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.

In facr one couole living in Edinburgh live fairly close to JK Rowling.

Isn't that an expensive part of Edinburgh? Have have they got such cheap
homes?

I am on the same boat as OP, we both work full time with £130k between us and we are worse than skint, we are in overdraft every month. But we live in London and we £2.5k in mortgage for a 2 bed flat, plus we pay wraparound care £2.3k per month. We are in debt because we had to use all our savings to cover our costs during my maternity leaves. We spend £800 on food alone per month, and then there’s bills and commute costs. Life is ridiculously expensive and we have nothing to show for it. I absolutely hate it.

I feel this so much. We are also paying off debt from my mat leave, plus Covid and DH got made redundant three times in four years. It’s crap. And I feel guilty for complaining as I know we are still better off than so many but it still sucks.

It's the mortgage cost, our mortgage is only £650 and that's overpaying. We only have 56k left bought it 15 years ago. I would really struggle paying 2k a month for mortgage. We earn between us about 80k I work part time we are comfortable because our mortgage is cheap. Council tax is a lot too and shopping costs im not surprised people struggle with large mortgage costs.

Go back in time by a decade and a half and buy a cheaper home. Bingo.

The years of good life for middle classes are over.
There will be no pensions OP so don't worry about that. Our generation of MC will be working till we die. The next 2008 is just around the corner, then it'll take around 10-15 years to recover (if we manage at all).

No idea how you don't have loads left over, we have a joint income of 45k and manage a couple of short breaks a year, run two cars, older ones but well looked after.
Your bills look a lot higher than ours though, I thought our 1000 mortgage was high but yours is almost double, our council tax is 150 a month, water 35 but not on a meter, gas and electric 200

Go back in time by a decade and a half and buy a cheaper home. Bingo.

I know people who maxed themselves on interest only mortgages but low rates really paid off. The landscape is so different.

The next 2008 is just around the corner, then it'll take around 10-15 years to recover (if we manage at all).

That's the issue though, we never actually recovered from 08. Low rates masked it and then can was kicked down the road and now we can see the end of the road.

I just do those things out of habit. We’ve not always had that sort of money. We were both on minimum wage with two children needing childcare. DH and I both grew up in working class families with single mothers.

We don’t quibble about heating but I don’t heat the whole house if we are all under duvets in bed. It’s partly money saving and partly environmental. It’s why I won’t throw things out and will sell them if they’re still good.
We holiday both in and out of school holidays, depends on whether it’s a family or just a couples break. We also pay for our other child who is at university. So holidays will be for four adults.
I don’t have to save money with vouchers and look for bargains but I can so I do. The attitude of not doing it is why I think £120 is an amazing household income and not a wage for struggling on. If you have this you are immensely fortunate, and to say it’s depressing is an insult to those managing on minimum wage.

Yep. It's going to be worse this time.

'some of the big bills are the mortgage (£1,900), energy (£270) council tax (£220) water (£120)'

Even on the 100k alone take home is £5,650. Add 12k tax free £6,650

Where is the rest going on? I can understand if you had childcare costs but even with the monthly bills food etc you missed out there is a huge gap somewhere.

Car loan, other loans?

I'm not sure what you meant for quoting but my point was that lots of people have to follow their jobs - I'm a bit tired of the sneering of "just leave London then". Very few jobs exist for DH and me outside London; at one point DH applied for a job in Birmingham and I in Liverpool but no luck. Those come up sometimes but rarely. Living where cheap housing is isn't really feasible especially with primary aged Dc, and Scotland would mean being incredibly far from any family help, as pretty as the country is.

Not to be the pessimist, but do you see your SO's salary come in directly from his work (not transferred from another of his accounts)? Could he be squirreling anything away or spending anything 'off the radar' so to speak?

Being in top 10% income wise and having to save on heating is a miserable life. Food, water, shelter, heating are basic necessities, if high earners have to save on basics we are deeply in trouble.

You mention DIY how much did you spend on that. Any major refurb? my guess is most has gone there

You are doing something wrong if you cannot even afford a holiday

This. What’s the point if you continue to worry and scrimp the same was as you did in a poor family in the 80s.
It blows my mind that people just accepted that would be their life regardless. I really thought my generation knew that we had the opportunity to work our way out of that life

There is literally no way this possible. Even if you were 20 years old, with a 40 year mortgage term at 0.1% your repayments would be double this.

I assume a typo somewhere.

That’s what OP said, the mortgage had been extended for the refurb and now interest rates are so high it’s much harder to manage

Extremely expensive part. Hers is obviously very private behind big gates,walls & hedges. There are all house & flat prices in the vicinity but admittedly all private housing.There is a beautiful beach within walking distance. It's on the edge of the city but still Edinburgh.

Agreed. I have a very similar mortgage remaining, a 1.19% rate and it's still £1200 a month. People being smug about their mortgage rates really annoy me- there is one reason I got this rate; I was lucky with timing. When the rate ends, I'll be paying around £600 more.

The one thing I would say to the OP, is that this is temporary- when you come to remortgage with a better LTV, the payments are likely to be lower. When the kids are older, you'll be able to work more. It's possible your husband may get a payrise or you may inherit. I know that doesn't help very much for the moment, but things can and do change in the blink of an eye.

Wishing you lots of luck.

I do get this, but it means that other people are subsidizing your water usage doesn't it?

We were not joking when we said that Brexit would fuck up massively the economy, beginning with the inflation.
Unfortunately, the majority of people did not listen. And now we suffer the consequences.

I don’t know any high earners (to me that’s someone on £70K salary or more) who’re scrimping on basics. But I’m sure they exist and most of them have seriously fucked up somewhere down the line - taking on a stupidly large mortgage or serving huge debts to pay for holidays etc. You live above your means, and you’re in trouble, regardless of income.

well, yes, isn't that the whole point?

People are asking how much OP currently spends on all those bills in order to see if she could possibly reduce them.

If you aren't living comfortably there are literally* only two options to improve your situation - earn more money or save money on some outgoings. OP has said she can't do the first, so the second is her only possible option.* What else do you expect people to advise, "Have you tried going out and shaking the magic money tree?"

£4k a month, or £48k a year AFTER tax is considerably more than the average wage BEFORE tax, so it's not patronising to point out the fact that well over half the population somehow do manage to survive on far less. Or do you think that nurses, teachers, police officers etc don't also have 'priorities bills' like council tax?

Most of those bills might be 'priorities' but very few of them have no room for reduction at all. If someone is paying over £300 a month in council tax they are living in a property that is more expensive than the other 90% of people in the country. That's a luxury, not a necessity. As for all the other bills, nearly everyone spending £300 on gas and electric a month could reduce that to some extent.

Nobody is going to magically find OP an extra £500 every month to solve all her problems, but she might be able to save £20 here, £10 there, £12 somewhere else
= adding up to enough for a meal out or a few new clothes every month
= the difference between being completely skint after outgoings and having a little bit left over
= the difference between feeling like work is completely pointless vs getting by with a few extras

If the majority of the population can do it, it's hardly 'patronising' to suggest OP could do so to.