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.

I cant give advice,
I did not go UNI.
But my income is £1900 per month
I currently only spend money on FOOD And housing costs.
United Kingdom is ¥¥¢¢√•§§¢$$ £## place to live.
Everyone is skewered.
I would like to work but am suffering from long term effects of poisoning from botched dental preceedure which has caused heart damage and fatigue , otherwise I was up at SIX am most days working Twelve hour shifts in mental health unit.

Your right you poor thing - can't buy health or real friends. The real stinger will come when you realise money isn't the way to happiness.

It sounds like you need to have a look at your budgets. Maybe look at doing a Statement of Affairs, there's a good one on the Stoozing finance website. It will help you look at what you are spending each month and also make you think about little things which add up. When it's all down in front of you, it may make it easier to see where your money goes.

There are lots of websites with forums which you can find advice on, including food budgeting advice.

Oh poor poor you.

Altogether I get 1700 a month after tax, 1000 of that goes on rent. Do you want to swap?? I'd happily swap!!

the base rate will not go higher. Inflation is coming down, swaps are coming down. Unless you slip into arrears it’s unlikely you’ll be on a higher rate than you are when rates fall. May it’s likely BBR will go down he 25bps

You can. We sold our last car that was on finance. You just pay the car finance off with the proceeds.

I’m not sure where people are getting the £3,300-£3,600 take home pay from. I earn 66k and after tax and pension deductions I come
away with £3,600 per month. Presumably the OP is paying pension contributions too.
One thing I did when I earned less (at the time I was on around £42k) was to take a pension break and allow me to get back on my feet a bit more with monthly bills etc. It’s not ideal and I wouldn’t recommend it for a significant length of time though. (Paid half contributions).

Ok lets compare you to the people where I grew up in a dying nothern pit town.

Shit and rough public school most barely got GCSEs
No money to move anywhere, no transport to travel, no local higher education
Parents in unowned council house, no transport, minimum wage jobs (no inheritance)
Little to no jobs except basic minimum wage or free ones (waitress, shop worker, fast food cook, bar staff in WMC, volunteer for charity etc...)
Most of us have been homeless at some point

You on the other hand got an education, got to go away to university, got a well paid job which afforded you the ability to purchase your own house (security and inheritance to pass down to your children to secure their future too), you got a car and (not even a £400 23 year old banger and car nice enough to be on finance) and you can pay for shopping and bills to cook that food so you don't have to go days without eating.

I would say your pretty privileged. If your stressed with work load that I would understand (I get being resentful for working through youth instead of living it) but to be stressed that you make more than entire working multigeneration families and all thats afforded you is all the things we don't have here just seems so out of touch with reality.

You are broke because of your own choices, op. Not trying to be shady, just speaking facts. Living alone in your own 2 bed property in your 30s is a privilege and you are paying for that privilege. Most people either choose a smaller property or to rent in order to have more money for other things and obviously some do not even get a choice as they can't afford it. You made your choices and you have to live with them...

if you're in the uk and have the usual student loans, it doesn't matter how big they are, you pay the same % of anything you earn over the minimum. Definitely shouldn't be crippling as thousands of people will be in the same situation (eg 90% of your uni cohort).
Google tells me "On a £58,000 salary, your take home pay will be £43,443.40 after tax and National Insurance. This equates to £3,620.28 per month and £835.45 per week." and "Plan 1 graduates repay 9% of everything they earn over £22,015"
If you're not in the UK, look at your plan and see what makes sense, it may be that funnelling all your savings into it reduces the interest so much that it's worth it, or it may be that it isn't.

This means you should still have over £3000 take home per month to live on. £1300 for a mortgage, plus say a £500 pension contribution, and £500 in bills per month would still give you £700 to play with spare.
I'd suggest you have a look at your other outgoing and do some budgeting around what to cut down on. Immediate thoughts are the direct debit type stuff which can easily add up - How many music services do you subscribe to? What about streaming? What insurances do you have? How much money are you putting into savings? Do you have a many memberships (gym, costco, national trust etc)? How much are you paying for gas, electric, internet, tv packages, etc? What about your phone contract? These are all things you could look at switching to cheaper plans or cancelling altogether. I'm not saying you've got to get rid of anything that brings you joy, but a £20 gym membership is probably similar to a £50 one, a £10 sim only contract in your old phone does the same as a £90 top end phone contract.

