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

To be fair, once you've had £3k per month disappear into £1500 childcare and £1000 mortgage and maybe £200 for fuel and insurance for the car needed to get to work leaving only £300 for everything else, including food, £50k doesn't feel that much. It's hugely important to realise that a lot of people earning good money have big costs to earn it and pay a lot of tax so the take home isn't as high as you'd expect. It's a lot fairer to compare the actual money coming in after costs.

Anyway, we saved hard and fixed our mortgage until our youngest is out of nursery in the hope that by the time it goes sky high we'll not be paying so much childcare. Still having to dip into savings each month for now but we have capacity to increase income so it's not awful and recognise this is what our rainy day savings are for and we're lucky to have them.

some of the top earners?

When we were on £75k, we were in our 20s, living at home and scraping together a 15% deposit to buy a small 2 bed flat in London. And at a budget of 400k, we could only afford flats in many southern towns either or perhaps a very small 2 bed terrace. Those were the towns with 1 hour and 30 minutes commute door to door. And now certainly you couldn't afford a terraced house in most parts of the SE on 400k, it would be something like £450k excluding the £5k season ticket as prices in the SE are now much closer to suburban london than there used to be. We had just started building our career. That was in 2019 when there was very low to almost zero inflation.

Someone on £75k household income would probably find it really tight now, esp with kids.

That poster was combined income of 125k… that IS some of the top earners in the country.

it was 50+ 75k

and yes on 75k means you are close to the top 5% of earners in the country

I'm a lower earning and qualify for some UC. I'm worried. But more worried that people earning £50k plus are struggling because if they lose their jobs and get lower paid ones to get top ups will there be less money in the pot? Their taxes are subsidising the lower earners with benefits and if they can't then what happens?

@CosmosQueen

“Try living on two state pensions plus a small NHS one that ensures you get too much for benefits.”

Presumably you’re not paying for childcare though which is the biggest cost people are struggling with alongside mortgage? I get how housing costs could be tricky on the state pension if you’re still paying rent or a mortgage though.

There'd likely be support with rent in that situation, but pensioners still paying off mortgages is something of a ticking timebomb. People who are pension age now had the opportunity to secure much cheaper housing in real terms than has been available to younger generations. They didn't all do it, but enough did. Give it a couple of decades and that will stop being true.

People get stuck though. Right now if your mortgage is high, you'd struggle to sell. You're mortgage could go up £600 and people don't usually have £600 spare s month. Plus some parts of the country are more expensive and we all have different outgoings ie different journeys to work, care responsibilities etc

Plus someone complaining isn't saying no one else has it harder. We could all say, someone else is worse off, they're homeless, in a war zone etc.. But they are just saying they're struggling in their situation and asking for support or advice.

We are in a similar boat. I am self employed and make "good" money..above average for my age etc. DH is in a v high up position and on a good wage but we have nothing leftover at the end of the month. Our bills (inc mortgage) are about £3.5K a month plus £500 on food (family of 4). It's astonishing. We don't have a car - I have no idea how people drive round in brand new fancy cars! Even £400 a month would be an enormous stretch for us at the moment!!

My DH is on £75k, and i am on £45k. Income isn't the same as wealth. we still live in the same 2 bed flat and we don't have a car. I wouldn't say we are in abject poverty but we are definitely not rich either.

Being in the top 5% of income earners in the country means absolutely nothing when an elderly pensioner can make £500k in a blink of an eye by downsizing. If we 'downsized', we would have to find new jobs in a cheaper area, move into rental and then probably buy a small house up north with the equity we have in our London flat. Altogether very risky move in the best of times. If you are telling me we are in the top 5% of income earners in London, then i would say thats something, but i think you have to earn £300k each for that...

The world is so different today to what it used to be decades ago. Nowadays, the essentials for life, housing, food, utilities, are the expensive things. The luxuries are relatively cheap. Its madness.

I'm in an area where private nursery is around £90 a day but school attached nursery which offer wrap around care are about £20 a day (as 9-3 falls within the 15/30 hours - you could also use the tax free childcare here too). Quite a few parents from my dcs nursery jump ship when their dcs are 3 but as it is term time only I can't as I don't have anyone to look after the dcs whilst I'm at work.

Its 9-3.45 term time. £15 for the session x

But it’s some perspective. I also don’t feel rich, I earn a bit less than you and my husband 55k and we’re having to make cutbacks and we have 2 nursery aged children but it’s disingenuous and tone deaf to think people like us who clear 6 figures (or thereabouts) a year are struggling. Ultimately that’s the price for living in london, you could move outside london and commute, go for a wfh job etc or yes move (you’d probably find yourself better off)- that all sounds very flippant and I don’t mean it to and I don’t doubt that life is less comfortable than it was and I loathe how ‘downsize’ is thrown around on here like it’s a magic pill but my point is in the UK if you earn over 75k you are the top 5% of earners

Can I ask what everyone is doing with their ‘ spare time’? This is one of our biggest issues, having cut back on leisurely shopping trips, meals out , cinema trips etc I find filling time difficult.
we do have a dog so lots of walks , reading books etc, but I’m thinking everyone must be in the same boat , filling time that was previously spent eating, drinking, hobbies, kid’s activities.

PIP is an in work and out of work benefit so your sniping isn't really helpful.

These threads always bring out the twats who say you can’t be struggling because you earn SO MUCH MORE than them.

