For my husband to earn £65,000 per annum and we still can't afford to live in this bloody country!!

[winegoddess]

Mortgage has gone up, electric has gone up, 5 mouths to feed, 3 children to clothe etc etc and month after month is a bloody struggle. Am fed up with straping money together when my husband earns a good wage and we should be able to get by! I now need to search for a way of 'me' bringing in some money but with a young baby at home and 2 others at school i am at a loss as to how! Please give me some job ideas or ways to make money!!

true myredcardigan but no-one would of given us a 4K mortgage. How expensive is a house to get that mortageg out of interest?
But the other stuff I mentioned are luxuries, as it takeaways and eating out. Its not compulosry to eat out or have new clothes, or lots of clothes or do 'activities'.
Avoid shops, it makes it easier. I am amazed at how Cribbs Causeway Mall is full every weekend with 'shoppers'. Shopping is seen as something one does but who needs new stuff every week or even every month?

Personally I don't consider £65k to be an obscene or excessive salary. If average earnings are around say £25k then this equates to 2.5 times average earnings. We all get paid what the 'market' dictates what we are worth - even if we have opinions that one job is harder than another that harder job may pay less as the market rate is lower. When someone is paid maybe 5 or 10x average earnings then you could maybe call that obscene - there are footballers / 'personalities' that earn way over that too!

The wealth thing is very relative - there are still millions in this country that are not well off and a relatively small proportion that are extremely well off. I know we are lucky to be quite comfortably off - but also feel a bit that it seems the not too much above average families (I'd include the OP in that) are having to pay higher and higher tax rates both direct and indirectly. The super well off tend not to pay that much tax as they can afford accountants and tax avoidances (all legal) to reduce their bills. We do need these high achievers / wealth creators in this country but the overall tax burden seems to be wrong - I'm sure I read that even what the gov't define as poor have been getting worse off during the labours term - that can't be right either!

There is no doubt that you can afford to live in the Uk with a salary of £65k but how you choose to spend that money and the lifestyle may not meet what you want it to provide.

bozza yes I do - and my mum is now confined to a wheelchair, lives in a rural area (it was where they were finally offered a bungalow after waiting 3yrs for somewhere suitable for them to live) - they need a car to get anywhere - there is no supermarket to walk to, and none of the big supermarkets deliver to their area. There is no option of walking to the supermarket with my dad pushing her. They need a car so while I accept that some get by without a car/are forced to others don't have that option - they have to finance it somehow.

most people would consider me to be affluent.

like Rhubarb we had one holiday last year in a caravan at camber. I don't eat out often because I can't afford the babysitting AND the meal.

Plenty of peopel who earn less than me are better off - I don't think what you earn is necessarily teh most relevant factor in how well off you are.

mortgages go up when people come off the fixed rate ones mp

[finally feels glad to have a tracker mortgage]

So where do you live Sudonom? Here in Wiltshire, London is an hour and a half by train - is that commuting distance? Houses are half the price here and the schools, ok they don't have glowing reputations, but my kids do ok in them.

I take your point, I do. But I think the OP rather lost her sympathy by revealing she had booked an expensive holiday to Egypt for Christmas.

Now the discussion has moved onto what is a luxury and what is a necessity. Some people might say, SudoNom, that you are lucky to be able to afford to buy. We are doomed to renting for the forseeable future.

SudoNom - 1500 a month after mortgage is a lot of money in my opinion. We get 1500 before the mortgage goes out.
I think people forget how to budget and start to imagine certain things are needed. But they are luxuries. Nice to have of course. I'd like a holiday myself - not had one for years and probably never will. My eldest is nearly 17 an d she;s had one holiday in her entire life.

Our rented house down here is £200pm more than our rented house was in Carlisle, but it does have an extra bedroom. However we are struggling with the extra outgoings for things we didn't expect. For instance, our water rates bill has doubled - we didn't see that coming!

