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.

Discounting all things taken off salary (NI, pension, student loans etc), the net monthly take home for £80k is £4700. For £30k it’s £2100, so x 2 is £4200. It’s better, but not that much better.

And most single people are on nowhere near £80k, whereas £30k is a normal amount for each person in a couple. A single person has to make £70k to get the same monthly take home as 2 people earning £30k each.

Really you should include council tax in any calculation about money available - that will reduce what your single person has in their pocket quite considerably compared to a couple as the single person pays 50% more of this particular tax than they do.

It’s not a full 50% more.

Council tax is an occupancy tax based on the value of the accomodation you are living in. Singletons tend to rent cheaper accomodation than a couple does so their total council tax will be lower as they are more likely to be in a lower council tax band. In addition singletons get a 25% discount off council tax.

(I am presuming here equivalent incomes with a dual income for the couple, plus no children for either.)

Yes, when talking about gross income. 80 is more than 60 🤨

Not all of us pay council tax 🤷‍♀️

This is not the case everywhere. Where I live, 3 bedroomed properties are band A, so a tiny flat isn't any less.

Council tax needs a huge overhaul for many reasons, but whatever they changed it to, even a really fair system, would annoy large swathes of the population who would have to pay more.

Please tell me how?

God yeah, if only council tax did actually reflect how people live. Round here all the lovely old period properties (that a single person could never hope to buy) are band b while every single poxy tiny flat built after 2000 is automatically band c. They get away with it because council tax bandings have never been re-evaluated so anything built after it came in has a "notional" [read: made up] value. It's a complete racket.

And of course on a purely like for like basis, a single person living in a band b property pays 50% more TAX than each person in the couple next door.

Oligarch I presume.

Or maybe a freeman on the land.

Unusual then to be in this position

I don’t find it that difficult to be honest. The tho h I find tricky is when I go out with couples and it’s my turn to pay for them.

I mean when you take off tax and NI the difference shrinks dramatically. And most single people don’t earn high salaries. They earn the average.

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at
By definition, a single person isn't going to be in a couple so will never be "captured in other household types such as a couple."

I was responding to a poster who said "If you're single you're probably in a shared house."
The stats show that is very unlikely, because shared housing makes up a comparatively very low % of households.
Given this low proportion and the fact that single people might also be recorded as living on their own (a high proportion of households), as a non-dependent living with family members, or on their own with a dependent or non-dependent child - none of which would be classed as a "shared house" it's not the case that most (or even many) single people live in that type of accommodation.

Another factor is that lack of decent jobs in the regions and rural areas means young people can't live at home anymore. Many have to move and get their own flats because the only available jobs are in large towns and cities far beyond commutable distance from their family homes,

It's why places like Cornwall and the Lake District struggle. The only jobs are retail and hospitality, and people wanting a better career have to leave their home towns and move to larger towns and cities. Places like London, Leeds, Manchester, etc are sucking in younger people but aren't providing adequate housing for them. A vacuum is left in the regions filled by people wanting to invest in holiday homes. The London centric nature of the country over the past few decades, centralisation of jobs into London and a handful of other large cities, wholesale closure of regional offices, local branches, etc., has greatly contributed to the housing crisis in different ways.

If my son could have got a job within commuting distance of our home, he'd be living at home as he's single. As it is, there are simply no employers in his financial services profession within commutable distance of our home, so he had to move 3 hours away, pay 3/4 of his wage on rent, utilities, travel, etc., just to work. A generation ago, our area had two large financial services employers - both closed down with staff made redundant or relocated to their London office! My son basically "crashes" in his flat during workdays and comes home most weekends and holidays etc. - he has no social life there, it's here. What a colossal waste of money (and travel time) just so that he can work in his profession - taking up a home that a more local person could benefit from. Lots of his colleagues were living in hostels during their first few months after starting work with him as they literally couldn't find anywhere to live, no flats, no house shares, etc - demand so high that estate agents were only giving an hour of viewings for each property/share and landlords had the pick of applicants due to the insane high demand.

So much has gone wrong with this country over the past few decades, from London Centricity, lack of housing, immigration, holiday lets taking residential properties out of the market, etc. Massive changes are needed in so many areas.

Yes, living alone is tough financially. Especially the mental load and being responsible for everyone. I have just taken in a lodger after resisting for quite some years to help with paying off my mortgage faster and to be able to put some more aside to cover some maintenance and decoration costs. I sympathise OP.

Been my life for 30 years. I never recovered financially from my first divorce, and 2nd husband was a spendy alcoholic that I had to leave. At 62, I earn better than I ever have. Life as a lone parent of 4 has been financially awful. Desperately trying to save for a deposit now as some places will do a mortgage till 75. 1st husband (who ran off with my wealthy friend and has been a Disney dad for 30 years) is very comfortable off his wife’s £££. He was a lying skanky bastard (still is but she won’t see it).
I don’t believe in Karma.

Responsible for everyone while living alone ...it's just you. You're everyone

@Regretsmorethanafew - yes, it was a typo. I meant to say everything rather than everyone. The cat may disagree, however 😂