What is your household income, how much is benefits, and how are you coping?

[Gabrilla]

Genuinely curious after so many threads on here about benefit changes. Please feel free to name change!

I’ll start:

Salaries for both of us total 90k. Only benefits are £102 month child benefit, though we also get tax-free childcare and 15hrs free at nursery.

Total income is about 6k a month, mortgage and bills 3k, nursery 1k, commuting costs £500, groceries cost £500, husband pays CMS and other bits to his children totalling about £500 leaving us about £500 for everything else.

Feels like we’re constantly penny-pinching.

Must be the mythical mumsnet chicken lasting a month rather than a week 😂

I would say to OP and most of you - don't despair. There is a bit if a "U curve" with disposable income.

I felt like I had more spare money as a student than I did as a working adult.

Second hand clothes, no holidays, no haircuts, struggled for everything. Sinking into debt anyway. As soon as my job salary picked up a bit, we had kids, and childcare wiped out those salary increases so back to brassic again. Never been on a package holiday in school hols, or hen do abroad, never had nails done or any of the things other people seemed to take for granted.

But - once the kids went to school the childcare costs plummeted. That was the first time we'd had any money. Suddenly, holidays and meals out were back in the equation. Then our salaries went up through promotions. Then the mortgage got proportionately less as a result of interest rates and general inflation.

Now we still have one second hand car, a bit of a shabby home, second hand clothes, etc. But these are probably because "old habits die hard" rather than out of necessity. Mind you, our incomes dropped again when I lost my job. But somehow we managed.

Things get so much easier folks.

"Live frugally" whilst having a holiday every 4 months, eating takeaways, paying for 4 extracirvular activities every week whilst overpaying mortgage...

If you read, I say one earning 80k and one stay at home parent. There could be an exception for single parents but this obviously is complicated by the fact that it’s difficult to track maintenance.

There won’t be a one size fits all..

I meant frugally compared to people at work on the same salary as me. They go abroad 2/3 times a year, have new cars on finance, have bigger houses/ mortgages. I expect if I was doing those things I would feel less secure than I do.

I wasn’t complaining about my life. It’s exactly how I want it. The biggest things are obviously no childcare bills and a tiny mortgage. I’m glad I made the choices that I made in my 20s to facilitate that in my 30s.

I suggest you look at some of the frugal forums- it's quite possible.

It is literally not possible to provide for the nutritional needs for a fully grown adult at £9 a week including cleaning products and hygiene essentials.

Retired and have a monthly income of £1550.
Still have 1 adult son at home who is currently in 3rd year of Uni. ( he has own income of monthly bursary and ADP because of disabilities he has ).
My monthly outgoings are
Mortgage £450 ( includes over payment )
Gas/electric £95
Council Tax £103 ( get single person discount whilst son is student )
Internet £32.50
Iife insurance £32.82
Tv licence £15
Mobile ( sim only ) £7
Netflix £12.99
Buildings/contents insurance £31.67

Total £779.98.
Have no transport costs as gave up car when I retired ( age 60 last year ). Have bus pass to cover travel throughout Scotland.
Spend approx £200-220 on food/cleaning/toiletries per month.
Enjoy eating out minimum of once a week.
Rarely buy new clothes unless its something needing replaced.
I manage to save on average between £300-400 per month.
Mortgage will be paid off by December this year so that frees up another £450 per month.
I dip into savings if anything needed in house and for occasional weekend aways. Did go abroad last year to celebrate 60th.
I would say I am comfortable on my income but did retire due to health conditions that can limit my mobility a lot of the time due to pain.

I am retired and live alone. My monthly income is currently £2,348.95 (I know that because had to declare it recently). I'm on no benefits. It goes up next month. Outgoings are service charges (I live in a flat), approximately £4,200pa which includes water rates, building maintenance, cleaning of common parts, lift, building insurance; ground rent £548.60 pa; electricity which varies but last month was £27.00. I manage quite well, thankfully.

DP & I have corporate pensions, so we know we are very lucky, plus Pip as I’m disabled.
Decent lifestyle, some months we save & some we don’t.
Four DC in total, youngest about to go to tertiary education.
Can’t quite believe that we have successfully got through some really hard times, inc massive debts & mortgages, to be in a position where we are solvent - it wasn’t easy. (Would rather be in debt & have my health, but hey ho, thems the breaks sometimes)

I wish this was true but now our DC are at school our wages aren't keeping up with inflation. I like my job but the industry isn't well paid. I see senior jobs in my industry paying 40k (I'm talking Head Of, board or CEO level in some cases!). Ditto with my partner's job. He can't move as his salary would halve.