(Oh and just to really get your sympathy vote now - I can no longer afford to order a pint of Guinness in a pub)

I dont think £65k is particularly excessive tbh

It is an easy amount to live on though

may not mean you can afford private education and flash cars and a waitrose shop every week but hey ho

anyhow I'm not being rude if I don't reply I have a list as long as my arm (longer actually ) of stuff I need to do this afternoon/evening/tonight and sitting on here debating about things which really no-one is ever go to agree on isn't getting them done, or the DS's fed

I may pop back on later - but I suspect there will be 100's of posts to go through and I may not have the energy to go through it all

I've tea to make now. Spag bog - oh and another tip (they should have me on that moneysaving website, they really should!), when making casseroles or pasta dishes always fill it out with veg and make more than you need, because the excess comes in useful for lunches.

if winegoddess DH is a relatively junior doctor, he probably has a mssive student loan as well (maybe as much as £400-500/month, as well as his indemnity (because people sue doctors you know), as well as all the neccessary fees and subscriptions someone put above!
I think she was silly to put the actual amount and a little insensitive but they probably are struggling!
Winegoddess a flaming is rite of passage, I got done terribly when I first joined, you dont get the respect the old timers do ....I went away in a huff then came back as I realised I was cutting my nose off to spite my face
MN can be a great place it can also be a real nightmare !

I don't really go to pubs, meals out are a treat and we have one family holiday in Europe most years. We might also rent a cottage eg at Easter though for half term we managed to blag a friend's house for free.

Our household income is significantly above £65k - but in London we can only afford to live in an overcrowded flat and even with prices falling we can't upgrade to a house

We don't have a car, I mix and match Lidl and Sainsbury's, the kids go to a state school and I'm working extra hours to make ends meet.

i can't believe i,m reading this op try living on like 20 k per annum fgs and having to pay a morgage gas electric run a car and look after and provide for 5 kids having 65k omg good tip sell your hose buy smaller don,t live beyond your means try living in the real world !!

maybe a thread asking what you consider "struggling" would be more relevant than saying you can't live on £65k a year.

struggling to me is earning minimum wage (now £5.72 an hour), worrying about every penny

to the op its not paying her £2k holiday

nought as wierd as folk

well I am not name changing, my dh earns a lot more than £65,000, we do have a 5 bedroom house and we do drive a 4x4, I also shop at aldi, because I dont think I can afford tescos, we go camping cos we cant afford to holiday out of this country otherwise, we rarely eat out and although I dont moan about being in the situation we are in we are not exactly flash with cash. I dont think someone should get completely flamed as soon as they mention a higher than avereage wage, but I also think I must be a bit crap because people on lower incomes seem to manage their finances better than I do. I am now going to run away before I get flamed.

house even

Cluelessnchaos - before you run away ...why not sell the unenvironmnentally friendly 4 x 4 and shop in Waitrose?

Apologies if you live on a farm and really need a 4 x 4!

"good tip sell your hose buy smaller don,t live beyond your means try living in the real world !!"

Haha - they should be so lucky in the current climate.....

I think Kewcucumber's point "I don't think what you earn is necessarily the most relevant factor in how well off you are." is a very fair one.

My very good friend lives in rural Somerset, we live in Dorset (in what is termed a village but isn't rural). My DH earns a little more than her DH, she earns a bit more than me. Our houses are very similar, both have two cars - one older one as a family car and a slightly newer one for the DH's. Their mortgage is less than ours but they pay maintenance to a DD he has from a previous relationship, so on the face of it our finances are and have always been relatively similar as have our life styles (combined income for both families a fair bit less than the OPs)

I couldn't understand why they were suddenly finding it tougher than us financially and neither could she so we sat down to work it out.

What it came down to is that because they live rurally they both do a high mileage compared to DH & I who work from home. Her petrol was £300 a month (S reg volvo) and her DH about £75 on average. Their electricity bill was about £48, then they are on oil for central heating and cooking which was coming to £200 a month (she has an Aga and had been having it on all year round as she grew up with one being a farmer's daughter, accepts it will have to go off next year). So a total of £623 a month on travel and energy.

Our expenses for the same are £75 a month for gas and electricity and gas, £60 a month on petrol. So straight away we are nearly £500 a month better off than her because we don't live in a rural place, both work from home and have mains gas.

Winegoddess, I'm sorry you've had such a reaction to your thread. I can see your point, you should be able to live comfortably on that amount but can also see why you might be finding things hard atm, however I'm sure that going over your outgoings really carefully will make a big big difference. Loads of good tips on this thread and many others if you have a look at some of the food /money threads and as said before, moneysavingexpert.com is brilliant.

my hose has too splits in it so i doubt anyone will want to buy it even tho it is longer than the average hose

What Rhubard has written about their family income and breakdown could have been written by me; although I don't do competitions. I know it's all relative and the OP has made valid points for her family dynamic specifically; however, it is a lot of money and, given the current situation for most of us, it's like rubbing salt into an already very sore wound; it is quite hard to feel empathy/sympathy

two splits