To not understand the cost of living crisis?

[tiggerbouncy]

Fully prepared to be told I’m being tone deaf here.

Before I start I want to caveat this and say I live in the North and I am comparing to other Northerners, as I know the South is a bit of a different ball game.

I earn less than the national average salary. I have recently had my biggest ever pay rise which has put me on 25k for 35 hrs a week. My partner is on similar but has a lower hourly wage (works more hours though). In total our household income is approx 45-50k ish?

We own our home (via mortgage) and we paid for the deposit with no family help.

We go on at least one or two foreign holidays a year and frequently enjoy meals out and day trips to different places.

We have two cats (one of whom has needed very expensive vet treatment) and soil them rotten.

A lot of my peers constantly moan that the cost of living being so high is trapping them either at home with parents, renting, not being able to go on holidays etc etc. Basically, I’ve had a few comments recently about our lifestyle being really hard to achieve and how it’s unfair we enjoy so much.

I just think that we have put our money into things we enjoy (ie holidays) and obviously don’t have children. But I genuinely don’t find like difficult? If our washing machine breaks we buy a new one, if the car needs work we pay etc. We both saved from having full time jobs out of sixth form in order to fund out deposit (again, big bonus of being northern I know!) but our mortgage payments are easily manageable etc.

I’m not suggesting that the world has our circumstances, but a lot of my peers either earn more than me or the same and moan they can’t do anything!

AIBU to think it’s about how you prioritise life and that “cost of living” isn’t an excuse for just being poor with money?

Again, I’m not saying that a single mum in London with 5 kids has the same options or anything like that, I’m meaning in our specific situation. Lots of people moan we earn nothing but to me it feels like quite a lot!

I also see loads of people on here moaning their 100k salary doesn’t go far anymore and they’re missing out on things. If I made 100k I’d be planning to retire in about 5 years!!

How is it ‘click bait’ when there is no benefit to the OP if people open the thread and it contains no links to anything?

I mean the key really is clearly you have a low mortgage if you are talking about £10-15k deposits and starter homes and you don't have kids. (This is an assumption based on all the things you've said)

Pre kids we lived in a flat (in the north) and paid a mortgage of like £270 a month or something ridiculous because it was a cheap flat and we didn't need more. We now have a family home and our mortgage is much higher. In the time between those two properties our bills and other expenses like food have gone up astronomically. If we still lived in the flat with no kids we'd probably have paid the mortgage off by now and we'd have loads of money spare each month to soak up the cost of living crisis.

In terms of your friends, if they are renting then rents are high even in the north as there's just not much available. I was shocked looking at rentals recently in the area I grew up in, in the north, average, some rough areas, town centre dire, literally basic fairly working class northern town and renting a 3 semi will set you back over £1175 month!! That is crazy! They likely don't have as much leftover income as you to save!

Everybody is different and I'm pleased you are doing well but surely it doesn't take much imagination to try understand why others are struggling.

Yep, I’m from the NE.

I could have bought my first house for £100k, except.. I didn’t want to, because that would have meant living somewhere I didn’t want to be.

The starter home I bought with my ex husband, in Middlesbrough, is also currently on the market for £35k more than we bought it for 7 years ago. So today’s “starters” are worse off, even in the NE.

Which also means you live in an exceptionally cheap part of the north!

I’m also in Teesside. If you want to buy for 100-150 you have to live in an undesirable area. At best you’d get average, but definitely not ‘nice’

You are very lucky op. Meanwhile in the real world everyone I know is struggling. Just to pay for food and bills. Extras like birthday presents are a luxury although we lucky near us that a local charity shop has toys for 50p but even that can be hard to find

Let’s say you want to save £15k for a deposit, and let’s add, say, £2k for moving costs to be conservative.

That would need about £700 a month saved for 2 years to save up.

if you’re on minimum wage and paying housing costs, that’s not impossible to save but arguably not ‘easy’ and takes a few years.

I wonder if that’s what your peers mean by ‘difficult to save?’

also you saved for your deposit during sixth form whilst (presumably) living at home. It’s much easier to save your disposable income when you’re a teenager. And I assume this was a few years ago. Hence lower cost of living.

Where you live. That makes all the diff

100/150k for a starter home

here in south east looking at 3 times £100k so £300k that for a starter home of 2 bedrooms

I’d say your title is asking for trouble. Maybe you could have written “Are child free working adults in the north really being impacted that hard by the COL crisis”?

Hard to say why your peers with similar circumstances are struggling. Being in a couple is an advantage. Being able to save while living at home is a huge advantage.

