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

I'm really struggling. I'm a single parent to 3 children, I work part time at the moment as I am studying on the other days. With wages, child benefit, child maintenance from their dad and a top up from universal credit I have the equivalent of a 30k salary.

After childcare costs, mortgage and bills I have very little left. The kids do a few activities after school during the week, but I am now at the point where I will have to cancel them as I am short every month and struggling to pay for school trips, school uniforms, clothes for home, etc. I'm dreading the summer holidays and having to pay extra for food and activities to keep them occupied.

My mortgage and and energy bills are fixed for another 8 months but after that I don't know how I will manage. I suspect I will have to give up my college course and get a new job instead to make ends meet.

I also use next credit, so if I need baby stuff I buy it on there then slowly pay it off each month, there is no way I would have a spare 100 in one whack at the moment.. I also found it difficult as bills went right up when I went back to work. As we had benefits council tax was 30 a month, getting a few quid over benefit threshold it went up to 186 a month 😭 that's just one bill changed due to it... but it will be better in the long term for us, as I will find it easier to get back into a career later on if I go from a job to a job, also have a current reference. Grinning and bearing it currently haha

Most people are working purely to pay taxes and bills. It is a disgrace. What shocks me is how people are always ready to come and tell people who earns more to shut up. This will not end well and signposts to the end of the middle class.

@HashBrownandBeans i have a husband and 4 sons and we are also spending £1k a month on food - it’s crippling. None of the usual tricks to reduce the cost are working anymore

Not everyone is surviving, but everyone has different costs and as a single parent in 'the childcare years' you'll struggle more than most. All you can do is make the best of your own situation.

Are you using tax free childcare? Can you get any help with the cost of childcare - have you checked if you're entitled to universal credit?

Can you use a childminder instead of nursery, that sort of thing? Is your DC father contributing?

At least things will ease a little when you're entitled to free hours and then DC go to school, so there's light at the end of the tunnel.

How big is your mortgage now? I've just remortgaged and it didn't double. When you get to 6 months before the date find a decent broker.

Can you downsize?

That is a huge amount even for six people. That is £166 per person and I spend that a month for two people and we eat well.

You can easily make savings here by shopping at cheaper places or switching what you're buying.

We’re not, we’re drowning. We’re 2 full time workers, DH with a good salary and me with a crappy public sector salary but with historical debts that we just can’t seem to shift no matter how hard we try. We used to be OK and could afford the odd meal out, new clothes etc but now it’s just bills and food and nothing else.

It's really, really hard. We are desperately trying to cling to the standard of living we are used to - and that was never particularly fancy, we've never holidayed abroad, don't run a car - but we are getting to the point where we can't do much at all except work, cook dinner, go to bed.
I'm surviving. But I'm finding life really hard as all the luxuries, the meals out, weekends away, going to the pub, nipping out for lunch... All gone. Life feels relentless and pointless at the moment.

Credit cards

Are you using the 20% govt help for fees? Is your work flexible and does it have different times available?

We examined all outgoings with a fine toothcomb from mobiles to Netflix and energy bills. We have cut our energy bill in half by limiting the heating and electricity using a ninja rather then the oven and a heated blanket during winter for wfh rather then putting heating on.
Food I completely changed the way we shop and eat so I buy 2 bigger things of meat so a whole chicken and a large mince pack. These do multiple dinners/meals and other then some sausages it saves a lot. I also buy bread when reduced and freeze it and freeze milk, cheese etc so we don't require top up shops as found this was really adding up.
All of the above saved us £300-£400 a month on outgoings.
Massively reduced spending all our clothes are from vinted or second hand sales.

We took a smaller mortgage when we could have taken a bigger one. We agreed it was more important that one salary could pay it if shit hits the fan than have a bigger house. We bought a four bedroom house in a less than chic area.

I worked my arse off for promotions at work (as did DH), including moving into a different more challenging role which doesn’t always have the work life balance I would like! When my DD was little I kept in at work three then four days a week and I’m so glad I did because my earning potential is much larger because of that. All my friends were saying “this is a precious time, you’ll never get it back” are economically disadvantaged - I felt I had a nice balance with dd growing up. It was tough but worth it now as my salary is same as DH’s.

Live off very basic and cheap food when have to. A lot of the basic veg and pulses are reasonably priced and going down in price this year. The core dairy and meat etc has increased but switched to buying different eg long life brands has helped.

We drive a third-hand twenty-year-old car (more sustainable to use old cars than EVs). Cost us £1.5 cash three years ago. Doesn’t look fancy but it’s ours not finance.

We don’t have a perfectly renovated house - everyone seems obsessed with immediately renovating their home when moving in or obsessed with things looking perfect. We’re doing bit by bit when can afford. We've done a couple of zero credit pay backs for some things.

Less than 30k income for the household, we send the 2 year old to nursery (and pay for it) 2 days a week, have a mortgage, bills same as everyone else, but still managing to save... we also have money for holidays and weekends away as well as days out and takeaways etc.
I've not gone back to work as we are comfortable, so now I'm confused as to why we aren't struggling reading this thread 😅 mortgage is only £510 though so maybe that?

