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

Oh please. £95 a week is masses to spend on food for a family that size. Good, fresh food that is well cooked too.

Nice one to pile in on people who can’t even spend that and make them feel bad for feeding their children ‘shit’.

I agree. If anything I have somewhat improved the nutritional value of my meals. D s eats better too. I turn 60 this year and have a sleep disorder and ds is now in a full time job so needs good nutrition. I fail to see the point of getting sick from poor self care. I cleared my mortgage two years ago but now have the mortgage of food!

It is disgusting how many people are now being affected by the COL. My heart goes out to homeless families and individuals.

Don't be so fucking ridiculous @3BSHKATS

There's endless perfectly nutritious meals that can be made on a budget from basic ingredients that aren't 'shit'.

For example Aldi do a free range chicken for not much more than £5. Add potatoes, carrots and broccoli or similar and you have a family roast with leftovers that can be used with a tin of chick peas, frozen spinach, onions, spices, tomatoes etc and rice, brown of course, to make a curry.

Yes, you need to keep a store cupboard, be able to cook and you won't be eating great piles of meat (or fish) every day, but no-one should be doing that anyway.

But it's absolutely not the case that £95 worth of food for a family will be shit or that only by spending loads more than that can you eat a good diet.

Your chicken feeds 5000 does it, bs.

Cheaper food, Less nutrition fact. Youll at best not have optimal health at worst cause long term damage and be in a weakened position to fight off disease and infection

We’re not really surviving. Keeps me up at night. I earn £70k, my DH considerably less (£25k ish) and we have two in nursery and a large mortgage. We hardly go out, just pay bills. We get no govt help. It’s awful atm.

Mortgages and childcare are a killer..our income is similar to yours, just slightly under but we have a small mortgage and no childcare costs. We are fine. Not struggling but not loaded. Whilst on paper people might think you're minted on nearly 100k, with a big mortgage and kids in childcare I can easily see how you'd be struggling. Wages are just not enough in the UK.

The 2 of you earn £100,000 ish currently. You decided what house price you would aim for and the mortgage that went with it. Did you not realise that you might have children and childcare one day to pay for? I understand that people are struggling but a lot of it might be interpreted as overstretching to get a bigger house etc. Everyone that does that fuels the price rises, it's a continuing circle. So would £150,000 together 'be enough'? There are people saying that isn't enough. So say £200,000 then? Then there are others who have budgeted and made different choices who are managing on very much less (many without benefit top ups).

Devils advocate here but if wages were higher then people would just get bigger mortgages and house prices would rise further. The people would still moan they don't earn enough.

However, once your children are in school then childcare will reduce and you will be better off so hang on to the long term benefits for short term pain.

@ghostyslovesheets "I've stopped having my nails done and my hair is now done every 10-12 weeks rather than 6-8 - due to health issues I've had to buy new clothes as dropped a lot of weight but I buy in the sale and second hand. No big holiday this year and I use Klana to buy more expensive things and spread the cost"

Might be worth popping your clothes on vinted, if you haven't already done that. Teenagers could do the same with theirs.

The point is £100k a year is considered in the UK to be a high income...that pp is on 70k. 70k is a fairly high salary on its own. Majority of jobs don't pay anywhere near that. We will be in serious trouble if only people on six figure salaries can afford to have children

Do you not understand how much mortgage repayments have gone up? Our joint income is 75k, our house cost 290k. Repayments we’re 800 when we bought and are now 1200, set to rise to 1400 when the fixed term ends in July. Saying this is because people maxed out to buy lavish houses isn’t true. Plus if everyone regardless of income went for the cheapest properties then lower earners wouldn’t have a hope in hell of buying anything. People generally buy relative to their income bracket at the time, where that used to be two or three times their average salary it is now seven or eight times, for exactly the same house.

Everyone is different - some will want their hair done (I dye mine for £8 at home and cut it myself and some will say - wasteful you - let it go grey and save the £8). However the squeezed middle are certainly struggling. For those of us with parents who were here during WWII and rationing it is a fact that most people ARE better off than those very older times, never mind even further in the past but that is no comfort to those today trying to afford full time childcare or live on one wage because childcare full time for a baby is too expensive.

As for what people should spend on food that is up to them. Probably for a lot of us the best thing we (adults) could do for our health is intermittent fasting - eat one meal a day and lose weight (I certainly would put myself into that category but I don't take my own advice....) Yet if times are hard the last thing you want to cut back on are your little relatively cheap treats.

CaramelicedLatte We eat very well thank you, make our own sourdough bread , cheaper and more nutritious than the bread you are probably buying at Aldi-recommended by a nutritionist if you don’t mind. Instead of ranting why not do some research. Have a nice day.

