Is anyone else's full wage just going on living expenses?!

[maria2bela1]

My partner and I both work, have 3 young children. We crunched some numbers yesterday and my partners whole wage (which is a decent one, over 50k) goes on outgoings! I just can't believe it, we pay high rent in London (2k) then our gas/elec bill is sky high at £230 a month. Sorry having a rant but this is insanity. How are we ever supposed to save for a house? I honestly feel like the only way around this is to leave London, but our family and friends are here so not nice for the kids.

You're getting a rough ride on here OP. I have three children in London too, and yes of course, it's very expensive, and got substantially more so.
Of course it would have been cheaper and more sensible to stick with two but sometimes these decisions are not straightforward /are taken by the heart not the head. Not everyone has the luxury of time to save for a house deposit before their fertile years are over etc. The important thing is what do you do now?
Realistically I do think probably you'll have move out of London if you want to buy a home. It's a tough one if all your friends and family are here.
There's nothing wrong with renting while you make the decision and while your kids are happy. Yes it's expensive but just by being in London you're 'buying' access to great schools, parks, amenities, cultural capital, in our case an amazing, walkable local community which our kids hugely benefit from. Of course these things exist elsewhere but there's a reason why London works really well for so many families and it's popular to live here.
A lot of people we know in London with kids are hanging on by a thread on interest-only mortgages, which isn't THAT different to renting, especially now that property prices have stalled.
I do think it's rubbish that parents who work hard and earn £50kish a year feel so hard up IMO. Only 40 per cent of people in the UK are net contributors of tax, I don't think it's surprising that a lot of people at the bottom/ middle of that group wonder why so much is being asked of them and why they can't afford a slightly better standard of living.

This. Op you live in London, there are so many free museums etc in London. 'days out' that incur more cost should be no more than maybe once a year as a real treat in the context you are trying to save for a house deposit? Surely a secure home for your children comes way ahead of a few days out. Every penny counts.

Tbh i think is partly because many young people want to skip out the step of buying a flat. They all seem to go straight to buying a 3-bed house as a first property whereas I'd bet a lot of people in their 50's now who bought in their 20's did so by buying a small flat eg 1 or 2 bed, then selling it to upgrade to a house in early 30's. Some of it is choices people make now.

That makes complete sense though! Often a 2 bed flat in z2/3 is the same price as a house in z4/5 and as FTBs are older if they want dc they need space now. And why potentially pay 2 lots of stamp duty? Plus many flats in London have not increased in value post Brexit. The ladder concept doesn't really work now.

I bought at 21, low interest rates and borrowing up to 5 times my salary, it was very easy to get a mortgage for everyone I knew around the same age

The only surprise is that you are surprised at this.
London is expensive

I find it odd that you " crunched the numbers" and only just realised after 3 children that getting on the property ladder in London would be impossible.
Bizarre

I bought at 21, low interest rates and borrowing up to 5 times my salary, it was very easy to get a mortgage for everyone I knew around the same age

Lots of 21 yr olds are still at uni or just finished so don't have the deposit. How did you save yours and what rent did you pay? Post 08 you couldn't borrow 5 times your salary unless you were a high earner.

Besides I haven't said there aren't any FTBs in their 20s, I just statistically it's not the norm...

This isn’t a ‘choice’ in quite the way you think.

A one bed flat isn’t much use if you’re 35 and wanting to start a family.

I’d have far preferred to buy a one bed flat in my twenties vs the series of HMOs I lived in - but it wasn’t affordable to buy one, due to both income level and lack of deposit.

People in their 50s now were still able to buy themselves a one bedroom flat on one wage in their twenties, often with 100% mortgages and far lower prices.

I bought straight after uni, had £5000 saved and bought a tiny flat for £95k.
I bought in 2012, got 5x my salary of £18k.
I paid rent for 3 uni houses, but it was pretty cheap as the landlord has such a low interest rate, obviously that's harder now as I can imagine rents are higher. But I worked 2 jobs throughout uni to fund my life at uni and save.

