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.

@Sofiewoo

There are so many good private day schools that are less than that, the average is nowhere near 100k a year for 3.

I only know London & SW London borders. And every year they go up considerably even before VAT.

But @QuickTyper likely can afford the house in the catchment of a very good state school.

Some great value properties in beasutiful places in Scotland! If you insist on London, you will pay the price. I thought Covid head going to change this with wfh opportunities.

I think it is easy to list all the big money expenditure that seeps out of your bank account every month, if you have done all the utility switching , mortgage fixing, sensible waste free food shopping ,then there is nothing you can do about it, we all have to live! But very often it is the small items that we barely register as expenditure that nibble away at what is left, and those are the items that are worth listing and looking at.

Take away coffees ( and cake), bought in lunches, popcorn and icecream at the cinema, impulse buys at TKMAXX, etc etc all nice and reasonable treats, but if money is tight you do need to keep track of them.

Did you think, a few years ago, that you would have to do all those things to be able to afford a couple of holidays a year?

Do you still go in school holidays as that is the killer for us - a £2k holiday suddenly becomes £5k because school's out.

It just feels depressing to be in the top 1% or whatever of earners and having to quibble about putting the heating on.

@AquaPeer these are not simple decisions and surely the point of being a high earner is to buy yourself the freedom not to make them?
otherwise at what point can you relax around money? £500 PA? Being a multi millionaire? Being an oligarch?

Financial awareness is needed at all incomes though. 100k isn’t limitless, 250k isn’t limitless, 500k isn’t limitless.
If you spend money like water it will run out on any income.
It’s why so many lottery winners become broke because they have no awareness of spending.
250k is by no means large enough to be spending several thousands a month on frivolous expenses and then complaining you need to budget the remaining amount. It is absolutely enough for a more than comfortable life, a nice house in a nice part of London, several kids, holidays etc. But if your metric for earning well is never having to think about the cost of anything then you’re never going to feel that because it’s not realistic on any income.

I’m on a bit more now but my budget on ~42k was…

In -2750
CB-280
Benefits-177

Total: 3,207

Rent 1400
Electricity 120
Life insurance 40
Internet/tv/2 phones 86
Bin charge 23
Apple 20
Disney 10
DS club 25

Total 1,724
Leftover 1,483

1483 goes to
300 food
240 fuel
200 savings
50 kids clubs/school trips etc
100 treats/coffees/takeaways
100 clothes/shoes
50 birthdays/gifts
50 prescriptions/medicines
150 holidays/trips (either as a payment off a booking or as savings)
I know this essentially leaves over 243 but it gets eaten up somewhere usually and if not it’s put into savings.

I just find it amazing that someone earning another 2k can’t save, I get it if they have childcare but that’s temporary…we all know that. But they should still be able for a holiday and/or savings!

You would expect someone with a ‘top 0.5% salary’ to be easily affording a stay at home partner, a flash house, three sets of school fees easily though.

But that lifestyle seems far less achievable even on these massive salaries than in the past.

I’d argue £250k doesn’t stretch to a lot of house in a nice part of London. At max borrowing you’d be looking at a 2-3 bed terrace where I live.

Insane, of course, they are far far better of than the majority, of course - but I think for a lot of people there’s a bit of an expectation gap on lifestyle vs the past.

I was wondering the same… I make £100k and my take home is £5,100. I pay 3% in my pension and I do have £200 going into a private health insurance but no way would that bring my take home to £5.6k. It is miserable to see the amount of tax I pay every month tbh, we’d be so much better off if we both earned around £50k.

I joined mumsnet just to post on this thread, I really feel with the OP.

I’m the main earner in our household, DH earns around 12k working part time and we struggle every month. It’s ridiculous! But after mortgage, bills (council tax, energy, water, insurances, childcare, food etc), we have just about enough left for the odd day out. Were a family of 5 and just a simple cinema trip is around £60 - just for the tickets! Our kids are still fairly young (primary school age), but we don’t have a car, no expensive hobbies or gym memberships and our annual holidays is a trip to Butlin’s (which the kids love so no complaints). Our only luxury is our two senior dogs, whose insurance is high and even with insurance, the co-pay for meds etc adds up.

