My professional salary only just covers my rent. How can this be?

[Rentmakesmepoor]

I am an occupational therapist in the NHS. I am a single parent. After tax, student loan and pension I take home roughly £1900.
I live in the South East of England. My rent is £1750 a month for a 3 bed, SMALL semi detached house with a courtyard garden

How is it that we have got to the point in this country that my salary literally just pays for my rent and nothing else??

I am permanently skint. I am not looking for solutions as I do nd claim everything I can (which is not alot).

But how can this be?

The leading cost of bankruptcy is medical bills in the USA. This can include middle class professionals. Well paid jobs in financial services/tech are also insecure so you can lose your stellar insurance cover.

my uncle is a very well paid IT professional in America, owns a 1 million dollar house in California and earns 6 figures. He is retiring back to Asia as he cannot afford health insurance and have a comfortable lifestyle on his pension. He has a couple of hundred thousand invested in stocks but doesn't want to risk it. How can someone like me thrive in such a country. I have far less money but at least if the nhs is there, i don't need to worry about basic healthcare and as long as i pay off my mortgage and don't overleverage on property, all my pension needs to cover is my day to day expenses without adding medical care into th emix.

I mean you have made some bad decisions (having lots of kids young, not getting married, not buying a property etc), but you know that.

At this stage, you either move location or reach out to family for help.

Most of us saying move area have actually done it - we've run the figures and made the hard choices.

Plus as I said previous I'm in area with cheap housing and some of the worse NHS waiting lists in UK.

This is not a new problem it's been steadily getting worse over decades - in fact it's not just an issue in UK many developed countries are having similar issues.

It's not just the SE I see many stories about wales in pretty areas - incomers have pushed house prices up in area with limited and low paid wage area and then moan as services disappear over time.

The system is fucked and it does have wider implications but railing against it changes nothing for the individuals - and I think any changes any future governments will make will take time to have any real affect.

If you can't add anything of note, don't abuse people. I have reported your post.

No point moaning about the NHS salaries etc... its not going to change anything for your situation.

You need to move town, the NHS salary for your job is presumably paying the same wage wherever you might live, so change the variable of your location.

I would think what you said to a widow of 4 kids is sadly indicative of the current state of UK society. Lots of people on unimpressive salaries who wouldn't be able to survive without free at the point of access healthcare, state education and the many services provided by the state but who decide to look down their noses on otherz

At least while I own my flat in London and have a combined income of £120k I know that while it is better than others, I am still poor like the majority of people and only marginally less reliant on the government than OP. You should try some humility. Unless you are literally in the clouds with minimum £250k combined income, mortgage free home and asset wealth, there is no point in being smug because you are still at the mercy of capitalism. It is a very unequal world you live in.

on rightmove theres not a single 3 bed house to rent in Somerset for £350 🤔🤔

Can you rent a two bed house? A three bed is more suitable for two working adults, which would then be very affordable.

I say that as a single parent.

These arguments that people couldn't buy on single salaries 30-40 years ago make no sense, loads of us now in our 40s were brought up in these homes: one parent working, house easily affordable. My father had a local authority job at the time my parents bought our 2 bed Victorian terrace with a mortgage, current vacancies for his role are £36-£43k. The houses in our section of the street have recently sold for £650k and higher.

If you are in this situation and can't do anything about it you HAVE to move like I did. I never regret moving to the west country, it's brilliant here. I'm not prepared to scrimp and save my whole life just for the priviledge of living in the south east which isn't that great anyway.
Once enough staff have deserted there will have to be a south east weighting of some sort.

She has four children.

And there lays the problem..... people having too many children they simply cannot afford. People need to take personal responsibility for their lives, unless you can provide for them In adverse conditions it's wise not to have so many. I could not imagine having five mouths to feed on top of the rent and bills. I read this on MN all the time people having lots of children they cannot afford and have made no provisions for the future should the SHTF such as savings or life insurance.sadly that's today's generation their attention span is as long as a tik tok video, they're extremely frivolous with what they do have such as constant"treats" for themselves and the children (play dates, days out, fast food, false nails, nights out, latest phones....growing up in the 70s we were lucky to get a bag of chips on a Saturday afternoon, no such thing as play dates and days out, our parents saved and we played board games). I see no end of young mums on FB posting pictures of nights out, days out with their kids, fancy food and fast food with the children a very much look at me generation yet are completely screwed when and if tshtf....then they come crying onto MN Iin the AIBU section because they cannot afford their kids and no one will help them out. Sadly most are living the champagne lifestyle whilst earning beer money.

