in my over draft most months. Luckily my partner is much higher up in the ambulance service and earns much more (still not enough for his responsibility though)
mid I wasn’t with him, I’m not actually sure how I’d cope, guess I’d have to claim UC and kids would go without and I’d be in council housing etc

I know a private hospital (but now serving the nhs too) could only pay their straight shift full time receptionists a salary of £20,444 were offering the successful candidate that walked to work and or didn’t take up a parking space a free lunch plus many other benefits so didn’t seem that bad if in a job you enjoy.

I actually somehow am doing really well for now.
I earn £20,700 so I think that’s just above minimum wage. I come out with £1,450 a month.
I live with my partner and no kids, we moved to one of the cheapest areas of the country so mortgage is £500/month, total outgoings per month including mortgage, bills and food shop amounts to £700/750 each which leaves me with £700 spending money.
I don’t drive because I wfh two days and the other three days I go to the office by train. DP has a works van where he gets free fuel, we’re incredibly lucky so use this to go out usually.
Mortgage will be going up to about £900 once the fixed term ends, and energy will probably go up again too soon. I’ll still have a few hundred quid left over though hopefully, so not worrying for now.

So your mortgage is £1k in total?

No, I may have phrased that badly.

I have a very low salary so automatically expect that I can't buy a new sofa or TV or whatever unless the old ones are decimated.

A lot of fun things are free however, like listening to music or watching films, walks and historical visits, or slight expense incurred like a cake or meal out or buying a new jumper or a class or learning a (less expensive) skill.

In my dreams I'd like to be on a yacht however I have a canoe 😁

Yacht will have to wait until I'm more affluent.

Is it?