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.

Not everyone lives your life or that of your circle of friends - which presumably is in a different area of the country or indeed you are an entirely different generation to the OP.

I absolutely accept that. I am a little
olfer than OP but not a different generation. Lodgers seem to be considered common on mumsnet and it’s often offered up as a solution but in real life I don’t know anyone who does it passed their twenties. Maybe I have an unusual reference group!! I don’t live in London, but I do live in a city. I have friends who live all over the globe in big cities (Sydney, Toronto, Singapore, London and Brussels) - lodgers stopped at late twenties.

at OP’s age and income bracket it would be unusual in my experience to have a lodger. In fairness I do earn a good bit more than OP but have friends in a similar income bracket and a similar age to OP. No whispers of getting a lodger.

but in your experience it’s common - single women I. Their thirties earning above average salaries and getting lodgers. To each their own / but I would feel like it was a backwards step! The beauty about aging is getting our independence

Does it matter how common it is having a lodger when you’re single? OP has hardly any disposable income, yet is sitting on a potential source of income that could massively enhance her life. Because of her outgoings, she can’t afford to live alone, unlike people here who do live alone and have no desire to get a lodger. Hardly anyone would consider having a lodger if they didn’t need to.

SFE is an absolute con

I'm now paying back 250 a month with 6.25% interest

I've had cheaper bank loans.

Zero incentive for today's graduates to aspire to anything above the payment trigger point

Sorry - just having a conversation!

and I thought it was in the spirit of OP’s post - she feels poor despite a really good salary! People saying most single homeowners have a lodger doesn’t help, unless OP wants to live like that. A lot of people don’t.

I was merely saying it seems weird to expect a relatively high earner to take in a lodger to make ends meet! Most people don’t have to - I was trying to sympathise with OP.

but as I said just chatting! Conversations often spin out on different directions!

It's the interest rate rises that have caught you. Are you on a fixed rate or tracker?
Assume you don't have kids? If not, rent out the spare room?
Can you swap the car for a cheaper one?

I'm waiting for someone to suggest that the OP should take in ironing.

It's not a race to the bottom. A graduate with professional qualifications and no children should be able to have a good standard of living without having to worry about interest rate rises. Sadly that's no longer the case.

@fedippp, I'm agreeing with those going "HOW MUCH??!" at your energy bill/usage. I live on my own in a flat, heating set at 20° for 12 hours a day, paying about £120 a month. Here's my Octopus link if you'd like to switch and get £50 credit on joining!

I saw a big change when I swapped all the light bulbs for low-energy. It's such a trivial thing, I didn't expect it to make the difference it has.

Try not to buy food "for now", if you do. It's far more economical to cook family-size packs, even joints of meat, and freeze the rest in portions. Bonus is you have ready meals on tap, all made by your good self from real ingredients.

That mortgage jump is horrendous. What are your chances of switching to a less excruciating deal?

Also what PPs have said about seeing whether you can extend your loan periods, reconsider the car deal, and double-checking all your direct debits.

Stick at it Things will get better and you'll be glad you muddled through this tricky period.

OP says she has education loans costing £600 a month. After council tax, this would leave approx £1,300 a month. It's really not bad, but it isn't loads and it sounds like she needs to be a bit more clever about how she uses the money she has.

I hope she might be able to switch or restructure her mortgage, too.

£1300 a month after mortgage, student loan, car purchase and utilities is loads. All she has to pay for is food, petrol, clothing and social stuff.

Having a house you will end up owning and a nicer car isn't just getting by though is it? You've got it better than most people

It's not after utilities. She's got energy & water to pay, then insurances and pension. She seems to be paying way too much for energy.

Water - @fedippp, are you on a meter? All small households should have water meters. Also use a comparison tool to see if you're getting a good deal on insurance.

Are you single? Maybe get a partner who’s also on 52k and life will be better and more income and split bills and you can do all the “fun shit” you’d have done in your 20s with them. The only reason your “20s” stop is if you have a kid, cus then life’s all about them, but single and child free is same as “20s” in a sense but better as you got income

are you being serious? Do you honestly think being single and child free in your forties is the same as being in your twenties?

