How are people surviving

[Truthseeker456]

I don't get it. One income and I am on a what was a good wage 53,000. My mortgage is likely to double next year I have nursery fees and 3000 take home and always in my overdraft. How are people surviving, we don't hear anything in the media. Rents are also though the roof

higher income earners have mainly managed to secure above inflation pay increases. Which would go towards paying the higher mortgage when the fixed term ends and also for some fun. The people who will see a drop are young families where the mum has taken a step back in her career so less earning power. But i guess in London, as people have children later, many more women have established careers before having DC so any hit may not be that significant.

I’ve taken in a lodger and made the kids share a room and am trying to pick up more self employed work, but it’s hard as a single mum doing 90% of the child care.

I wish the government could read this thread.

I don't see how your mortgage will double. Yes rates have increased but that doesn't mean your repayments will double.

If you're really struggling, you could extend the term of your mortgage to make repayments more affordable.

I earn £85k (pro rate to 4 days) and my husband earns about £40k. He struggles at but as he pays maintenance towards three other kids.

We've only managed to not be in a terrible state by me working around my DH job so we don't have childcare costs, I work 35hrs and he works 60hrs but with 4 kids our food shop bill is our biggest expense! We earn less than average 2 income house. We have zero hope of getting on the property ladder and stuck in private rental but at least we aren't starving.

We used to have two really good incomes. Now I'm scraping by on my backside and that's after letting two staff go from my business. My business was already struggling post Covid before the current circumstances really got their claws in. DH was made redundant and retrained last year so he's not earning anywhere near what he was.
We were fortunate to have considerable credit for gas/elec which saw us through the winter with only a 70% rise in our bill (what is this world coming to where a payment is increasing by 70% and we're saying it's "only"), we were fortunate enough to get a new deal on our mortgage at the back end of last year, so it only increased by 23%, and we had a lot of things we could cut back in like eating out/days out/holidays/new clothes/takeaways/pension contributions/savings (we're living on those not adding to them), it's all stopped
We're both self employed and haven't had any time off work since August because we can't afford it. We're exhausted and fed up, and we're some of the people that are better off. We will make through to early Spring if things continue and then we really will be in dire straits.

I know but it should be

Someone posted this on here recently but I was surprised that more people own outright than have a mortgage.
Lots on thread on here having paid off mortgages at pretty young ages or inherited houses.
Especially in these times most people won’t broadcast that, just nod along if people are chatting about mortgage rates.
No mortgage or rent makes a massive difference.

Some of these responses are just ridiculous. I would be willing to bet that some of these ' I earn less than £ 30000 and get be just fine ' responses and from some people who live in social housing and get benefits, help with childcare etc. But they can't understand how people with mortgages, childcare expenses and other costs are struggling.

You can survive on ridiculously low cost stuff, like living in a prison. I did this when I was a student.

Lentils, rice, beans etc are very cheap.

It's just not very nice and not for most people, unless you've got zero taste buds and revel in eating the same bland slop every single day.

Some people can do it, and not only that they actually like it.

Why should it be? If you have someone, say, who is wheelchair bound and needs PIP to pay for mobility aids, and those mobility aids enable them to travel to work, are you saying they should be denied the opportunity to work and be forced to sit boredly at home, scraping by on benefits?

Not everyone can lock in mortgage rates 6 months in advance - my lender only allows 3 months. So people coming up now to the point where they have 3 months before their fix ends, are fucked.
Even where they could have locked in a cheaper rate than the current one, it 's not right to blame people for not marking the right guess. Even financial experts were just making educated guesses as to how things might pan out!
Besides which, there'd be no point to raising rates if everyone was able to dodge it by fixing. The point of it is that most people won't be able to avoid it.

@GasPanic and fair play to them. Let’s hope it eases for us all, tho my podcast habit is not giving me much hope. All of them are doom and gloom!

Exactly . OP is only saying her wage doesn't stretch as far as it used to .

I used a huge chunk of savings and something matured so I could pay off my mortgage early. It was either that or rent out a spare room.

I won’t lie and say that food and utilities have gone up a lot for me.

For me this is why I prefer hybrid working as I save on commuting and general daily spends at work. Lots of friends are similar.

A few friends don’t go out as much now.

Boyfriend stopped work but works for himself and is sorting out parents and brother’s estates then will get back into work, he said he saves on commute, after work socialising, daily work spends.

I’m fairly lucky in that as a family we have a few BTL’s which help generate an extra income for me, DB and DP’s partly because DB worked for himself for a few years and was chronically sick as a child and education was affected. He fitted them all out though entirely. I know MN hates these landlords but as DM was also medically retired it helps her too. Certainly not a huge portfolio and selling one soon to free up capital.

Right now I’ve been growing fruit and veg, making oatcakes and bread etc.

I don’t have debts per se but I do still sometimes do Klarna or Clearpay or Next pay to help spread costs.

Certain foods I don’t eat if too expensive. Eg meat etc.

People do survive but you have to be creative.

