To wonder how people are coping?

[CobbleWobble]

We are very lucky, I know this.

We are "Mumsnet rich" both have professional jobs with good salaries (£170k household income) and yet this last 12 months:

• removed children from private school
• changed how we do the weekly shop to reduce costs
• cut subscriptions (like Disney+ etc)
• reduced what I bought in the back to school shop
• decided against a holiday in October half term
• concerned about our usual Christmas food order

What is going on? I just don't understand why or how prices are rising as they are or how people on less than us are coping!

I'm extremely grateful we have the things to cut that we have but we've also had to remortgage this year which has doubled our mortgage payments and then our utilities have increased and the food shop has just got insane.

We have other things we can cut - a holiday in the UK, Netflix, the monthly takeaway but its just miserable to think we may need to do that just not to be living.

Happy to post spending particulars if people are finding it hard to see where I'm coming from.

So AIBU to think that as a country we cannot go on with prices rising like this? How are others coping?

We earn around the same and don't feel rich BUT have one child in private school and one at uni, plus a £2k mortgage.

Without the school and uni we would be fine so I'm.not sure where you're going wrong. Although if you have teenagers they are just expensive generally with driving lessons etc, I have three and they have all got more expensive as they got older.

Very confused by this… we earn less than 60k combined and in 12 months have done;

• lake district for a weekend x 2
• Canada for 2 weeks
• France for 1 week
• Italy for 2.5 weeks
• Spain for 1 week

All in hotels, no camping. We have Netflix, prime, Disney+
It must be your mortgage, ours is £1.2k for a 5 bed

This is why there are so many threads about income and living standards where the posters can’t understand each others point of view at all - the cost of living is so wildly different based on age, stage and geography.

This & I think the average user of MNs is not young so many have no clue.

what are you spending your money on? We earn 120k combined and have a mortgage of practically 2k and we still save 2.5k per month!

I have a good salary for the UK and so does my partner, small mortgage. We manage to eat and live and go on holidays but can’t save enough, if I lost my job tomorrow I would be shafted! I can’t see how others are managing on lower salaries, people’s debts must be going through the roof. It’s not okay, the utility companies and supermarkets are still making billions, don’t understand why the government can’t collect more tax from them to ease the burden on the rest of the country.

Not just in London, when we were buying our first home 10 years ago a lot of people were advising us to buy the biggest, best house we could afford as many of them did. In the end we went for something more modest and we paid the mortgage off in 7 years. Others we know bought homes they could only apparently afford due to record low interest rates and are now up shit creek.

I am on a third of your income and a single parent of two teenagers. No maintenance from their Dad. I’m not struggling, but obviously no school fees. Your mortgage must be huge.

If in London their mortgage may well be double that, which I suspect will be a major factor.

If I interpret you correctly, you have plenty of money coming in, but you are spending it even faster. Any fool can do that.

I don't know what you are spending it on. Might be mortgage, gambling, drugs, carpet, pension contributions, new engines for the boat, helicopter trips, charitable donations, medical expenses if you live in a backward country.

Read Mr Micawber's theory of financial happiness

And draw up a budget to see where it's going.

Disney + is 5quid, and you're on 170, 000??
Kin ell you're in deep do do aren't you op. In more ways than one, move up north 😂

I was saying I'd like to move to a bigger home but that would mean 1m plus & take on a lot more debt which we can't afford allowing for the cost increases elsewhere. My mum was like just do it, you can make it work. It's not the same anymore.

what are you spending your money on? We earn 120k combined and have a mortgage of practically 2k and we still save 2.5k per month

Do you have dc? Pay for childcare?

170k 🤣

I'm on 26k and I am sure I'll be able to eat at Christmas.

Yeah, me too.

I think there is a real mentality in London of people overstretching themselves financially to get the most house possible.

Because for many it reaped huge rewards. Loads bought on interest only/high LTV & it still paid off.

Please do post the spending particulars.

Since the kids are at school childcare shouldn’t be a huge expense

I'd live like a multi millionaire on half your combined income - but my housing costs are low - small 2 bed bungalow almost paid off, low CT.
I guess you have a large house with an equally large mortgage in an expensive area ?

Well I suppose it depends if you have young kids or not who need childcare :)
Probably lifestyle means their spend has been very high - they've recognised this and are taking steps to address it.

We've had this conversation so many times as well. Similar price point range 900k-1.5m
Can't justify the massive mortgage, just not worth it for the very little upgrade it brings.
We could totally afford it, but brings no joy, and the running costs at this point means it isn't even that great a proposition.

I wasn’t giving, or not giving sympathy. Just observing that private school is also beyond our means.

This is what pisses me off the most

I put bach mince the other day, it's ridiculous.

I'm most annoyed that all the supermarkets have started selling it vacuum packed. It's horrible.

This. I will never understand the lack of financial literacy in the wealthy. You can literally pay people to teach you effective money management skills. I used to work with hospital consultants and it was terrifying how many of them actually lived paycheck to paycheck (they would genuinely argue over extra clinics). They had the big houses and the fancy cars but everything was financed up to the hilt-it’s terrifying.