Living alone is tough financially

[Addictedtofizzydrinks34]

If you have a mortgage or rent a home alone..maybe different if you're mortgage-free or perhaps only renting a room or something.
You have to make sure you can afford everything each month. If anything breaks/needs repairing, you foot 100% of the bill. All renovations are paid for solely by you.
You have to make sure you have money aside for various things.
Living alone has many advantages, but financially it's tough and I'm not sure I can do it for much longer. It's stressful unless you have a lot of savings I think.

Agreed. I'm coming up to 60 and the last thing I want is to have to share with a bunch of people I'm not related to. Where would DD and her DP sleep when they visit, or am I expected never to have them under the same roof as me, even just for a weekend, ever again? Also under the terms of my tenancy agreement I'm not allowed lodgers so that's out. "Just share" is not the magic solution some think it is.

yes a single person may have more earning opportunities than a couple raising a child/children

As a single parent I find this kind of statement utterly infuriating. Two people can work around each other. Sure, it will take it's toll on a relationship but the bottom line is two x 40 hours plus a week is better than 1 x 40 hours plus a week. I worked full time teacher from my youngest being 3. I also do exam marking (so seasonal work) and I continue to tutor when the work is available (it can be hit and miss - right now I don't have enough hours in the day and am turning work down but post exam season, I will have to start again!). I even set up my own holiday club which runs for 3 out of 6 weeks in the summer. I side hustle because I have no choice - no financial support from the ex. But the idea that having children somehow exempts you from finding additional work or having a partner means you can't work around each other is beyond ridiculous. So many people moaning about the cost of living and doing sod all to help themselves.

It really is! I lived alone for five years when I was aged around 27-32 and unfortunately that was the age where all my friends rented with partners and were saving for a house. I desperately wanted to save but couldn’t, and some of them seemed to struggle to get why.

My explanation always was… there are two salaries in your household and so half the bills pp. I am one salary and full bills. Let’s just hypothetically say we all come out with £2000 after tax every month, and rent and bills come to £1200. A couple bring in £4000 between them, once tneyve paid their bills they have £2800 left over to spend and save. A single person only has £800 left over to spend and save. So of course the couple are going to be able to save so much more, and also have so much more to spend.
Obviously everyone has varying salaries and outgoings but this explanation helped put things into perspective a bit.

I am living with my partner now and find it so much easier financially!

That is a choice you are quite at liberty to make. But you have to understand the luxury of that choice (a property to yourself plus a spare room) comes at a cost. You're choosing to pay more to get more. Your choice. You can't expect to have a property to yourself with a spare room and only expect it to cost you what 2 people sharing one property without a spare room pay each.

I agree with you...I work in a school too - full time day job and evenings on a zero hours contract.

When I was married and my daughter was small my then H worked a rolling 4 day on/off shift and I worked 4 days a week school hours. We filled in the gaps with nursery and a bit of help from the grandparents, and then with breakfast and after school clubs.

I used the word may because the possibilities depend on factors beyond being simply being a single parent.

Rent is the killer. Our son is having to pay over half his wages for a tiny one bed flat, and that's without council tax, electricity, water rates, broadband, insurance, etc. When you factor in all that and foods etc., he's barely got anything left for fun. And that's on a pretty good wage. All because of the housing shortage and having to live in an expensive northern city full of student lets and holiday homes which have soaked up far too many homes that people could have lived in.

Some of his colleagues are living in hostels because they've been unable to find anywhere cheap enough to rent (again, not minimum wage jobs, these are graduate jobs at a large employer). Others are living on sofas. Heaven knows how single people on minimum wage manage unless they're lucky enough to be able to find a job close to home and can continue living with parents.

Stop using the word luxury to describe someone’s living conditions!

A home is not a fucking luxury. It’s a basic need. Yes, some homes are more luxurious than others but it’s hardly equivalent to an all exclusive trip to the Maldives!

It is expensive. Mostly that expense is unavoidable tho. I certainly wouldn't consider sharing now, having lived alone most of my adult life.

I do wish hotels had more single rooms, and council tax was per adult rather than per household but most housing related costs its hard to work out how to do it differently.

Sorry, did you miss the bit where having a lodger would cost me my home?

Trains.

I went out with friends who have a two together rail card. Their train tickets cost £122 for both. My ticket cost £96.

There's no railcard for single people aged between 30-60 with no disabilities or not a veteran.

They also paid half for their dinner as they had the meerkat meals app. I paid full price for mine.