Quite right, we had high mortgage payments when our children were young and lived on pasta, home made pizza and other simple food with less protein (but enough) and lots of fruit and vegetables (including frozen). Porrige and/or eggs and toast for breakfast.
This was a perfectly healthy diet.
I think that the people who have more problems have less time to cook and buy more expensive food because they see it as quicker to cook, e.g. prepared pasta sauces, ready meals, ready to cook protein. In fact cooking from scratch doesn't take much longer - it was possible for me although I had four children, a husband working overseas and a very full-time job.
We also usually had a lodger which helped with the bills but added to the work.

This is a very outdated view. Switching to porridge for breakfast will barely make a dent in your finances. This sort of cutting back may have worked decades ago but not anymore.

Also you're describing perfectly ordinary foods...eggs and porridge for breakfast. What on earth do you think people eat? Caviar and smoked salmon. And cooking from scratch isn't necessarily cheaper. I've costed up many things including dinners and cakes/biscuits/bread. Many years ago, convenience food was very expensive but not so much nowadays. Cooking from scratch won't suddenly mean you can pay your mortgage

I think the biggest problem with food spending in the U.K. is meat. I read some of the ‘what are you having for dinner this week’ threads and was surprised at how many posters had meat for every single meal - not just ham or canned tuna (if that counts as meat!), but chicken breasts, pork chops, steaks. I can see how a good shop for 4 people comes to £100+ per week when you’re buying 6 or 7 lots of meat every time. I spend £70 tops for a family of 4, one in nappies. The same shop would’ve been about £50 last year so it’s not wonderful in that sense but still seems to be a lot less than others on here. I do 2 portions of meat a week, 2 of fish (one being canned tuna, one salmon) and three vegetarian days. One of those days is just something like beans on toast with grated cheese.

It would be interesting to see the contents of their order but I know I’ll get my arse rightly handed to me if I ask for a breakdown, so I won’t!

Indeed @Sweetashunni I got my arse handed to me earlier this morning for daring to suggest that a chicken might do two meals, with the addition of chick peas in a curry for the second meal because, you know, protein.

Cutting out meat a few times a week isn't going to make a big enough dent. We've had posters saying that their DC's nursery costs £100 a day. Shaving twenty quid off your food isn't going to make a big difference.

We have now reached a point where cutting back on luxuries is pointless. The essentials are the expensive thing.

Ok, so Netflix costs about £7 a month so £84 a year. That won't even cover one day at nursery.

I know what people eat, I see their trolleys full of convenience foods, pasta sauces, ready to cook (eg flavoured BBQ) meats, seasoned or breadcrumbed chicken fillets. Microwave rice, prepared veg, ready meals. As the last poster said, "chicken breasts, pork chops, steaks" rather than cheaper cuts, with expensive protein at every meal.

And from the look of their trolleys many people eat cereal bars or sweetened cereals for breakfast.

I don't see this as "perfectly ordinary food" but as the value-added stuff that manufacturers produce to make money - and cost consumers money.
I agree that bread is cheaper to buy than to make. But buying cake and biscuits? Snacks like this all add up.

Probably because the reality is that for many families, a chicken would only work for ONE meal. Hence the rise of the mumsnet mythical chicken that feeds a village for a week…

Try telling my hungry teens that for dinner we’re sharing half a chicken between all of us. It’s honestly ridiculous. Probably fine for two adults and a toddler though.

Not by itself but that’s not a reason not to bother doing it. Meat for 4 people is (erring on the low side) about £5. If you cut it out 3 times a week that’s £15 a week, or £70 per month approximately. Which isn’t insignificant when you’re tightly squeezed.

Cereal is one of the cheapest foods you can buy. People buy it to fill up their kids. I really don't understand what you are suggesting? Of course buying biscuits is cheaper than making them. A packet of custard creams is 30p. If you made them, the butter or marg alone would cost more than that

Actually, I don’t think we will at all that’s the problem we will be just fine.

The lower class children for want of a better word I hate these categories, are just is intelligent and just is capable of going to university and having a good education for which they will be expect to be rewarded.

They just currently aren’t.

So they’ll still be born at the same rate.

The issue is they don’t want to sweep the streets, understandably. And the middle class and the rich dont want to pay them enough to survive for performing these tasks.
So either the government steps in and gives them a basic universal income. Or else will need to import that labour and the intelligent lower class children that could make excellent doctors and teachers, for example, will flounder.

You are forgetting the cooking costs too, fuel is expensive. I’ve just bought a new cooker which I hate that was £300. If and when it breaks I won’t replace it all by £100 air fryer because that’s all I need. It was a very different situation 15 years ago when I had a large family. The oven would be on every day.