To be fed up of being on a good income but always skint?

[Justonemorecurlywurly]

I know I’m going to get flamed, lots of “boo-hoo, poor you”, and that there are people far worse off but -

Our household income (family of 4) is roughly £110-120k. DH earns about £100k of that, I’m self employed and part time so my income fluctuates. I think that’s pretty good money but it feels like we can never afford to do anything.

No holiday for 2 years.
1 car
Very few clothes
Modest house

If after paying bills, we ever buy something non-essential like a meal out, or maybe one or two items of new clothes, birthday present, that’s it, we’re out of money for the month. And we have no savings. It’s ridiculous!

We did try to move a few years back but couldn’t afford it so remortgaged instead to extend the house a little. We got the best deal we could and borrowed only as much as we were comfortable with (even though it meant we couldn’t do as much work as we needed). But unfortunately we made a mistake fixing the new mortgage for only two years and when that time was up, rates had shot to which has made our repayments considerably more expensive which really hasn’t helped.

I’m so fed up of it. I honestly feel like we felt so much better off about 10 years ago when we were earning A LOT less.

Does anyone else feel like this? Is it just that everything is so expensive now??

I know some people will say I should work full time but for reasons I won’t go into, I need to be available for my DC so me being p/t works much better for the whole family.

As you’re both apparently too skint to go out socially more than once so far this year, you are both obviously a bit shit with money. You have to budget and cut your cloth accordingly, like most people.

We earn around £85K between us and DS has just gone to uni. With the parental contribution and massive accomodation costs our outgoings now mean we can't afford to go on holiday or save, or replace big items.
I realise uni is a luxury but DS is paying for his own food and taking out loans as well.
At this point we ought to be comfortable but our salaries haven't kept pace with inflation at all. We were definitely better off a few years ago.

I know I know 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

they’re not as perfect as you!

I earn 22k and I've been on a holiday every year.

Where are you living?

People seem to think £1,900 a month buys you a million quid McMansion.

So many must not have recent mortgage experience

You forgot utility bill and council tax.

But you have demonstrated that they are better off. And that they CHOOSE to use their ‘better offness’ to pay for more expensive houses, cars and food. Those are choices. You don’t need a more expensive car, or food or house just because you earn more. One of the high earners I knew drove his cheap car past his local Waitrose to shop in Tesco.

OP are you paying NI contributions or opted into child benefit (can usually get NI contributions paid if under 12) this will make sure you don't have a big gap for state pension purposes.

Definitely sit down with both of you and do the Martin money spreadsheet with your bank statements.

You have a high mortgage so that's taking about 1/3 straight away, also your husband falls into the pay bracket of you actually need to earn significantly over due to tax purposes. Would look at his P60s. HMRC also has some useful take home pay calculators to have a play about with so if a pension contribution goes up slightly he might actually have more take home pay.

@couchparsnip yes, the uni funding is quite something these days. I am saving now but will feel it. God knows what it will cost then.

I’m in Australia. My partner earns $180k to $200k a year plus bonuses, dividends etc but his tax is horrendous.

We have a modest house with no backyard. We haven’t had a holiday in over five years. We have had a couple of weekends away but those were so expensive.

I have no nice clothes or jewellery. Everything goes on living expenses. Mortgage, cars, insurance (house, car, life insurance, health insurance) petrol, gas+electricity+water, phone plans, internet (we need internet for his work) and local government taxes (known as council rates). I don’t ask for anything. I didn’t get anything for my birthday or Christmas or Valentine’s Day. I don’t spend on myself because my partner never buys himself nice things. I’ve had the same sunglasses for about six years and they weren’t even expensive.

I feel so responsible for our current status because I’m not earning - but my child is severely autistic so I haven’t been able to and now I’ve been out of work for so long I’m worried I won’t get hired anywhere.

We live in a city where you need a car to get around and at one stage we shared a car but that meant I was often without a car when I needed it.

The car I drive is old and my partner’s car was bought second hand.

Ten years ago people on my partner’s income could support a family, buy a house in the city plus a holiday house near the beach of a tourist town and fund overseas trips.

The cost of living had gone up so much we are needing savings for basic living expenses.

We're the same as you and I feel embarrassed to talk about it as there are so many people earning less. However like you we did a renovation pre mortgage rates and have been majorly stung by the increase since. Then when you add up all the bill rises it has amounted to around £1k extra pcm. We're managing ok but I feel skint.

Apparently there was an article about ppl in this salary bracket feeling skint - it's quite common!

the truth is if you have housing costs of £3k (mortgage, council tax, utilities) and you feel like you “should” be able to afford a Saturday night take away, the odd bottle of wine, tea and cake whilst out on Sunday you’re going to burn through your £110k very quickly

You really aren’t.

Those are choices. You don’t need a more expensive car, or food or house just because you earn more. One of the high earners I knew drove his cheap car past his local Waitrose to shop in Tesco.

Generally better paid jobs are centred around areas with higher house prices.

I drive an old car - not that cheap these days by the way. I am not unusual. I don't shop in Tesco,

That's just a ridiculous thing to say about buying cheaper. First of all moving house is expensive and occurs a lot of cost, but also depending on where they live it might not even viable to move cheaper. I live in the south east and house prices are extortionate, I brought my house in 2011 for 180k and have a 130k mortgage on it, however the average house price in our area is now 400k, most people are priced out of the market without healthy deposits or equity, those that can but are still left with huge mortgages. I have no plans to move, I couldn't afford it even if I wanted too.

teaching qualifications don’t get you double in a different sector though do they? If you have other valuable qualifications then they’re not for teaching either so but of an odd thing to say. I think it’s highly unusual for a teacher to leave education as earn double- qualifications aside their work experience doesn’t really lend them to this kind of value in other sectors.

I don’t know why teachers are always so insistent they’re so highly desirable on other sectors, I’ve never seen this in 20 years of all sorts of sectors as a consultant.

We're the same as you and I feel embarrassed to talk about it as there are so many people earning less.

We should be talking more about it. Wage stagnation, tax cliff edges, frozen tax bands etc has really damaged incomes.

How much do you pay into your pension?

My mortgage is £505

There’s a lot of sense on this thread, op Id say look at all the things listed but also look at eg you’re in town and the kids want x or y or you feel like a treat etc- do you do that? Do you change service providers to get best deals, have you cut eg sky, is your car expensive to run etc. on that salary not having a yearly holiday/ savings is wrong. I know the times that we live in etc but just do a lot of detective work

All the brokers in the world can't sort that out on recent interest rates. You must be on a legacy rate.

I had to remortgage in 2023 during Liz Truss. £140k mortgage costs me £870pm for A Long Time, and that's through a broker, because that was the best rate available for anyone unlucky enough to need to remortgage then. I'm guessing you're on something like 1.3% and you have to see that isn't just due to your exceptional mortgage skills or whatever.

I don’t know why teachers are always so insistent they’re so highly desirable on other sectors, I’ve never seen this in 20 years of all sorts of sectors as a consultant.

I never get this either @AquaPeer

Waiting for op to pop back up and tell us the kids are in private school or they've got ponies or something.

I don’t think it’s possible on a legacy rate- I pay £1600 on 1.6% for a £360k and it has 26 years to run! She’d have too be on negative rates lol

@notatinydancer my house is worth 800k but i don't extrapolate that and think it's normal for everyone 🤷🏻‍♀️

Doing renovations has become the norm. It’s always been a massive expense and with current costs it’s increased massively. But you don’t have to do them. There’s definitely a move to wanting it all over the last 20 years.