Difference for us is we have 2 incomes, no childcare bill.
mortgage is still on a fixed tarif til December and we have been over paying so we pay less when it’s up.
Our son is disabled and we have a mobility car so we have no motoring costs plus DLA.
Parter also gets a vehicle with work.
No debts prior to the COL.

i have to agree
there is SO much talk about this

sugar was 65p
then £1
now £1.19!

shocking

I earn 40k but I'm a lone parent. I don't get UC..40k sounds a lot to anyone on NMW and will sound very little to a lot too. After rent, c/tax and utilities I'm left with around 400 quid for food, petrol, clothing (for 3 people) etc. Bugger all really. I survive and do basic social things by taking on extra work. I worked 4 nights last week on top of my 37 hours..
I'm about to get my SIA licence which will enable me to pick up even more work. I'm exhausted in my 50s. I don't want to be working sodding nights.
Eldest is about to leave college and has to get a job and contribute to the house. My youngest will start university in September but plans on staying home.

What do people eat to keep their food bills so low? I shop at Aldi, but still end up paying a fortune. We eat nicely but I don’t think extravagantly. Last nights tea was chicken skewers, Greek salad, pitas, hummus, couscous. We also had a bowl of prawns for pescatarian daughter. This cost a bloody fortune, even without the prawns. People who say they can shop for a family of four for 75 quid a week - are you eating jacket potato and beans every night? (Nothing wrong with that as a tea, by the way!) How do you manage to eat cheaply and healthily?

On paper our income is decent enough, though nowhere near the 60k to 180k most of Mumsnet apparently earns for their rare skills for a couple of days a week at a nice little hobby job.

However our income has just halved for the foreseeable future for various reasons, at least temporarily, so we are having to make some tough decisions which might include having our flat repossessed, in middle age. I am hoping we can avoid it but in the meantime....

• eating a lot less meat and batch cooking for Britain, comparing every price for everything to see where's cheapest, using the slow cooker, soup maker, air fryer and wonder bag a lot, not overbuying food, improvising and using things like Harley, oats, and lentils a lot more
• minimising our energy and water use
• never eating out, going out, or having takeaways (we used to have a couple a month). We still have Netflix and Prime for now but they might have to go as well at this rate.
• not having holidays (we used to manage one bargain basement a year and a couple of weekends)
• not travelling to see my family any more (this is actually a plus, it costs as much to visit as it did to have the holiday)
• not buying any new clothes except underwear, shoes, and tights when they wear out, and I mean wear out
• doing the equivalent of two full time jobs on top of my actual job (though loads of what I earn goes straight to the government in tax)

I had a miserably poor childhood so know most of the techniques for living on nothing but even these techniques aren't enough now. I am beyond furious that my middle years are now the same, after a brief and lovely few years between 2001 and 2008 in my 30s and early 40s when life was good and I could afford to travel a bit and even have hobbies.

My only consolation is that my pension is okay due to who I work for, but that's only if the government doesn't move the goalposts again and the overwork doesn't kill me first. I don't know how the hell people with young families or kids at university are coping. And I can't see any light ahead, it all looks so incredibly joyless.

I hope those who've brought us to this, either by their policy making or voting decisions, are proud of themselves. Not that they'll ever even notice the peasants, much less give a monkey's backside.

Really struggling here, standard of living has fallen through the floor. My 3 kids are well out of childcare years but I’m a single parent of 3. My teenagers desperately need new clothes but they needed new uniform last month and there was nothing left for non-school clothes. They complain that there isn’t enough food in the house. I spent £105 in Tesco last week and it barely lasted the week. I have 2 teenagers and one preteen, work 4 days a week for 19k and get universal credit of between 6-700 a month. Yes we are surviving but there is no money for any extras like, certainly not days out or treats. Not looking forward to the summer holidays.

I'm a single mum, one ds, mortgage, salary about the same as yours.

By cutting back. No coffees out, cancelled all subscriptions, weekends at home, cook from scratch, choose cheaper food, packed lunches when I go to the office.

I don't spend anything I don't need to.

We spent approx £100 a week at Aldi give or take.

but we also probably eat out twice a week so that’s why.

Right now we’re ok as we refixed our mortgage last year for 5 years and dh works for an energy company so decent utility discount. Our take home is higher than yours too. It depends how long all this goes on tbh, but at the end of our fix there’ll be 13 years left on the mortgage so if the payments were suddenly unmanageable we would have space to extend it. Not overreaching in the first place on the mortgage helps too.

i am definitely noticing the food bill creeping up though!

We are in trouble.
Public sector worker ft ( 30k) part time worker me( minimum wage) and a DS 6.. savings have now been demolished and we are completely broke 2 weeks after payday.
We are barely keeping our head above water.

Everything has been cut to the bone, not that we were big spenders before.

It's difficult when I hear family members of 125k complain how tough it is.. there spent 50k of holidays in the last 12 months. ( I know this as they won't shut up about it!)
Meanwhile I'm in debt to our water company....

Yep lots of basic food, use spices and herbs to add flavour! Eg make a tomato pasta sauce using tinned tomatoes, ketchup and herbs. Lots of things like that.

Meal needs core components: carb, protein, veg. Protein doesn’t have to be meat.

I think the media and social media has a lot to answer for with setting people’s expectations and putting pressure around making everything feel and look perfect from clothes to food. It’s just not financially sustainable or healthy. A lot of priorities and expectations in the wrong place.