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.

Same for me. I now work full time but don’t feel any better off than when I worked 3 days a week and paid for childcare a few years back. I think everything is so much more money- bills have gone up, shopping and clothes prices have risen so much. It’s the school holidays but I can’t afford to take the children anywhere.

If you earn over £72k pa you’re in top 10%

This is so simplistic. In there are a raft of lower paid earners who receive benefit top ups, plus it only counts employees so excluding a huge raft of high earning self employed and the averages regionally are very different. The median salary in the north east is 32k versus 48k in london - its a huge difference.

If you looked at median salaries in London for people aged 40 it would probably be higher again.

Yes, I hear you, However, people would come and guilt trip you. The reality is that you pay a lot of tax and bills. It is ridiculous and the same people that question you it may well be the ones you are supporting with your taxes. It is the reality of the situation in this country.

We earn similar op. Probably a bit more as DH gets bonuses/commissions. We are definitely comfortable, I would be disingenuous to say we're not, but with 3k of bills per month I do wonder how other people manage. About £500 of those bills are non essentials (a nice gym membership and paying off a holiday) so that's still 2.5k before we've even woken up on the 1st of the month. We're not saving very well but do have decent pensions.

Also... if you live in London, the East or the South east, your pay has fallen in real terms 5-10% from 2010 to 2024.

East: -10%
London: - 6%
South east: -5%

You feel worse off because you in fact are worse off in real terms.

I’ve got £390k mortgage and pay £440pcm - people need to do a lot more shopping around and use mortgage brokers. Yes you pay c£1,300 for the privilege but then you more than make it back

But it's not 5x the minimum wage really when it's all via the DH's salary. For tax purposes it's inefficient - this family will not take home 5x what a couple each on minimum wage will take home, after tax.

Anyway OP has been quite vague about the outgoings. I'll be amazed if there isn't at least one pretty expensive car finance payment going out - if the DH is earning over 100k he no doubt wants to be driving something nice and via car leasing that can easily be £500-700 per month.

How on earth do those figures work in this day and age?!

I think you’re spending money somewhere and not even realising it. When I’ve had this issue in the past it has always ended up being the supermarket trips. This week alone 140 on our Aldi shop and then yesterday we popped into Lidl to get fresh pastries etc for breakfast and ended up spending another 40… I can tell you we are already out of some essential bits and I’ll have to go back today / tomorrow

We have a good income for where we live (probably 80 ish this year) but between the mortgage and food and utilities- throw in frozen tax brackets and it’s definitely more of a squeeze than I imagined it would be.

there are apps you can get to help you with this and I’m sure some will go through your banking and tell you where it’s all gone.

I’ve got £390k mortgage and pay £440pcm - people need to do a lot more shopping around and use mortgage brokers.

Oh do tell where you've got an interest only mortgage at sub 1% per annum. Have you got a typo there?

This

I'm fully in the head tilt group. If this is real give me some time to find my tiny violin.

I know. How out of touch do you need to be to call a 4 bed house 'modest'?

Over how many years. Bullshit.
Even with ZERO interest paying £440 per month on a loan of £390k you'd be paying it off for 880+ months which is over 70 years. So yeah.... That's bullshit.
Do you mean your house is worth 390k but your mortgage, the bit you have borrowed, is maybe £120k?

OP do you have a Sky subscription?
Amazon Prime?
Eat takeaways a lot?
Thats where I’d start with trying to save money.

Meanwhile on planet Earth, most people would agree a household income of 5x the minimum wage is actually quite a lot.

A lot of people on min wage get benefit top ups though so what they actually have in their bank account is higher. Then you have to recognise, a lot of min wage workers are very young people starting out. OP is not comparing herself to that. Her peer group or reference will be workers in their late 30s and 40s when earnings tend to peak.

Yes but over double the minimum wage is still an incredibly high income, it's in the top 10% at least?!

What’s your mortgage term, 900 years?!

I said not much more than double a min wage household. Two FT workers on min wage = £48k and they'd get UC on top of that. £48k x 2 = £96k. Take into account 40% income tax on the OP's DH's income and that's how it's mot much more than double - and less than double after benefits and tax taken into account. I'm not saying it's not a decent household income but we need to get out of the mindset that 6 figures is unimaginable riches.

Take home on £110,000 is what circa £6000 a month so where does the rest go?

With most threads I've read like this, it usually turns out that the partner is pissing the money away on something that the OP knows nothing about - gambling, shopping, drugs etc, but usually gambling.

I'd start digging OP.

This

was going to work it out but you have

to have £2/3k EXTRA over from paying bills and food is amazing

and again more left over than what I earn a month

so I really can’t understand where that money is going and why can’t save /have a holiday

Plus how much is spent on food and drink in and out of the house.

Groceries
Top up shops
Coffees/lunches while at work
Quick pint after work
Coffee and cake/sandwiches while out and about at the weekend.

All can add up massively and include quite a large component of 'extras' that could be reduced if you're wanting to free up money for other things.

I’m in the tiny violin camp I’m afraid. You don’t need two cars so stop complaining you only have one. A foreign holiday is a luxury. A 4 bed house is not modest. Reset your expectations and you might see you are doing ok.

We’re on less than you (about 85k between us, both full time), have a three bed house in the south east and one in nursery. We have a Europe holiday and a couple of UK breaks a year, the occasional take away, don’t feel like we particularly have to limit ourselves though we are struggling to save at the moment after a few unexpected costs. I really don’t understand how you can be doing so badly on that much money, you must not be budgeting properly.

I think your issue is your salary, OP.

There are plenty of part time roles that pay better than £20k. Can you at least look online and see what’s available on your industry/skill set? Lots of remote working available now.

Also you MUST have a pension. If you’re low waged see if you can join something like NEST or go on MSE and look up the best value SIPPs that you don’t need much money to open. You get Govt tax relief which on your earnings would be another 20% added to your pot each month. Even if you just put in £20 a month that’s better than nothing.

A SIPP where you choose to spread your investments over 4 medium risk funds tracking the FTSE should be safe and will mean you don’t need to actively manage it if you’re unsure how DC pensions work. But you must have one - don’t rely on DH’s. Do ask DH to check what type of pension he has though and if he has spousal benefits or has named you as his beneficiary.