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.

Thing is though OP doesn’t want budgeting advice. She’s not once asked for it, I have no idea why MN are launching in to solve her problem. She simply asked if anyone else felt the same because it’s depressing

loads do feel the same. They don’t want budgeting advice either

Came here to say exactly this. Plus during a cost of living crisis with rampant inflation, everyone is going to feel the effects because they can afford less than they did previously on the same salary. Some people seem to think they should be shielded from the COL crisis because they are top tax payers, higher earners etc. But when you're able to manage the impact of inflation by having fewer luxurious holidays, choosing state instead of private education etc, you're in a much more privileged position than someone who now has to choose between feeding their kids and heating their home.

People who earn more get used to spending more. The person who says they earn £250k as a household but still can't afford holidays - I'm pretty sure they could afford the type of holiday I go on. But they probably have a very different idea of what a proper holiday should look like.

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 not true though as the figures are outdated.

Probably all gone on the Curly Wurlys.

This is why I questioned if they had debt. If you'd build up debt from maternity leave for example it's going to take a chunk of your wage out straight away.
I don't have any old holidays - we spend around 14k a year on holidays because I want a holiday I'll enjoy and like you say, I feel we should be able to afford that on our income (and we absolutely can afford that on a very similar salary). It must be frustrating for OP to feel like she can't.
My point still stands though that with a joint take home pay of around £6800, those higher earner staples should be available to her and if they aren't it's worth looking into why.

We’re in a similar boat. About half your income but we live in a cheaper area. I thought when our income went up to where it is now we would be living the high life, but that’s never been the case for us. With every pay rise comes ever increasing cost of living, we’ve never been able to get ahead of it.

We live in one of the cheaper areas, and in one of the cheapest type of houses. We have 4 kids so that’s more outgoings but still we cannot afford anything extra. We haven’t been on a holiday in over 10 years and the last one was our honeymoon!

The only thing it seems you could downsize, is your house/mortgage, by moving to a different area - buttons that isn’t always an option for people.

it could be an option for retirement thought to make the most of your pensions etc.

We are in the same sort of situation as recently moved so our bills have gone up a lot, although we do put into our pensions still.

I always think of my mortgage as an investment rather than a bill which makes it easier, at least we will have an asset at the end of it.

I also grew up with a single parent with mental health issues in a council house and know what it's like being truly skint - that keeps me grounded!

This is the crux of it for me. I was born in the 80s. My dad was the sole earner and I was one of four kids. My parents could still afford a detached 4/5 bed house in a nice area with a large garden. They put us all through uni. Even with both me and my DH in good professional jobs we can’t afford a house anything like what I grew up in. It makes me feel like I’ve failed because I can’t give my kids the same standard of living that I had growing up.

Also for all the people saying there are cheaper private schools out there, I’d like to know! All the ones near us are at least 20k per year.

You’re on less than minimum wage so it sounds like your business isn’t making much, is it viable? Plus the fact that your husband earns over £100k so you don’t get discounted childcare.

But many have a household income of less than £50k and have to pay for a mortgage/rent, bills AND childcare. You don’t even have childcare, where is your money going? You say you can’t afford to save.. seriously what are you spending your money on

I'm in a similar position to you, but pay 3 lots of nursery fees, last year we were always going into overdraft. But this year we had a sit down and did some calculations and changed which have helped. I'll share what we do. We did a spreadsheet of how much comes in and how much goes out

Both salaries go into 1 account (Santander), which mortgage, bills, insurance, nursery fees etc come out off

Rainy day savings £100 in Santander savings account for things like car repair boiler repair etc

Food shopping - Barclays (online food shopping helps)

We both have Monzo's for personal spend £100 each

Starling for kids stuff (clothes, shoes etc)

Revolut account meals out/day out

We have been really strict and it has helped. Definitely do a spreadsheet and allocate money to different accounts for specific things.