You've taken the car payment now, so you're stuck with it, but if possible try and keep it after you've paid it off, but keep putting the payment money into a savings account, so that when it comes time that you need a new car, there's a pot of money for you to use. Same with any uncancellable subscriptions - aim to cancel or switch to cheaper as soon as possible, using physical produces as long as possible, but keep putting the money aside so you can have it when needed. If you don't pay a set amount for electric and gas, try to keep putting the same amount of money aside during summer so the increase in winter doesn't hit as hard as there's money aside for it.

Also look at where you spend small amounts of money often - yes it's cliche, but a £4 coffee on the way to work every day adds up, and if it's the difference between beans on toast three days a week and a variety of meals I know what I'd choose! Or a meal deal three days a week is £10.50. We were having this discussion at work recently, with one colleague saying she's committed to bringing food from home for the next month, as her average office day spend was about £8, not a great deal occasionally, but it's £24 a week, which if her partner was doing the same meant it was a nice weekend meal out they were missing out on buying sandwiches and coffee. I love monzo for this, as it will add it all up for you.

I think things are hard at the moment and everything is going up so much.
I would be interested to see your budget in detail. Do you sit down every month and look at what you are spending?
For example, I literally write down our income, write down all the set outgoings like bills, rent etc and see what I'm left with.
This is my 'spare money' and I actually go a step further and write down what we spend that on just to hold us accountable.

We were in debt quite badly at the beginning of moving in together and I'm super strict on us now.
If you are paying a bank loan and car finance this is obviously a massive factor. Once this is paid off you will hopefully have more spare cash but it can be a struggle for a while.

I mean... you could have not bothered with uni, gone on a zero hours contract and still be living at home.

Gratitude, my friend.

I hear you OP, i'm in a similar situation and if it wasnt for DPs wage, I couldnt manage the bills myself. I dont think renting instead is a good solution as round here renting the shittiest little houses in the nearby shitty town works out more expensive than our mortgage payments. I have a car on finance but its a very ordinary car and 10yrs old.

I get it, it's sounds like a lot of money but when after tax you take home around £3400/£3500 and around £2100 is mortgage and loans, it doesn't give you the financial freedom you'd hope for after you factor in bills, food, petrol etc.

I think you need to look at short term solutions to help you out here.
Can you look at extending your mortgage term until interest rates drop a bit?
Can you extend the private student loan term to reduce your monthly payments, look around for better interest rates?
Can you look at trading your car in for a cheaper model/older car or maybe temporarily halting your pension contributions until your car loans paid off?

I don't know how much your private student loans are but it might be worth looking at interest free options. I paid of my private loan for tuitions with a balance transfer credit card that was 0%. Saved me the 5.9% Apr I had on my loan and let me flexible repayment. Obviously you need to make sure you still make repayments and this may not be the right option for you.

Sorry but I think you need to have a really hard look at your expenditure as you are earning a handsome salary.

There are families with two/three children where couples earn less than you , combined, who somehow manage to cope.

Sell your property and buy a smaller one bed place. £600 for student loans/professionals seems excessive.
What are these professional fees?

I think this race to the bottom/gratitude narrative is all well and good and yes, we should all be grateful for what we have, but I think the point the OP is making is that she’s worked hard, sacrificed and ‘done everything right’ in order to have a comfortable professional career and the expected lifestyle that affords and still doesn’t have it. I understand that resentment, I feel it too.

Of course there are people that either didn’t have the ability or opportunity to go into traditionally middle class careers. My Mum was in that position, she left school at 16, married at 22, became a single Mum by the time she was 27 and moved into a job where there was progression without advanced qualifications (therefore no student debt). Those types of opportunities seldom exist anymore. A degree is a minimum qualification for jobs that needed 5 GCSEs when I left high school in the mid 90s.

I have a master’s degree and 20 years of experience in my field but don’t have near the level of financial security that my mother had at my age because she bought her first house for $6,000 when she was 21 when you needed three times your salary and that matched what she was earning. Our quality of life is worse, there’s no doubt about that.

