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.

Awww god these threads always have people droning on with passive aggressive comments.

£110K a year including bonuses, family of 5, 4 bedroom house mortgage £1200, food around £1000 a month, car, petrol, insurance, council tax takes a chunk and then their competitive sport fees which alone cost about £400 a month just now.

We get zero benefits inc child benefit

So yes our wage is high and so is our outgoings BUT things are still tight some months and thats fine as we choose to live like this.

I'm up north so the mortgage & nursery costs seem massive to me 😁
Anyway if I were you op I'd be diverting some of that £1k pm to a pension once your DC starts school. If your gross annual is a pretty even split then it looks like there's not much coming out each month for employees pension contributions from either of you.

I think the problem is you are both only earning £45k. It’s not a lot. We are all sold a lie. There are billions kicking around in the economy and unless you one of the very few, we never see it. We just get the minimum to feel like it’s enough.

What industries do you work in? Could either of you shift into something more lucrative?

London/SE isn't the only part of the UK where property prices are bananas. I'm nowhere near London and the average property price here is £300k.

The average price of a property anywhere in England it almost £300K.

About 8k after tax. No benefits. No mortgage so just bills but have 7 kids between us so they cost a fortune😂

You can definitely get them in Yorkshire. In all four counties.

A 7 year old car isn't exactly ancient jeez!

You’re right, I worry about pensions. Mine isn’t bad (used to work in public sector until I was made redundant) but DH has barely anything. Right now we just can’t afford to pay more though.

The same household income as OP, only benefit is CB for one child. However, I live in South Yorkshire, my mortgage is paid off, we have no debt and we have a good lifestyle.

Yes, its more than my wage.

I had no idea how much it was until my husband left, had no experience of benefits prior to that. It includes an £800 contribution to my rent. People in social housing have their full rent covered, people in private rentals have their a contribution to their rent based on the lowest market rental in the area. In reality its never close to what you can actually rent for but its very much appreciated all the same as I couldn't afford to live without it.

We're very lucky and live a very good lifestyle.

DH earns £125k. I get £320 every 4 weeks in carers allowance.

DD gets just under £800 in PIP. That goes toward £300 on a wheelchair adapted car, £120 on incontinence products (she gets a very limited number free but nowhere near enough), £250 on specialist physio (she's been on the NHs waiting list for 4 years), £120 on speech therapy, £100 on hydrotherapy (very cheap as it's in her school's pool), £50 hospital parking pass (she's has a min of 3 appointments a month and it's £10-15 a day parking, but last year had 14 admissions of 2 days or more so it's cheaper over the year), £60 on her after school club (£15 a session but literally the only club that will take her).
We also have higher electricity bills because she has machines plugged in and the heating needs to be higher but can't break that down really.

We also get around £500 in kinship payments for taking in our nephew. That covers most of his nursery bill and a childminder pick up for the one day DD finishes school late (I can't pick them both up at the same time).

The carers, PIP and kinship add up to roughly what my salary was so we're lucky in that respect.

We're very lucky though as we have no mortgage now so we're much better off than many, which I'm very grateful for.
DD received compensation for the fuck up that left her so disabled so we're also 'lucky' (for want of a better word) that adaptions to the house for her and her speciality equipment was paid for by that rather than us having to find the money.

I imagine a hell of a lot of places. I'm in the North East, you can get properties here for around 70k, some cheaper in really bad areas.
The really nice houses here are around 250-300k so still cheap compared to a lot of places in the country.

With trepidation and hard hat firmly on......

We have £4127.02 per month.

Of which:
£3154.79 is wages
£972.23 is benefits

We're doing great. I feel pretty well off.

Thats down to a couple of things:

1. Pretty low housing costs and frugalish lifestyle (Not really- but by MN standards)
2. Disabled child- which significantly increases benefits entitlement
3. Both working- which UC was specifically set up to incentivise

Your issue is not your income. Your issue is your OH decided to have more kids than he can afford.

To be fair £3k on mortgage and bills is a lot, you could downsize for more disposable. Plus when kids no longer need nursery you'll be better off. But I agree not much left for living a relatively ordinary life. Money goes nowhere nowadays.

I think it's due to your outgoings, isn't it?

DH and I bring in £95k between us : about £5500pm. Our mortgage is only £235pm, so that, plus all other bills, totals about £1300, then we need food on top.

We drive second hand cars that are 9 & 11 years old, and all paid for, so no car loans. Even though the cars are 13 & 15 plates, they are lovely. Don't see any need for a new car.

When the kids were in Nursery, I was only bringing home £140 a month after fees paid. It's such an expensive time! Kids are adults now, and financially independent.

Hang on in there, it will get better in time. I would project forward to when yours are in school and his older kids are 18 and see what the figures look like - you should be really well off.

Well that depends when you bought it doesn't it? I bought my first 2 bed flat in London for 35k back in 1993

My little cousin is just buying her first house.
It's a lovely new build for £120k.
He morgage was around £700 a month if I remember correctly.
It goes without saying lots of young people are struggling to buy in expensive areas but there's still plenty of places they can buy at a lower cost.

We get around £150k in per year. Not entitled to child benefit but we do get the tax free childcare and 15 hours for our two nursery aged kids. Mortgage, bills and childcare comes to £6k per month then we have to add food etc on top. Our mortgage is £2600 per month in itself (very average 1950s terraced three bed house but in outskirts of London), nursery is £2500 for the both of them even with the free hours. We are ok but definitely still have to check before we buy and the likelihood of a third child or being able to reduce my hours is pretty small. I do earn more than nursery fees are per day, so we’d be worse off if I went part time

This is why the country's in a mess.

How relevant is what you paid 30+ years ago?

40K before tax. Paid my mortgage (modest terraced house) off last year which has eased things up quite a lot.

Try to save around £400 a month as house needs around 20K of work doing to it for maintenance rather than titivation.

Old car. Hair cut 4 X a year. Private tutor for my son once a week. Will increase this as he gets older.

I survive on a lowish income but have savings so don't worry too much. I'm happy being frugal. Don't really buy clothes/make up.

I guess mine is a cautionary tale against getting together with a single parent.

The issue is a man on a relatively low income, supporting a lot of children- how many? 3? 4 ? 5 ?