Yes. This. I don't understand why there isn't regional weighting as it is, or individual trusts able to set their own wages to manage demand/supply.

People in the south-east don't "deserve" OT treatment, we can get it if we pay for it same as anything else.

is That a joke? Where I am there are new homes going up all the time on any available open space.

because the population is rising faster
And because there may be more single person households
And because lots of people own second homes and lots of homes have been converted to holiday mega

And because it's not every available space , it just seems that way

She chose to have that many children. She choose not to marry her partner. She chose not to buy a house. Those decisions are now biting her.

There is nothing smug about it. People need to be responsible for their own actions.

Yes, and it's still not enough. We are millions of homes short. I don't think people realise the scale of the problem.

They are locally to me as well, if you have 450,000 of our great British pounds, you can buy yourself a new build, semi detached three bedroom house on what we used to call Ashlawn pools …. I actually feel genuinely nothing, but sorry for those poor souls that have purchased houses in effectively a bog.

@TripleDaisySummer I have also done it and mentioned this in an earlier comment.

I've been paying 785 for a very rundown 2 bed semi in Newcastle. Single parent, good, professional work like you, I regret getting divorced sometimes (which is crackers because i had no option) because its almost impossible to see any lights in long dark tunnels. Just wanted to say, it's almost as bad jn the North as well. Landlords ick!

We haven't built enough homes for decades.

Than what was the issue with moving area to a cheap one then no one was claiming it's an ideal solution but it's a possible one.

Incidentally I can see the OP posts - but while I've read all the pages and posts I don't know how to work out among so many posters who else posted what.

OP has 4 kids on a NHS wage in an expensive part of the country - that's going to be hard - and that's not looking like it will change any time soon.

In meantime she can cover the rent and it sounds like every month she'll be going through savings or accumulating debt which if far from ideal and moaning about the situation - which affects many others - changes nothing.

@TripleDaisySummer I’m sure the OP is perfectly capable of considering the option, she just wanted to vent not be piled on.

I can’t speak for her but unless she has family/a support system in a cheap part of the country where there is a suitable job for her then it’s probably not actually a viable option.

Nobody should have to move to a completely different part of the country from where they’ve built their life unless they want to. I don’t think a bog standard 3 bed is a luxury.

OT’s are needed all over the country, rich southerners aren’t exempt from things like strokes, spinal cord or brain injuries. The answer is to sort out wages and affordable housing and the shit show currently going on in the nhs.

Tonight I was hours late getting home due to a last minute issue which was only doable because I have a support system where I moved to. My best guess would be that if she had a support system somewhere cheaper she’d be there and not on here.

All occupational therapists, nurses, teachers, care assistants, shop assistants, cleaners, anyone in a job that doesn't pay big bucks should be removed from the south and resettled up north where everyone knows you can buy a 3 bed semi for a fiver and a KitKat. Previous posters are right, anyone who isn't wealthy is the scourge of society and doesn't deserve to live in the prestigious south.

Children can be taught online by private tutors, anyone needing care or medical treatment can obviously move up north or travel up north for treatment. People will have to grow their own food and clean their own houses and offices on their lunch breaks from their big important jobs.

OP is a terrible human being for choosing a career in a helping profession instead of the mumsnet ideal of financial services. Ditto for having 4 children with her partner, how dare she have children in her TWENTIES!!! The audacity of it! And then her relationship ended and her partner died. This was obviously on purpose so that OP could claim benefits and be villified for it on mumsnet. Also, what an idiot for not buying her own home years ago! Everyone should have bought their own home and anyone who didn't and is now struggling with extortionate rent increases has no right to complain because it's all their own fault for being poor!

I moved up north and lived in a tent for 6 years with my 3 children as I retrained in (insert acceptable job) and now I earn £500,000 per day and live in a mansion, why can't OP do the same?

NOT MY ACTUAL VIEWS, JUST A SUMMARY OF SOME OF THE ABSOLUTE SHITE THAT HAS BEEN POSTED ON THIS THREAD SO FAR. YES, THE CAPITALS ARE NECESSARY.