As others have said it's all about decisions people make to be able to save and go for what they want

Exactly @MidnightPatrol I would skip the flat stage too if I was a FTB now.

I worked out if I didn't go to university & worked full time in my weekend retail job and if I was just 1 yr older I could have bought a cheap flat in London on a 95% interest only mortgage with a small deposit & I would have made a mint! By the time I left uni and was over 18 things were already different. Plus many people were just very lucky that things worked out & post 08 wasn't like the 80s. Who would advise a young person now to borrow their max on an 100% mortgage or interest only one? There's a reason not many of these exist now!

Pretty much both our income goes on bills. We're each left with about £200 "fun money/savings" a month. Fine until something needs fixing/replacing. Never any holidays, never any treats and I'm so overdrawn from making ends meet.

@Youcancallmeirrelevant

I worked at uni to support myself, my loan was exactly the same as my rent. I didn't buy till I was in my 30s but my deposit was more than 95k...

As others have said it's all about decisions people make to be able to save and go for what they want

We will just have to agree to disagree.

How did you get 5x a salary of £18k with a 5% deposit in 2012?

That sounds very unlikely.

We've ruled out living in London due to costs as long as 20 years ago - despite DH loving it as a PhD student - and large parts of SE or part of midlands I grew up in - just unaffordable house price wise and other costs.

London been losing kids a while now - schools are closing because of it. Kids are expensive - London is expensive - unless you have a huge income/money you can't easily have it all - or not all at same time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2k9l8vjk8o

You can believe me or not, doesn't affect me. I'm telling you how I bought my 1st property, it was a very straight forward process, maybe it varied in different areas

@MidnightPatrol Definitely not the norm but nor is leaving uni with savings.

Yes,it's horrendous! I don't even have kids but still have virtually nothing left at the end of the month. It all goes on rent, utilities, fuel etc! Bloody depressing 😕

As I say different decisions, because I bought at 21, I then sold that house and bought a 2 bed house at 26 with a deposit from the equity of my flat, and then bought a much bigger house at 30 with equity of £200k because house prices have gone up.

Also never took out a student loan, cause I worked flat out whilst at uni to pay for everything so I'd have no student debt.

Different decisions 🤷

As I say different decisions, because I bought at 21, I then sold that house and bought a 2 bed house at 26 with a deposit from the equity of my flat, and then bought a much bigger house at 30 with equity of £200k because house prices have gone up.

Also never took out a student loan, cause I worked flat out whilst at uni to pay for everything so I'd have no student debt.

Different decisions 🤷

Well - it does when you are on your high horse about your ‘choices’ being superior to others.

The point about accumulating equity by the time you were 30… well, yes this is the problem buyers have, silly price inflation meaning the later you get ‘on the ladder’, the more expensive it has become.

Different decisions

Yes, younger people didn't need student loans if they just make different decisions 😆😆

Buy time DH - in HE - had permanent job and wouldn't have to move on in few years time - and I'd save bulk of deposit we were early and mid 30s - we had two kids already and wanted the family house.

My Il were outraged we weren't buying the 2 up and 2 down they did then trading up every 5 or 6 years . It would already have been too small for us and as luck would have it 2008 crash would have meant we were stuck for best part of a decade anyway in somewhere too small to start with and we wanted a third child.

They had wanted us to wait to be parents - unlike them parents at 19 and 20 - MIL thinks few year earlier would have been "right" time - DH just turned 50 and I'm only a few years younger.

This.

I mean, how is this news to you now ?

Also, if I've read it right, you seem to still have all of your wage "spare"

You are in a position of real privilege.
For the first 18 or so years of our marriage, I was literally checking and double checking where every penny had gone. I do mean literally. The concept of having a "spare salary" every month and moaning about it is wild.

They said in the UK it was a low amount.

Well I have just read that someone is paying £2,900 in rent in London. Paid for by UC. That is crazy.

We have 2 kids in London, if we only had my DH’s 50k wage then it would almost entirely go on essentials so we are a 2 income family to avoid this.