I don’t think the OP is coming back…

I would guess this is part of the problem- posters saying they take home 6.6k per month are assuming OP is paid in 12 equal payments which is easier to manage and plan for. In reality, the DH brings home £5.4k and theOPs self employed income could fluctuate month on month with some months nothing coming in.

my DH is self employed and we can’t rely on his income at all. It is used for holidays and Xmas, because we can’t rely on it each month

I think it housing costs with OP.

First house we bought fixed mortgage after advice from family - rates then dropped like a stone - so we were fixed at a higher rate and then found a lot of work in house needed - then slack in inital budget got eaten up as everything else went up in price.

Moving to actually a higher mortage at a much lower interest rate to house needing pratcially nothing doing to it made a huge impact on our disposable income.

I agree Op should track and study their spending - it just might be though that housing costs are screwing her over at the minute.

'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'

We already know what her mortgage is. I am meant additional DIY costs for the ongoing work. I had already factored in the mortgage and bills mentioned are not enough to account for the large gap better income & expenditure.

Can you give a breakdown? Net monthly income, mortgage, and bills - but make sure you include things like phone contracts, Sky, etc, which can really add up.

For example, "Car" could mean £60 for petrol on 2007 Fiat Punto, or £900 of lease payments on a big Merc and a Range Rover. "Insurances" might include a fat life policy or some other stuff you don't need. "Food" could mean you are buying deluxe prepared dinners at Waitrose 4 times a week. Probably none of those applies to you, but when other people have posted with similar complaints, it often hasn't been hard to identify one or two outlying numbers.

£120k is a top 1% gross household income, so something isn't working if you can't afford a holiday of any kind.

Between us we earn 47k and are exactly the same. Sick of it

An insult to those managing on minimum wage? I think you are looking for something that just isn't there.

My comment is that energy costs have risen so much that even a family in a high income bracket have to cut back in order to maintain a decent lifestyle- how is that an insult?

same for us. me and my DH earn about £100k (we are both paid £50k for our full time jobs) and live in a detached period 3 bed house in North Surrey. Couldn't afford a foreign holiday last year. Everything is so tight where it didn't used to be even 5 years ago and I'm so resentful that we work so hard and still struggle. We did a lot of work to the house a few years ago but now have no chance of ever saving for a loft conversion or an extension since the mortgage costs went up. Went from paying £1200 to £1950 a month last year thanks to Truss. I try to count my blessings but I'm angry our monthly sayings are now so sparse. Maybe a few hundred a month at maximum.

We are both very frugal people with one primary age child and there is nothing to cut back on and we have an intense budget spreadsheet. Surely it can't go on like this? How are people copjng?!

It appears to be the standard weekly post of I earn elevnty billion pounds and can’t afford a holiday - sob sob.
There are only two solutions: you earn more or spend less. The OP wants to stay in her current role and so analysing expenditure is the only way forward.

No, OP doesn’t want solutions. She’s not once asked for them, and is presumably capable of solutioning herself. She just wants to chat.

Surely a chat would involve her coming back to the thread?
this is just a whinge.

God forbid they should do anything to improve things instead of just moaning helplessly

We earn about half your combined income and whilst our mortgage is less (£1kpm) our other bills are similar and we live in an expensive part of the world. You need to look very carefully at your outgoings as there's no way you have nothing left after everything unless you are spending excessively elsewhere.

If you've never had to budget you could easily be spending £800+ on food but probably assume it's far less - we used to spend this but we now manage on £500pm for food but still have to be careful. This excess was due to not planning meals and just buying ad hoc locally which is always more expensive, chaging supermarkets (sainsbury to lidl) swopping from branded products stopping organic meat etc. It's really the little things that tend to add up - coffees out, hair & beauty, gym memberships, multiple TV subsriptions, cleaner/gardener, ironing/dry cleaning.

Well this thread isn’t helpful is it? It’s just critical with a smattering of suggestions that no sensible person would expect a stranger on the internet to take up (“move to Scotland”)