To be in this job and feel poor?

[fedippp]

I trained for seven years, reasonably large student loan etc, to end up age 35 on 58k, and barely anything left at the end of the month!!! Mortgage is 1300 for a 2 bed semi, (up from 800 last year). Student loans are still hundreds a month. I have a car on finance as I couldn’t save house deposit and car deposit, need car for work. I eat beans on toast 3 nights a week. I feel like an idiot. I missed out on so much in my twenties to get into a decent job that I thought paid well and it seems to have been a waste of time! Does anyone else feel this way? I feel so disheartened.

If she lived in a cheaper area her salary would likely reflect that.

The OP is voicing an issue that affects many around the same age who did what they were supposed to in the belief that hard work and a solid career choice would be worth it.

All these posters saying take in a lodger: did you not read the post the other day about the woman who took in a lodger for a few weeks and can't get the stinky feet smell out of her house? Gross.

Being single is really expensive. I couldn't believe it when I moved in with my first DP (relatively old, having been single all my twenties) and we put our finances together and realised how relatively well off we were going to be.

Why are millennials not having children? Can barely support ourselves on one good salary

Go to a financial adviser. Anyone earning 58K a year should be able to support themselves. £800 mortgage increased by £500? Go to a financial adviser. Hundreds every month on student loan? Go to a financial adviser! Car payments - just what kind of car? Go to a financial adviser! On £58K, you should be able to afford a £1300 a-month-mortgage. Easily. Our mortgage was £1600 on the same salary with two adults and a child in the home. We budget carefully, but didn't eat beans on toast three nights a week.

Being single does it and people never get that.

But you are not poor.

You are in the top 10% of earners in the country and own your own home.

Lots of people would give their right arm to be in your position.

I think car finance is a bit of a swizz. We're persuaded that we need a car on finance because everyone else has a car on finance. You don't. I've never spent more than £5k on a car, and my cars have always been very very reliable and lasted me for years and years. My current car is 14 years old, and it's absolutely fine! One year I bought a car on a 0% credit card and paid it off within a year. That's got to be better than spending ££££ on a new car on finance, surely? You sound like you're doing fine OP, but some tweaks could make a massive difference. You have bought a property on your own, that's something many people could never do. Get rid of the car on finance and buy a cheap one, the save up for another cheap one when this one dies. If you can't get out of the finance deal, put yourself in a position where you never get a car on finance again. Don't get into debt for things that depreciate, that's a good rule to live by. Debt for a house is fine, debt for a car is not.

If they’d give their right arm, I assume they’d also get into £100k of debt and study for 7 years to be in her position. So why aren’t they?

Op I hear you.

You feel like you did all the 'right' things and you were sold a lie. It hasn't been worth it.

You will get people on here saying that you be grateful for what you have but that doesn't change how you feel.

We're all paying for lock down from 4 years ago. Still a way to go yet.
It's overwhelming studying long degrees and still not earning as much as a train driver years later.
Consider working in the middle east for a bit. Even very wealthy people do that to accrue more income.
I hope you find a way round it soon.

Why are you presuming they haven't?

Well if they have, I feel for them but that doesn’t negate the disheartened feelings of the OP. The old ‘there’s always someone worse off than you’ wears thin. It’s not at all helpful. I can see why many professionals are emigrating and university applications are falling. UK salaries are horrendous, there is no incentive in career development

I’m 26 on £42k and feel like this. To be honest I don’t think wages really go far these days as the cost of living is so high and shrinkflation etc

i grew up in a double parent household but my mum was the sole earner for most of that. She was nhs band 7, so I’m assuming on £50-60k. She was able to save up a least a year’s salary to fund my dad’s various business ventures/periods on unemployment/minimum wage work. On her salary alone, my parents bought multiple properties and also had different commercial properties over the years. My dad had lots of failed businesses but my lifestyle growing up was comfortable

there’s no chance I could buy one property let alone all that, on my salary

I'm confused by your post and your budget. With a salary of £58k you are currently taking home £3,620 per month after tax and NI. From April, that figure will be £3,683.

Then, of course, there are pension payments. There can be big differences if you are employed by a private company or a public body or if your employer just pays the minimum amount required into a Workplace Pension Scheme.

For example, if your employer runs a Workplace Pension Scheme then you will be paying £146.77 per month, your employer will be paying £110.07 and there will be a tax credit for your pension of £36.69 per month. Also you may be able to claim extra tax relief as a higher rate tax payer depending on how your employer operates the pension scheme.

In contrast, being employed by the NHS for example, you might expect to pay in the region of £430 per month towards your pension and the NHS would be adding around an extra £760 per month - not a bad deal if I might say so.

So from April, after pension payments, you're left with between £3,536 and £3,253 per month.