Are you a GP?

If so I recommend going abroad as you are not appreciated here. Workload is ridiculous, patients unhappy and not remunerated for that at all.

You're not wrong to feel frustrated. Your mortgage has doubled. You are earning in the top 9% and you're skint.

People might be thinking ooo if I had that money... But the reality is they might be in a similar boat. If you can afford a mortgage, you buy a house and that's biting you in the backside, but you can't sell and rent. So you're stuck.
Student loans are grim to pay back.

I think you're probably in the most awkward /painful phase of it all right now. Hopefully your mortgage eases off.
Definitely some good advice on here about easing your burden but you don't sound frivolous with your money and as people keep saying you earn a good whack, so yes it reasonable to think you'd have a better quality of life on thst wage. It's crap and a state of the times that you can't.

If your mortgage is a tracker and the rates drop, I would consider funnelling some money to over pay your student loan down quicker and give yourself some head room so that longer term your pain is lessened on that front. You might be skint still but if you are managing to pay double your mortgage, if that goes back down you could afford to overpay your loans a bit more and reduce the over all burden.

But I genuinely empathise with you. It's hard on your own two when the cost of living is hitting a single pocket.

Doing the sums on this.

£58k paying a plan 2 student loan back and ignoring pension is £3,390 a month take home. In reality there would be a pension deduction.

-£1,300 mortgage = £2,090.
Car loan maybe £250? = £1,840.
Insurance/VED/fuel = 200 (guess) = 1640.
Council tax £200 = 1440.
Water 60 = 1380.
Gas/electric = 250 maybe = 1130.
Broadband 30 = 1100
Phone 30 = 1070
Food shopping guessing at least 400 = 670

So maybe £670 a month after essentials. I'm sure people have to make it work for less, but that's hardly living the dream and she probably imagined having more than that left over when she got the job.

Why a single lady has a two bed semi? Why do you need a car with a large finance? Sell and start from scratch, 1 bed, then 2, small car, beans on toast is healthy btw.

It is 3 of us here, living on much less than you, I am saving all my part time wage, we have two double bedrooms, a car and money seems to be spent, but reasonably on whatever is needed

@TheFancyPoet

you work part time rather than full time - immediately less stress.

Some people aspire to more than beans on toast, some need to thrive for happiness not just survive.

Umm, phone she can get as cheap as £6, that's £24 saved = 1094

Food shopping 400 is way too much for one person and can go down to £50 = 894

This is more than most people have disposable income and there is no chance that she wasn't able to afford to go on holiday in years as she claims, I have less disposable income that that and I go on several holidays a year, you just need to make smart choices.

Like in most of these types of threads, something doesn't add up

Basically, you’ve lumbered yourself with excessive borrowing and now the inflation rate has gone up.

It won’t stay this high, I don’t think.

What about the car loan? Are the payments large? And how much longer is the loan? I recently bought a cheap, reliable second hand car because I’ve been stung with a car loan before. They really do suck in a lot of money.

Ultimately, this situation is temporary. When I bought a house a couple of years back, what struck me was that this was going to be the worst time. In general terms, payments on a mortgage stay the same over the whole term (barring interest blips) so over time, you in ten years, you will be making the same payment per month, whereas those paying rent will be paying way more. In the meantime, your wage will have risen, at least in line with inflation and likely your house will be worth more, so your mortgage is much smaller than it would be if you bought your house over again.

Tighten your belt. Take on the lodger, if you really think you’re at risk of losing your home (your reaction to that suggestion indicates you’re not really at risk at all). It’s not much fun right now, but for you, this is the worst it’s going to be and it will improve. For a family in a rented home, not so much.

Ok, buying the cheapest crap phone possible and eating like a sparrow can save a little bit. The point is people are carrying on like this is some kind of luxury lifestyle, if you're having to do that it isn't.

@andrew10642 400 quid food for one person a month is not eating like a sparrow.

Our monthly shop for 4 of us is about that.

And it's doesn't have to be a cheap crap phone. We have 4 phones on sim only deals for less than 30 quid a month total. Nowt wrong with our phones.