I am a single parent in Scotland with a monthly take home income of £2500, no childcare costs and a mortgage of £400pcm so actually life is pretty good although I’d of course prefer food, petrol and energy cost less. But I’ve got several friends not quite so comfortable because they couldn’t live at home rent free to save for their first house deposit and now have huge rents/don’t receive CM from their kids dads/have to fork out £1200 per month on childcare/whatever else. You never know what challenges other people are facing that you aren’t!

How old are you? When did you buy your house OP and how much was it? I bought a house in 2014 which I sold for double the price this year. So I had a mortgage that was under £400 per month but if I were starting out again this would be impossible.

Rage bait.

41yo. Widowed. Live in the midlands, big 3 bed semi. 2 teenagers. Nurse taking home just under 32k a year. Mortgage is very reasonable (£535).

if my washing machine breaks I can’t “just buy a new one”.

So your question is basically, why are my local friends shit with money?

I had loads of disposable income when I lived in the north and didn’t have kids. Had around £700 a month fun money. I was on 28k a year living alone. A very different story now I’m in the south with kids even though I have my partners income too. We earn 80k.

so many people are seriously struggling with cost of food seemingly increasing monthly and bills seem to all go up every year. It’s easy to see why loads of struggling.

what is annoying though is when people say they are broke or can’t afford to move out of their parents when they just spend shit loads of their money on stuff they don’t need. I do think there’s a lot of people saying they are broke who aren’t, they just see all the shit they buy as necessary.

If you’re comparing, peers without kids so are in the exact sane position as you… Maybe yours and your peers style of living is different.

• car ownership?
• furnishing the house
• fashion
• beauty (hair, make-up, nails, waxing etc)
• skin care
• hobbies

Where in the north are you ?! £10k for a deposit wouldn’t get you a shed 😂

Good for you. Try reading the room next time!

We are now at a point where we have no mortgage, our children are adults and we have a daft amount of exposable income. But I read the room!

I’m in the so called cheap North and those prices are the same in my area. It’s not all 50p houses anymore. My house is a standard 3 bed semi and is valued at around £300k.We paid about 40% less than that 9/10 years ago. Houses around here are selling for more.

A pint of peroni in my local chain pub was £6:40 last week, a large wine is upwards of £8-10. Fish and chips can be £16-18 in the pub. Everyone goes on about the North but it isn’t as cheap as it was pre covid. Just like everywhere it’s affected by price rises.

Full time job out of school, no student debt. That’s huge. And it’s both of you. Also, presumably you are quite young still, so started early and knew what was important- house and travel.

People who do uni, have a couple of serious relationships and maybe sank money in a house then the relationship didn’t work… that pretty much scuppers your chances.

Finding a stable partner early significantly helps finances.

You don’t have children, I’d be rich if I didn’t have mine 😂

You’ve nailed it by saying it’s where you live. We’re in Scotland, combined income around £95k. We’re very comfortable in a 4 bed house. Relatives down south are earning nearly twice our income but are in a two bed flat and struggling. Free uni tuition where we live also impacts - I saved for a deposit and bought my first property at 23 but I had worked all through uni and only had a small loan of about £5k to pay back.

Well kids would change that substantially wouldn't they. As either you'd be down to one income or you'd be paying for childcare.
You have a very cheap home at 100k, which is not suitable once you have children. As northerner I know the cheap houses round here at either tiny, or in a shit hole where you would not want your kids to go to school.
Your supermarket shop and holidays are also substantially cheaper. You're not buying formula, probably not nearly as much fruit as toddlers get through, you're not restricted to the summer holidays.

Essentially, it's really easy to live cheaply when you're just two working adults... Yeah shocker. That doesn't mean the cost of living crisis doesn't exist. It means it affects you less when you need alot less stuff in the first place.

Your household income has to be at least £50k because minimum wage is £12.71 an hour. If he does a 40 hour week hes bring in £26.5k on minimum wage.

So maybe your finding it easier because in your head your like were earning £45-50k but youve likely got at least £51k

And as you say no kids

Blah blah blah… 😑

Can you give us a breakdown of monthly income and expenditure? That might help us see where you are doing well. In both senses. I'm guessing a small mortgage is ok part of it. If your mortgage is only £100k and so you only pay around £500, that's a big deal.

Yeah it’s kids rather than just being up North.
We are up north too. We have higher wages about 75k between us. Not a huge amount but we manage fine. We had a high deposit so our mortgage is lower and we can overpay.

We have a lovely life with cheap holidays, days out, savings etc, aren’t going to be short for food or bills etc. ( i come from a very working class family who never had much money). But if we threw a couple of kids in we wouldn’t feel half as comfortable and money wouldn’t stretch anywhere near as far.