Then there are student loan repayments. OK this can be tricky. You studied for seven years so can I assume this is an undergraduate degree followed by an MA or MSc and then a PhD? Or maybe a medical qualification or (as somebody else suggested) perhaps an architectural qualification?

"I have student loans then professional bank loan (standard thing for this work). in total I’m paying back almost 600 a month."

OK, that's slightly more than I would have thought - without a "professional bank loan" I would have thought you were paying around £450.

So, since you're clearly not working in the NHS with their very high pension contributions then it looks like, after paying student loans, you're on about an income of £2,900 take home after all deductions.

"my mortgage repayment, it’s up to 1,500"

OK, so this leaves you with £1,400 per month.

"Then council tax is 140 (with the single person discount). Have the heating on an hour a day, gas and electric bill was 240 last month."

OK, so this leaves you with £1,000 per month to spend. Also, I would just say that I am also a single person living alone and my gas and electric bill is nowhere near that; it's less than half of what you're paying (and I work from home!). Perhaps have a quick check for some cheaper deals?

The actual amount of money I have to live on is very similar to you. The difference is that my salary is rather lower but, there again, so is my mortgage. It balances out.

You appear to have a £1,000 a month to spend on food and anything else that you want. Some people splurge on takeaways and lease a brand new car and then wonder why they have no money. Could this, perhaps, be your situation?

To be frank I do spend an absolute fortune on food at Tesco, Waitrose, Aldi and specialist retailers, probably in the region of £70 per week - just for myself. But it's all food that I cook myself from scratch, I enjoy cooking it's a hobby.

I know that it's a total Mumsnet meme but, yes, I can stretch a £30 organic 100 day chicken from the likes of Ginger Pig to make myself five meals and also stock from the leftover bones. But the big thing here is that there is literally just me on my own - not a family.

"I eat beans on toast 3 nights a week."

Yes, I could do that as well. But I choose not to.

Unless you have a really large car lease payment on a brand new car then I can't understand where the rest of your money is going (and, yes, I also have Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions).

For context, I drive a 2012 Ford Mondeo. I've had it for years and it's never needed anything more than an annual service. The car is huge and it's got a massive boot. If I ever go to Ikea or buy some second hand furniture on ebay then I can usually always get it stuffed in the back of the car.

Serious question here, can you please provide some sort of breakdown as to where you spend your money at the moment?

Your mortgage is 50% of your salary. You need to pretty much sell and move to a cheaper house/flat. There isn't another solution as this is just too much for 1 person to pay. :( with the increasing interest rates its just madness! I wouldn't get a lodger as that will bring like 600 quid but you will share your living space and kitchen which I would never do.

Gas and Elec £300!? That’s orettty outrageous.

I'm in a 5 bed house with 2 kids and charge an electric car laying £275 a month since last summer and I’m £80p in credit post winter 🤷‍♂️

Admittedly I cut back on central heating MASSIVELY this year and burnt £150 of wood instead from Nov - Feb.

i don’t understand how people use so much Energy. My parents used to have their hot water on for 2 hours a day until I changed them back to 15 min and saved a fortune.

Student loan payments will be approximately £250 a month on that salary so deduct those too

Is there anything, looking back, that you wish you'd done differently that would have put you in a better position now (excluding getting a partner/husband)?

Do you think that when you were a student, you could have worked part time without compromising your qualification and career ?

I’m struggling to be sympathetic. I earn £47k a year, I raise and pay for two children by myself (not my choice) and I’ve just had to sell our house and downsize so we can afford the mortgage when my current v low mortgage rate comes to an end. My education required for my job took five years and I paid my student loan off when I was 41. We still (just, now we’ve moved, have enough to survive - & I live in the expensive South East). Living in a two bed house when there’s one person is a luxury. Refusing to rent the room out demonstrates you are not as hard up as you claim to be (when you are genuinely poor, you’ll do anything to survive). You’re just not as rich as you’d like to be OP. If you can’t live off £58k as a single person, then 100% that’s because you have too high expectations of what life should be or you’re not very good at managing money.

How has your mortgage gone up 50%, in one year?
You may gave answered by the time this is posted, but your industry would help.
Everyone knows what their selected industry pays, so I’m always amazed at posts like this by people suddenly amazed they aren’t earning £400k a year after 5 years.
I will read on to see if we get any clues that help explain your bemusement, but it’s normally entirely foreseeable.

Why are your student loans so huuuge? Something sounds amiss here?

Okay so including both undergrad and post grad loan, net income would be around £3150 so £50 off.

£240 per month energy bills for a 2 bed semi is way outside of the norm unless heating is on 23c all day night and night.

I think the OP, who hasn’t replied in 18 pages, has probably had a rethink on her ill-advised career choice from some middle class career group . Yawn.