Its all relative ffs. Let’s say for a middle earner -

Mortgage increases from £1,500 a month to £2,000 a month.
Utilities increase from £400 to £800 a month.
Food bill increases from £600 to £1,000 a month.

But then wages don’t increase by £1,300 a month to cover the difference. In fact because companies are struggling, they increase by zero.

And for working families in middle income brackets, there is no extra help.

So yes, it DOES affect middle to higher earners too.

(and those on a higher income would have more disposable income living in smaller houses, or by not being tied into car finance/PCH, but you can’t just hand a car back in breach of contract, or tell your adult/teenage children that they need to go back to sharing a bedroom and can no longer have partners staying over, or rehome beloved pets because they’re an expensive luxury. Real life doesn’t work that way)

Debt and more debt.

We are done scrimping and leading miserable lives, if we are offered overdraft extensions and credit cards, we take them up.

We have done nothing wrong, we've worked hard and and until five or six years ago things were OK.

Now this stupid fucking Government has left all of us so worse off, it's criminal.

So let the chips fall where they may. If we have to declare bankruptcy then we haven't wasted the best years of our life paying for the mistakes of others.

For me I am playing the long game. I hope to earn more and so does my DH. But you have to continue playing the game in order to do that.

Cos I ultimately think that inequality would grow and wherever you are in the country, you will ultimately struggle if not on 6 figures. Look at how Manchester has become quite expensive over the span of a few years with four figure per month rentals..the housing crisis is now bigger than London.

The only remedy is to earn more sadly. Or vote for better politicians. I think the latter is more sustainable as a solution as obviously not everyone can earn more.

I think struggle though is relative, would you struggle to have a modest mortgage 1/ 2 school aged children and one family holiday each year on £70k combined living in Newcastle? Probably not no, it depends on the life you want to live, if you want to rely on the nhs for healthcare etc. I think you need a bit of a reality check on that. I don’t say that to attack you because this is something I have to remind myself of, in addition to counting my blessings. I’ve recently had a massive panic about my mortgage thinking I can’t afford it, but there is a difference between wanting to pay it and actually being able to.

obviously I don’t know what you do for work, but more and more jobs I see are remote, even when london based. My husband recently went to an interview with an investment bank in london and whilst the job was ‘based from london’ they wanted 1 day in the office a week. One could easily live in coventry/ Birmingham etc and do that.

If you had told someone 10 years ago that someone on £70k would find it hard to buy a house in many parts of the SE without a partner, they would have probably thought you were a bit strange..or that you would have to pay for private healthcare. My husband went to a neurologist after only 2 days of waiting (private and on his workplace insurance) and he saw a family friend (retired teacher on modest income) there. The NHS just isn't functioning the way it did before..

The same applies for WFH, yes you can WFH in many jobs for now but will that be the case in 10 years time or would they be outsourced to India?

Staying in the capital city gives you more options. Esp if you are lucky enough to always own your home there..

My mortgage is 2.5 times our combined income. And it would only be two times our combined income £260k when I remortgage next year..dunno what Newcastle prices are but unless the mortgage there is below £150k not sure how I would be better off. I don't have a car in London and our council tax is lower than in most parts of the country...

Absolutely agree on healthcare there, unfortunately private insurance seems to be an almost necessity but the ability to have it is a privilege most don’t get.

i don’t think wfh jobs are destined to be outsourced to India…that’s an odd conclusion to come to. Additionally, perhaps in certain fields there are more opportunities in london but there are plenty outside of London too, the big big company i used to work for moved their HQ out of london. And lots of financial services institutions have their hq outside of london or require only a few days in the month from the main office

We are in a similar position, combined income of 3k a month. 36k a year. Mortgage is fixed for 3 and a half years, own our car outright, no debt/credit cards, 30k in high interest savings account for when it's time to remortgage. Council tax is high at £200. Food around £400 a month. All bills come to around £1.6k, that leaves us saving at least 1k a month, sometimes more, sometimes less, after things like clothing, birthdays etc but we are quite good at living well within our means. No expensive holidays (since covid), no regular takeaways or expensive meals out, we have a home gym in our garage so no gym memberships. I'd say we have a pretty good disposable income every month, personally feel very lucky to be able to save 1k a month. Obviously that might not be a lot to some people but for us its a absoulte luxury.

On the question about what to do in spare time that doesn't cost anything, I suppose that is most of my spare time. I never get things like takeaways nor go to the cinema etc. Spare time would be things like DIY, the garden ( I am lucky enough to have one) and I work on each of the 7 days of the week from home so I suppose my spare time is spent earning money to pay tax etc UK has highest tax burden for 70 years which is one reason young families including middle earners with vast childcare bills of £20k per baby in London all out of after tax income, have so little left.

If they m ade full time workers' ful time childcare costs for children under say 4 years old fully tax deductible that would be a huge imkprovement if we really have to keep the current massively high taxes given how many people are being shoved into the 40% plus 2% NI bracket, loss of child benefit and all the other sleights of hand which mean young families are much worse off because of higher tax.

Well the mortgage would be dependent on whatever your deposit was but yes if you sold your london property, im pretty confident you’d end up with a cheaper mortgage on a property further north. I’m not saying you should up sticks and move all the way to Newcastle but a 2 bed flat in london will cost you a lot more than one in Coventry or Birmingham or Manchester or Newcastle (not talking city centre locations, as similarly I doubt we’re talking zone 1 london)