How patronising and silly.

I'm struggling to understand what happened with your mortgage, why has it gone from £800 pcm to £1500 pcm?

We had to get a new mortgage deal literally weeks after the disasterous Liz Truss budget and we went from £728 pcm to £861 pcm. I am not sure why yours has pretty much doubled.

A couple of years ago you could get a mortgage with a rate under 1%. Some time recently it's been up to about 6% so I don't know if that accounts for the increase. Would obviously depend on amount and term of mortgage too.

Yeah we went from under 2% to 5.1%.

You’re done really well! I can see why you feel this way though, I think a lot of us do at the moment. Everything is so expensive and wages haven’t increased to match.

Can you sell your house and buy a place with a lower mortgage? Is a lodger out of the question, even if just for a while to see some more cash coming in? You might resent it (I would too), but as a temporary money earner to give you some slack.

What is your profession? Will your wages increase in the long term, surely?

I guess she's at a much earlier stage of paying off her mortgage, in the first few years you're pretty much just paying off the interest. Having said that, I'm also at an early stage of paying my mortgage off, it increased much more than yours did after the Truss debacle but it didn't double.

I also think it's very fishy that the OP initially said £1300, then said she'd got it wrong and it's actually £1500. I think if you were struggling to pay your mortgage you'd know exactly how much you were paying each month, you wouldn't forget. I know exactly how much my mortgage is as it's my biggest monthly outgoing, I wouldn't need to double check if someone asked me. I think the OP could be bad at budgeting and bad at making sure she's on the best deals, which maybe also explains the ridiculously high energy bills. £240pm for one person in a two bedroom house doesn't make sense, especially if what she says about having the heating on for 1hr per day only is correct.

The sums in this thread don't add up. Either the OP is over exaggerating how high her bills are or she's not working on making sure she doesn't default to the highest rates.

Mine was 1.34% mortgage interest only (repaid it last year). They are much higher now.
I asked much earlier on the threat what the profession is here as mumsnetters might be able to help give ideas for her to earn more money in the career where she spent 7 years training which is probably a better and easier course of action than just trying to get slightly lower bills; but I don't think the poster has been back.

@SquirrelMadness yeah I can see how it could be higher if it is a newish mortgage - we are half way through paying off ours, but doubling sounds a bit odd.

The OP isn't alone - https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/22/debt-britons-financial-difficulty-credit-cards

Some tough tales here but some of these, particularly William, need a good hard lesson in proper budgeting. £90 a month on mobile phones when you are drowning in credit card debt?

@Ginmonkeyagain it's astonishing how much the latest mobile phones cost. It's such a con. I bought my phone from a company that refurbishes second hand phones, I bought it outright and have a sim only contract. It's so much cheaper.

I also think buying new cars on finance is a massive waste of money. They depreciate so fast. Someone said earlier in the thread that you end up paying more for a second hand car due to the repair costs, but that hasn't been my experience. I've had several hand cars over the years and I've got a lot of mileage and value out of them.

I do understand that rent increases and rising house prices are absolutely crippling for younger generations. Something needs to be done to bring rent under control and to increase affordable housing options. But society does have a lot of other ways of conning into throwing our money away.

@Ginmonkeyagain Just about all the people in that article need a lesson in budgeting and priorities. I know the Guardian wants people to think 'isn't the Government awful that people are struggling like this, but it falls quite flat when it talks about people 'having to buy lunch on a credit card' (buy lunch???!! whatever happened to making your own sandwich or having leftovers?) or the idiocy of people like Charl, who 'shares a rental flat with her mother in London, found a new job with a £35,000 salary, but had to opt out of her employer’s generous pension scheme in April 2023, because she could not afford to pay into it'.

Even if they live somewhere expensive and her DM is on NMW, she will be able to afford her pension, rent, food and basic bills etc, just not alongside whatever fripperies she indulges in.

It seems to a lot of people that their definition of 'poor' is 'not being able to continue spending on whatever the hell I like whenever I want to'.

I know right? Matthew (not William!) is spending £540 a month on his sodding dog.