Does anyone live alone on 25k or less?

[Imsotiredandcantsleep]

Assuming outside of London and not rent or mortgage free.
If you don't, have you done previously? How did you find it?

I lived alone on about £15k, but that was in 2010. My rent was also just £350 for a city centre flat with garden. I coped just fine.
Rent would be about 4 times that now.

I now live alone on UC (about £800pm), but have no housing costs.

@Imsotiredandcantsleep I would say that's absolutely fine! It's roughly £1600 take home pay?? If you have rent / mortgage of around £600-£700 plus bills, travel and food you should be able to manage (even if it is a bit tight some months).

The one thing I didn't account for living alone on a small salary (many years ago!) was anything going wrong in the house and having to find extra money to pay for repairs. I had to borrow off my parents or use a credit card (would not recommend - I was still paying them off years later!).

Do you have savings (or parents who can help you out in an emergency)?

Take the job. And extra £5.5k will be about £250
a month I think? It’ll make a huge difference.

I live alone on about 12k. I had to give up my car as I couldn't afford to keep it. I have a cat who (like a pp's cat) has the best of everything and who I love dearly. I rent a small terraced house in a village. Everything has to be very carefully budgeted but I manage.

To give you an idea of how CoL has changed things, in 2021 I was on about £8k less than I am now, and comfortable. Now I'm stretched. Same house, similar commuting costs, same number of cats. On food alone, a typical supermarket shop has gone up from about £40 to around £70.

I lived on less than that between 2016-2020. I took home just £1050 each month.

I lived in a room in a shared house, £400 went on rent with utilities included. A further £200 on council tax and other bills and direct debits. I spent £150 on food, £100 petrol and had £150 left for other things.

It was tight, but I did it. I couldn’t live on that little now though, since cost of living shot up.

I'm currently living on a max of 12k income - but I have substantial savings (built up when I was earning around 55k for a couple of years) and my mortgage is very small. I do take from the savings most months, but only a couple of hundred. Also use the savings for unexpected bills (car probs, cat illness etc). So that makes all the difference. But I've never had a lavish lifestyle and I always knew my previouos job was precarious, hence all the savings.