PS to my previous post which is currently above-but-two.

I forgot to mention Council Tax which, from next month, is £146.35, £151 thereafter, per month. I think that's for ten months.

That's a scary jump in your mortgage, considering you have 50% equity.
Do you mind sharing the figures involved? We come off of our 5 year fix in June 😮‍💨

OP you are an absolute saint to put up with a partner who willingly dropped £15k in salary and whose kids cost you £1.5k a month and prevent you from having your own.

Fuck if I would put up with that. He must have a golden dick. You’d be much better off single.

Thats my figures too, I have 60% equity. Mortgage went from 1.2% to 4.6%.

Wow. Do you mind me asking on what house value?
Our house is worth approx £425k. We have £110k mortgage left to pay, and mortgage calculators don't suggest anything like that kind of increase in monthly payments.
Presumably (hopefully) our higher equity is the reason for that.
I was anticipating payments going from £500 to £700-ish a month.

I'm a single parent with two tweens and a dog and I work full time. Gross annual salary just under £50k, plus child benefit of ~£2kpa. Ex husband sends £185pm.

I'm very fortunate that my mortgage payment is only £300pm. Long story as to why, but that's what it costs me.

Household bills (council tax, utilities, mobile phone, TV licence): £390pm

Car and home insurance: £70pm

Pet costs (insurance, food): £70pm

Car costs (service plan, fuel): £100pm

Car loan repayment (including overpayment): £280pm

Tax free childcare: £90pm

0% purchase repayment: £55pm

Kids clubs and pocket money: £250pm

Subscriptions (Netflix, online photo storage, Amazon Prime, Audible, charity donation): £35pm

Household luxuries (cleaner, wheelie bin washing): £90pm

Groceries: Average £600-700pm

Savings: £500pm

So that's a total of £2380 bills etc and £500 savings. It leaves around £300pm on average, but as some of my salary comes in an annual bonus it's much less left over most months.

I do dip into savings regularly (had to take a lot out recently for some massive vet bills). Holidays tend to be staying with family/friends with only travel costs; I just can't afford to spend a few grand on a holiday abroad, as much as I'd like to. It will be better once loan is paid off.

I know where my luxuries are and where I could make cuts if I wanted/needed to. I don't scrimp on groceries and we have a lot of non essentials in there.

I make good use of 0% finance, and other than the car loan and mortgage I've never paid a penny in interest, despite having thousands on cards/purchase plans over the years.

The main stand out thing for me in terms of your finances is your mortgage payment 😱 I do dream of moving to a bigger house but financially it just wouldn't be doable at the moment.

Our mortgage is a lot more than yours, its 235 k!

Bought and fixed at 1.2% and remortgaged for a similar amount when the fixed deal ended, then unfortunately had to remortgage at the hight of trussenomics for around 6%.

We knew 1% was obviously low but the jump in such a short amount of time has been astronomical.

It’s not your equity but the low mortgage. Plus interest rates have lower out and steadied.

For us property is around 600, mortgage high 200’s.
London, not a large or fancy properly. The 2 kids share a room.

OP, your mortgage is £1800 and your "bills" are £1200. What is included in those bills?

Absolutely privileged beyond imagination, tone deaf etc….certainly not! Very conscious of my privilege, spend a lot of time and donate a lot of money to charity.

Although reading the responses - was perhaps rather stupid to focus on obtaining a high earning role. I should have had kids early, done an admin role, been subsidised by the govn and had a much less stressful life. Instead I was the generation that was stupidly fed the nonsense I could have it all. Left it to mid- 30s to try for kids, have unexplained infertility and recurrent miscarriages - so while I have no kids I am in the high paying role, paying all the tax 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. At least I have the experience to advise my friends female kids to marry well/ or have your kids early and get subsidised by the State! Win win.

You don't know you're born.

Oh it’s that easy. Let me just switch industry and leave London.
Make it a lot harder to find a job given I will have to start with zero industry knowledge and likely have to move back into a field I hate but who cares about that!

I just think lots of people on this thread don’t understand the impact of tax. Benefits, child maintenance etc as all received tax free.

But to take home that amount ( even on a mid range tax bracket) you’ve got to earn 20, 40% more!

for someone to take home the same amount as the £1000 a previous poster gets in UC you have to earn at least 1200 , or 1400 , this is why larger salaries don’t always equate to actually having more than smaller salaries plus benefits and Cm payments!