To really struggle to save money

[redfox14]

I work part time (20 hours a week) and DH works full time, we have a 1.5 year old DD. I've been back at work since she was 9 months old. DH and I are trying to save money and literally every month we find ourselves thinking, where on earth has our money gone?

My annual salary is about £12k and DH's is £25.5k. Neither of us are frivolous with money. We don't go out drinking, we haven't had a date night in months, we would maybe get a takeaway once a month (and then wish we hadn't). We haven't been on holiday for 2 years. When we look at our bank statements it is all bills, petrol, and food shopping, or bits and bobs like picking up stuff from the corner shop, Boots, and so on. DH foots the majority of the bills and for DD's nursery, I pay for the car, we split food shopping and petrol. On the rare occasion that we manage to put a bit of money away it never seems to last or has to be spent on emergencies (tyre punctures, broken boilers, to name a couple of recent examples).

I feel we never have any money comfortably left over. We try so hard to be sensible, but I have sleepless nights worrying about money. I think a lot of it is due to the rising cost of living and neither of us having particularly well paid jobs, and me only working part time, but I don't want to sacrifice the time I get to spend with DD by going back to working full-time, and then having that extra pay be cancelled out by needing more childcare. My parents are gobsmacked that we don't have any savings but I don't know what else we can do.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for saving money when you're not on a large combined salary?

That’s not a massive income for a family, especially with nursery bills, so I’d say it’s right that it’s just about enough to cover the very basics these days, depending on your housing costs.

In time you won’t have nursery to pay for and hopefully wages will rise and things won’t be so hard.

That's a low household income when you have to pay nursery.
Could you do a couple of evenings / weekend shifts a week while husband is at home with the baby ?
You could maybe get some Christmas retail hours now and save that money?

@notsosweet16 That's just it, I feel we do cover the basics and struggle for anything else. Our nursery bill isn't actually that bad compared to a lot of people's but everything just seems to add up to a huge sum.

Your part time and both low earners so it's no surprise you can't save. Sounds like you are doing ok if you can cover basic costs though.

@notatinydancer I have thought about getting a second job, but DH has discouraged me from it. He has offered to start working weekends and has a lot of friends who are labourers, so he's said he could start doing jobs with them, but then we are both disappointed at the idea of missing our weekends together.

We do need more money but also want to spend as much time together as we can so it's a bit of a rock and a hard place situation sadly!

Do you not qualify for Universal Credit on your joint salary?

You both have very low salaries, that’s not a dig but facts. The idea you would think you’d have money left over let alone a substantial amount is a bit delusional.

Can you not work full time and have DC in childcare full time? Then you can earn more and still have weekends together

What are your career paths going forward?

a lot of it is due to the rising cost of living and neither of us having particularly well paid jobs, and me only working part time

Well, yes. Low salaries and part time work on top of rising living costs is exactly why. Would working a couple of evenings a week (when you wouldn’t need childcare) help a bit? Babysitting/supermarket, maybe?

Have either you or DH got any prospects for earning better salaries? Any training you can access to progress to something higher skilled/better paid?

£25.5k is low for a full time wage for an adult of an age to have begun a family.

Well, firstly you do need to have a proper grip of your expenditure and know exactly where your money is going. "Bits and bobs" usually means unplanned/non essential outgoings. £37.5K household income is not the poverty line. The level of disposable income you have may just require discipline to enable regular savings. Deliberately saving £50 per month would be a good start.

Realistically you can't not compromise anything and have it all.

Your making your choices to not have money but instead have time. That's a great thing. But with time comes compromises.

You need to change your perspective. Rather than expecting to save instead expect to not save. That's the trade off you've picked.

Once you've accepted being skint then your feeling about being a bit broke should be more positive.

Your time rich but cash poor. You can switch it up anytime. For now this is your choice. Be content with it.

Thing is @redfox14 you're going to have to make a choice between more time at home and having more money. I made the choice to work more hours (still part time) and focus on my career to get promotions) so we’d have enough money to give our DC experiences, the extras and being able to save for their futures, but if you choose more time at home that’s a perfectly solid choice but obviously you’ll have less money, especially as your both on low incomes.

You will be hard pressed to save anything out of your joined salary. I agree with PP, you prioritize time with your child, your husband wants you to prioritize time with your child so, naturally, money is going to be tight. I would consider spending your time wisely and think about retaining opportunities so that you can get a higher paid job once your child is no longer in nursery.

Why are you both on such low salaries? I understand your oart time but even the FTE is low. Are you in careers with progression? Are either of you able to do further qualifications or training to get better jobs? That's a very low household income to have a family. Do you get UC?

@Justwantosay we have checked Entitled To and it says all we qualify for is our child benefit.
@OnlyFoolsnMothers I don't think we could save a substantial amount, but it would be nice to have more than zero in the savings account :)
@Pandasnacks We can't really afford to put DD in nursery full time, we have looked into it and if I worked full time my increase in salary would just cover the nursery fees so not really feasible sadly.
@Didimum @V0xPopuli I work in a school as a TA, there is some scope for pay progression with further training and working as a 'senior' level but I have only started fairly recently. DH works in manufacturing and again there is scope for pay progression over time. Both of us like our jobs but are very aware we won't be making high salaries.
@howshouldibehave I may have to look into supermarket shifts and hope that they would offer evenings only (I used to work in one where you had to do at least one full day shift/early shift a week if you wanted to do shorter evenings).
@sansou Yes for the most part it can be things like running out of shampoo and conditioner/cleaning stuff etc which I don't budget for in the weekly shop, and only get when it needs topping up - but then random things will crop up, like recently I was poorly and had to pay for 3 prescriptions, so that was almost £30 on medicine! I totally agree with you though and could (hopefully!) manage £50. Every little helps.
@CanIBeHonest that's a refreshing outlook and you're totally right. We are very lucky to have what we have. I think there is a lot of pressure from society and even our friends and family to have savings and disposable income to spend on holidays etc but we just can't afford it right now.

People are forgetting that as OP points out, if she works more then that’s more money to pay for childcare.

Surely you can get some UC. I would also think about a part-time job for you that pays more and a full-time job for your that pays more. What qualifications do you both have?

@Joycedelight If I were full-time my salary would be around £27k pro rata (according to my contract), of the two of us I am the most qualified as I have a bachelor's degree but unfortunately haven't been able to get a job in my degree-related field. I've ended up working in a job I really enjoy but ultimately isn't ever going to pay me a high salary. DH worked as a tradesman for a number of years and has college qualifications, but his salary was always lower than mine when I worked FT. The job he is in now is the best paid he has had.

Do you absolutely need a car? Could you both look to hange jobs in the future to ones you can reach on public transport? It's the thing that made a huge difference to us when we were earning a similar amount.

I am sure he can earn more as a tradesman. My partner pays his labourers £150 a day and they often work 6 days a week. But even at 5 days it's 39k a year.

You need to get what you're entitled to on universal credit OP. Put it in tomorrow.

What does your dh do for work op?

Yeah the calculator isn't accurate on entitled to.

first start by logging all expenses for a couple months, this will help both of you see exactly what your spending where. no judgement just print off or log every penny spent.
one way of saving even small amounts monthly is to transfer money to a savings account odd "change" every evening.
so log onto your bank app at 8-9pm (after all outings and shopping basically) and transfer over the change or money so you start the next am with an even amount (ex taking a 9pm balance of 153.81 and transferring the .81 or 3.81 into the other account).
you would be surprised how easily you could squirrel away 50 per month.