SIL having second baby in autumn and recently said she’s taking off a year compared to 6 months with her first child. I think for her sanity but also saving nursery costs.

I’ll be on holiday but prob joining big family one, huge villa/house will share costs.

I do know a single woman with a perm full time job who takes on extra work eg dog walking, helping neighbours or childcare drop off etc all paid for. Because she WFH she fits this in around her job. lots of other friends babysit.

My hairdresser said that her one holiday this year is a staycation long weekend with her DH. When it comes to the choice between paying her rent and keeping her salon open she’d rather prioritise that than but new stuff or go out loads but she was giving me the lowdown on pub prices, ones with gardens which me as a single person you don’t often think about unless you’re on a really tight budget.

This is fine for a while but it's hard to get enough nutrients on a diet like that. You need a range of food including fresh fruit and veg to stay healthy. Students are young and their health is relatively good.

For growing children or older adults, bad nutrition is going to lead to greater susceptibility to ill health and disease, which is expensive to them and to the nation through healthcare, lost productivity etc.

I'm all for being frugal and eating beans etc instead of meat, but living on a shoestring is a recipe for poor health, sooner or later.

That's not what I'm saying,let me go into more detail. If they are capable of working then I don't think they should be getting pip for themselves unless it's someone who uses hearing aids or wheelchair bound, have explained , please don't try and twist my words now.

I’ve survived on low cost stuff and made friends with and helped a friend who had an allotment before.

We would swap things we’d grown, cheap recipes. Would go to markets for cheap end of day food. No way would I be able to live or afford house deposit but I did move back with parents in that period too which helped.

You do get used to eating less. I snacked far less but also got cheaper food from Somerfiekd, Kwik Save, Netto etc. I also had lots of dates who’d buy me lunch, dinner etc. at one stage I never had to cook. Dates always insisted on paying though I did go Dutch a few times too. For cheap meals we did cheap pizza express meals, orange Wednesdays and attended free gallery opening etc. got free sandwiches as worked at architects who’d do CPD seminars and always over-ordered sandwiches so there were extras.

And don't anybody mention Brexit.

How much it your rent? And whereabouts in the country do you live?

Do you get housing benefit?

In the south east that income would barely cover the rent on a 3 bedroom house, let alone anything else.

Even if not at pretty young ages, there are about 11 million people over 65 in the UK. Most of them won't be paying a mortgage. The majority are owner occupiers or in SH.

We are doing OK now as I work FT, been promoted, have a fixed deal mortgage and energy so been cushioned from the worst. Also our kids are teenagers so no childcare. So although we are lucky now we’ve really struggled in the past, unemployment, fixed mortgage at similar rates to now just before the financial crash, 2 x redundancies in the last few years, husband furloughed in Covid etc so swings and roundabouts

We are just having days out ATM no holidays booked.We dont have takeouts, and run one car which we could do with updating but wont.MG not too bad and we have a friend who is also a lodger .Clothes Ebay .I think its sometimes misleading .As someone on say 70k should on paper, be better off than someone on a lower wage .However there are so many variables ,how big your home/MG is ,whether you run 2 cars and so on.I think AB should be sacked and Interest Rates should be reduced and kept there .

I think about this everyday, the cost of living is staggering these days and I simply do not know how people are going to cope with the next lot of mortgage and rent increases. I own my home outright and my only child is grown and gone, but it does not take much imagination and empathy to feel for people who have dependents and housing costs to pay. This is the real "trickle down" effect, the less people have to spend the more things they will cut back on, so they will of necessity, spend far less on non-essentials, so more businesses will go to the wall. How many people are managing to feed and clothe their children I do not know, it shocks me how much food costs and it seems to go up on a weekly basis. I try and put baby stuff in the food bank collection point when I go shopping, wipes, nappies and baby bath stuff, but I cannot afford to donate as regularly as I used to and I am sure I am not alone in this. Scary times and then factor in a government that is totally out of touch, uncaring, greedy and self-serving and here we are.

It is very hard for people. In some parts of London the £3000 net pay of the poster would not even pay full time childcare costs for two babies or a baby and toddler for normal working hours, nv er mind rent which is why a lot of people have to have two full time salaries. I am not sure if the original poster has said what the children's father's pays but he should be paying at least half the childcare costs.

I am much older, will work full time until I die and have grandchildren (and only 2 adult children living at home who I still do support financially entirely although that ends next year other than they will still live here). I paid off my mortgage in April 2023. I first took out a mortgage in 1984 so it has been an almost 40 year mortgage haul. (I don't have savings or pension). I am not hard up.

People's situations vary a lot. The post earlier on about the turn arond to about 40% no mortgage and 30% have a mortgage is partly because instead of dying in their 60s as my family has tended to do people are living an extra 20 years so more change they pay off a mortgage and quite a lot were council tenants who exercised right to buy so own outright. Also in lockdowns with furlough and no holidays quite a lot of the better off put the spare money into lots of mortgage repayments (lucky them).

This goes through my mind every day, how much more of this will people take? I think that once summer ends things are going to get very challenging.