175k salary and all gone

[175allgone]

This will ruffle some feathers, but after tax, mortgage , childcare, living expenses….there doesn’t seem much left. SE London, commuting, wrap around care. Whilst I appreciate I’m not having to watch my bills I’m hardly living an extravagant lifestyle.

People do talk some absolute shit about "the reality of London" but I had my kid living in a posher area of London than Islington, DH and I earning about 40k each full time. We then both dropped down to p/t for the pre-school years. Yes full time nursery is expensive but that's why most people don't do it! Most people cobble something together with childminders, p/t nursery, flexible working etc. We worked different hours and had a nanny share where we paid someone else's nanny £12/hour to pick up the slack a few shifts a week. We also didn't move out of our nice but too small pre-kids flat until DS was 3. I'd have had a nervous breakdown if I'd increased the mortgage at that point in my life.

I guess OP you have a high income and high outgoings.

To ask how other people survive in the SE- short answer is that they don’t!!! They move areas, live in overcrowded homes, have a poor quality of life.

Things will be better when yours are both at school.

Yes they could move somewhere cheaper but £2000pm per child is fairly typical cost of childcare even in London zones 5/6. Then your commuting cost and time increases.
Childcare costs are astronomical.

@AbsolutelyNebulous I don't care if OP pays tax. It's not a charity contribution, it's the law, and it's deducted immediately from OP's salary.

The thread is stupid, how can anyone struggle on £175k? Hire a financial advisor of you can't figure it out.

What was the nasty part of her comment? She sounds like someone who is very capable with money who was just being direct and truthful.

Childcare is easily that for two kids in London. Where I live 40 miles outside London it’s £1400 to £1500 per month per child.

That's an interesting perspective. You will gentrify an area just by moving to it? Are you Princess Kate?

Well those of us on much lower salaries who say we are struggling get told on here to

Downsize
Sell stuff on Ebay
Only use public transport
Cancel any subscriptions
Buy from charity shops
Get a lodger
Get a 2nd job
Take in ironing

So which of those have you considered OP?

Well done on completely missing the point 🙄

This actually doesn't surprise me. It's just the absolute state of this country at the moment. I live in Scotland so have a significantly cheaper mortgage/overall bills and expenditure but on a joint income of around 100k (probably a bit more) we are not exactly living the high life either. We have two young kids although youngest is three so no huge childcare bill now (although it's not zero either right enough). I have no advice but I actually do understand even though i'm not earning anywhere near as much as you.

Can you tell me what job you do? Looking at new careers

Yep!

After all bills are paid, food shopping done etc I have, at most, £20 left a week. Try living off that!

So you are in a huge amount of credit card debt 🙈

I’m assuming you are a single parent, OP, since you don’t mention partner’s salary?

In this case, your £175k is more akin to a dual income household each earning less than 50% than that. I say less than 50% as you’ll be taxed much harder than a dual income household (which isn’t fair).

But you spend 4k on childcare and that won't be forever. Also once you have paid off your house then you can stay in it, or move to a larger property outside London. Or downsize and free up the money. Whereas others are much further away from building that much wealth over a lifetime.

Just learn about where your pension is invested and invest what spare money you can wisely.

And they'd have even less take home salary if they lived in Scotland due to higher taxes. I totally get it, I'm in the SE and household income is a bit below OPs. I get to live a nice quality of life only because I have chosen not to have children.

OP, even though I'm currently on welfare and I have so little in common with you, I love how you respond to these women who are being so catty and brutal. You are so heroic in your clever and witty responses to these jealous ladies, I'm inspired 😅

Having worked as a nanny to an Islington family with 2 children, I used to be paid £10 an hour/£550 a week/£2383 a month working 55 hours. It would probably cost you £12/£660/£2860 in today's money, so you could be saving £1140 a month by hiring a nanny.

Also, do you shop from Ocado/Waitrose/M&S/Wholefoods for all of your shopping? If so, it would be best to switch to a cheaper supermarket such as Asda or Morrisons - they deliver to your house too. I would go as far as saying you should shop at Aldi/Lidl because their food is not worse quality - the reason it's cheaper is because of how their supermarkets are organised (items never unpacked but kept in boxes, limited choice but good quality basics, mechanised reshelving, fewer staff), thus cutting corners on costs.
You can always get some of the more luxurious things that you enjoy from the more expensive shops- like meat, eggs, treats etc Instead of paying £400 a week for an Ocado delivery, you could be paying £150 at Asda.

Your mortgage is actually very low for the area you live in (Most mortgages in Islington nowadays would cost more than £5k-£10k a month) so it would make no sense to move to a cheaper area.

Do you get Childcare vouchers at work? This would be a great way to reduce the amount of tax you pay by doing a salary sacrifice in lieu of childcare vouchers.

It's true that it's the cost of kids that really hammers the nail into the coffin of a comfortable lifestyle 😅

Would a nanny or childminder not be cheaper than nursery? Do they eat off gold plates? People on less manage because they have to. They probably stress more than you because they have less of a buffer when an unexpected expense crops up.

Wow your childcare bill is mental, one always think you'll be so well off with a wage like that(most of us can only dream of) but I guess the consolation is that after the kids start school you will have all that money to use for something else, so it'll be 3-4 years of tighten the belt. Would it be cheaper for you to hire a nanny/childminder?

Nannies are £15-18 an hour nowadays. And childcare vouchers scheme is closed for most

People on Less get subsidised childcare.

standard nurseries without gold plates cost £2K a month nowadays (and Im in zone 5).
Nannies are more expensive than nurseries

It's so true! Many posters here would consider me to be well off, the fact is, I am because I have 100% less humans to pay for than average 😅

The childcare voucher scheme was closed six years ago. The tax free childcare scheme was introduced to replace it but anyone on £100k plus cannot access it.