Be careful, @mrsm43s will be here to tell you how it’s a LUXURY to catch a train and be able to eat a meal. And that you should walk everywhere because it’s your choice to be catching a train. And just don’t eat out? Watch your friends eat their meal whilst you sit starving in silence.

For those living as couples who say it's hard financially, why don't you take in a lodger to make life easier?

What, your DC wouldn't have their own room? Well, according to some on here, that's not a problem if you're a single person with DC. You're making a choice to have a place with room for your kids.

Expecting to have a place with a bedroom for yourself and at least another for your DC is not an unreasonable expectation, whether partnered up or single.

It's not a race to the bottom and just because one set of people find things tricky, doesn't mean they shouldn't get help just because a different group of people find things tricky for different reasons.

Living on your own is more expensive. Fact. Some of the solutions given by people on here would not save any money. My eldest pays more than double in rent for his room in a shared house at university in comparison to my mortgage, partly due to location, partly due to the fact I bought a house that needed a lot of with and have spent time renovating it (myself).

I'm in my late 40s. I left an abusive marriage with next to nothing, despite being the one who carried most of the financial brunt during that marriage. I can't save to top up my pension, which is woefully inadequate as I've had to start again from scratch.

As I said in an earlier post, I'm lucky in comparison to many, but being able to afford housing with sufficient space to give DC a (shared) room should be a basic minimum expectation in mid/later life, not a luxury.

Who hear thinks we should live in a fair society? All of us right.. so is this fair...

Single people no dependents...no tax breaks, bottom of list of benefits or lucky to get any at all.

Single or a couple with dependents lots of benefits and support and tax breaks or sharing of tax allowances

When you go shopping anything cheaper or on offer is more than single person needs. Try buying food for a Single person so it won't be wasted and you pay more. Often better to buy a bigger packet and end up wasting it.

Council tax only 25% off

Is that a fair society?

I have lived alone for years, then shared now live alone again.

Financially it is crippling I agree - there us such s tax on being single.

Flip side is emotionally and mentally I far prefer not having people in my living space.

So I tell myself I need to earn more money and increase my investments!

The council tax 25% off made sense to me when I looked up how it was calculated (as opposed to 50% off). Still a big cost though!

Are you talking about living alone or being single as they aren’t quite the same.

That’s a huge problem in society though - that it takes sharing to afford a property.

Why do you think everybody has a spare friend who they can share with? Or has the room / desire to live their life with a stranger?

How do we have it “second best?”

No it's not. It is true that single people with no kids (actually all single people kids or not) are screwed financially.

It's also true that many people in couples (with or without kids) seem to think that being single is some kind of luxury - it's not. I say that as someone who lived alone for many years following a divorce and who is now living in absolute luxury compared to that because I live with my husband and we have that second income. We also have the luxury of being able to physically and emotionally support each other, share the load in other areas and take each others company for granted if we can't be arsed to go out.

This thread has also shown that not only are single people screwed over financially they are also treated and dismissed as second class citizens - not worthy of a space of their own, expected to always pay but never receive.

This is on top,of the fact that many coupled up people don't want to be around their suddenly single friends so they end up socially isolated on top,of everything else. And it ain't easy building a new social circle when you can't afford to socialise and, besides, omce past 30 everyone is couple up and generally with kids.

But they knew that when they had children surely?

The point is depending on what the SAHP was qualified to do there is another people to act as a back-up. If the primary earner is unable to work they can do the childcare and the other parent look for work.

Not an option for single people.

The other adult could work though and the children I assume was something you wanted.

@daliesque

It's also true that many people in couples (with or without kids) seem to think that being single is some kind of luxury - it's not.

I remember a friend being mind blown at me talking about my having to be very careful financially due to being single and living alone and how expensive it is because she wanted us to go away on a trip and I could not afford it. She said she just always imagined that single people with no kids must be rich.

I pointed out to her for the last 15+ years her household has been supported by 2 incomes when mine has been supported by 1….

I don’t see living alone as “luxury living”. It’s just a fact of my life.

But a 1 bedroom place is not much less than a 2 bedroom place. The reality is if you are single, you are probably in a shared house.

I remember a MNetter on here arguing with me saying I must be loaded because she’d be loaded if she was single and had no kids. The fact that we were on totally different salary brackets made no difference whatsoever - she continued to insist that single people without kids are absolutely loaded and the only people in poverty are families.

I’ve only read the first page of this thread and you can see why this issue is never discussed or addressed. Parents immediately start arguing about our luxury accommodations vs their childcare costs and asking why we don’t move in with the milkman if it’s that bad.

Society is only interested in hardworking families. Anyone not falling in that group can sod off.