They can afford that though, they are in the nice house they wanted and they have plenty left over.
They could even afford 3 fees at the vast majority of private schools.
If they didn’t spend 2.5k on private fees from 2 years old they could easily have well over 100-150k in savings to top the schools fees by the time the youngest is in school.
Primary should cost even less allowing them to put away the difference in cost for secondary.
It’s not normal to expect to spend without any awareness whatsoever though.

@Mulki not sure if this works for you but the Everyman & curzon cinemas often do a family ticket (4) for £26. Obviously you still need to buy for another dc but much cheaper than the bigger chains.

Insane, of course, they are far far better of than the majority, of course - but I think for a lot of people there’s a bit of an expectation gap on lifestyle vs the past.

Housing has massively skewed things.

£250k after tax and pension ~ £11k a month.

£800k mortgage = £4.5k a month (this would be a small three bed terrace in London).

Three sets of school fees at £24k each = £6k a month.

That leaves you with £500 left over.

I think the private schools have no idea what is about to hit them re: decreasing pupil numbers. Millennial parents just won’t have the money due to the extremely high cost of housing.

I think the housing issue has become noticeably more extreme since interest rates went up.

The ‘my mortgage is £400’ brigade don’t realise to buy the same house today, their neighbour on the same income is now spending £1,900.

Ours is £450 mortgage for a two bed in a shit area in a Northern city.

Yes, so many are insulated as many don't even have mortgages. I read somewhere that the 5/6% rates of today are akin to the high rates of the past in terms of impact on disposable incomes because the base price is higher.

OP says they have a spreadsheet, so it'll be really interesting to see this. Not being critical, but we're in a four bed house but our council tax and gas/electric are a lot cheaper than what OP quoted, so could be OP chose to have a bigger house than us, and the price and size contributes to what's coming out of their income. I'm very good at food budgeting (can do £25pppw if I have to), I'm the only one who pays for a hairdresser (usually a couple of trims a week) - again that all saves us money I guess we had to get used to living moderately as our joint income was approx £48k a year. Coming out the other side, mortgage has been paid off, DH has taken early retirement for his own well being, so income is down to approx £24k per year but it's easier to manage.

We are in the same position as you. My partner earns around 110k and me 15k and after the bills and food shopping (which has gone up to ATLEAST £150 a week not even including weekends. Plus childcare and clubs we are literally left with nothing for treats or new clothes etc

But they wouldn’t be paying 3 sets of schools fees for a number of years, average primary fees are way less than 24k per child.
Currently they could very easily be saving £30k a year without much change at all other than childcare while OP is home with them a way which would pay for over 1.5 years of fees.
They won’t have 3 sets of fees for probably 4 or 5 years as the 3rd DC is young giving the DH several more years for salary increases, plus more often than not those sorts of salaries come with huge bonuses.

YANBU OP, I think having one higher earner clobbered by tax works out worse than two middle earners. Cost of living has gone crazy post covid. We spend so much on food, even at Aldi, it’s really eaten into the savings we thought we would have on childcare when our youngest started school.

There's no way that I could uproot my family from London and move to Scotland - the job opportunities outside London are slim and we need to be in the workplace in person several times a week. It's not really an option for lots of people to live in the sticks.

We have a household income similar to OP and yes, definitely feeling a squeeze compared to previous years, though it's not yet dire. We do budget carefully.

Oh for sure, the people who always come along and say “I paid 15% in 1988” are always massively oblivious that 6% of 300k is a hell of a lot more than 15% of 20k!
Plus no mortgage interest tax deductions these days.

How many kids? 3 adults shopping in Aldi- £100 -£120 pw incl weekends. That includes a couple of bottles of wine.

we are in a similar position to you, unfortunately we are in the worst tax bracket. Could your husband bring his wages down under the £100k mark and put into a pension, then you won’t get taxed as much.

Thing is you’ll also have less cash to meet your monthly expenses. The tax is just off the pension contribution, you don’t see the impact in your take home. You just get the satisfaction of knowing you’ve saved for the future I guess

Plus no mortgage interest tax deductions these days.

Always forgotten!