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!!

{grin}@zippy wish i had a split hose to sell !how doe's the song go "there's a whole in my bucket "

Right, can we have an agreed income limit so we know when we're allowed to complain about the rising cost of living? Also perhaps a list of rules e.g. you can't complain and have an expensive holiday but you can complain if you've chosen to have more children than you can afford.

lol combustible

happywomble, I live 5 miles from the nearest village and we get snowed in for at least a month of the year, and I have no idea where the nearest waitrose is, thats the thing though isnt it, my choices are different to others I shouldnt be flamed for them.

Agree re holidays, they are a luxury that when times are tough must go. It astounds me that some people feel they are entitled to 3 foreign holidays a year. 2 Sun and 1 ski. What's wrong with holidaying at home and keeping the pound here. I went on 3-4 foreign holidays until I left home at 17. We holidayed at home and I dont feel I missed out.

Meals out and takeaways are another drain on resources. People need to remember these hard times wont be forever and a bit of frugality never did anyone any harm, particularly the children of today who are handed everything on a plate and can be spoiled rotten, (sweeping generalisation I know.

My MIL was amazed today when I said dd (1) would be learning to iron and working for her pocket money when she is older.

You have to start learning about economics early or you'll spend your life frittering your money away.

I want snow

Shitty poxy South of England.

it is expensive holidaying in the uk tho

Some of you are so tetchy! So what if Op DH earns £65K (I bet her works bloody hard as does she). So what if she cam here looking for advice because she is finding it hard to get by.Giver her a break and play nicely.

tho i have booked a family room in cornwall for 5 nights over new year for 110 quid with travelodge

If you cant get by with a half decent quality of life on 65k then you are doing something wrong.

Maybe get a decent accountant ?

Very true Zippitippitoes. It always stuns me that you can get a weeks B & B + flight somewhere warm in mainland europe for what you'd pay for a few nights in a Travel Inn in the UK.

I know £65k is a lot of money for some people but I think it is perfectly possible that it can prove difficult to live on. If you live in an expensive area, your home, with mortgage and fuel costs can easily eat up a huge chunk of your money without even getting to the day to day expenses of food, clothes and travel.

Hopefully, since it appears that the OP is on a variable mortgage (since her costs are going up) she will be saving a fair bit by interest rates going down today. Selling the house to reduce the biggest expense is not going to be possible in the current climate but hopefully the pressure will be reduced a bit by a mortgage rate cut.

Also the OP's husband is the sole earner in the house - they would actually have more disposable cash if they both earnt £32.5k a year because they would pay less tax.

As somebody else said, if he is a doctor he probably has a hefty student debt to pay back and no opportunity for overtime or the chance of bonuses.

I think the OP needs some sympathy for expecting a decent (not affluent) standard of living for £65k and to be shocked that it isn't possible.

I would however, in that situation, not put myself into debt to pay for a foreign holiday. If you need a holiday, have one but stay in this country and keep it cheap. Two weeks of sun are not worth months of tight budgets and worry imo.

Yes of COURSE we are sympathetic

It's the indignant WE CAN'T AFFORD TO LIVE IN THIS BLOODY COUNTRY! ranty bit that irks

'cos we know (nearer) the truth is: "Shite! You can't really have a comfortable middle-class-trappings life on 65k anymore, can you?"

rather than "THIS SHIT COUNTRY HAS THROWN ME INTO POVERTY!"

bit different innit

ok to earn a LOt more than 65000 and not be able to afford holidays or to shop at sainsburys means you must be seriously crap with money

Ooh, I remember you mentioned the cheap deal. Might book something similar for a night or two.

welldone zippitippitoes..how will you eat though? Surely not 5 days of little chef meals?

i think the living in a particular area thing tho...people also live in those same areas who earn a lot less they do all the infrastructure jobs that people depend on and have to live in the area because they dont get paid enough to commute

so saying well to live in place x you will find you need income y is wrong because everywere there are people living round the corner on far far less...somehow

ill eat cheesecake and drink wine in my room

The point about wealth being relative to someone else's income is a good one.

Dh earns more than the op's dh, I gave up my job to move abroad to be with him, as he was posted overseas and we got bored of only seeing each other every 6 weeks, as his employer did not give a get you home deal from Brussels to Cornwall. He is still well paid however, and as the employer now pays the school fees and I don't have to, and I'm not having to pay all the costs associated with working (as a teacher that was resources, textbooks, clothes etc), the loss of my salary hasn't been too bad.

We also pay the mortgage and insurance on our house in the UK which is rented out, but that rent covers the costs (rent and bills) that we pay for the accommodation here.

However, I am astounded at the packages that many expats in the private sector get, including help with UK mortgages, and their rent and bills paid over here, as well as the school fees. I sometimes feel like the poor relation besides them, and dh is not badly paid at all.

We are finding that things are more expensive than before; food has got really expensive and I shop at the Belgian equivalent of Tesco...the Belgians look at me sideways when I corner the reduced chickens to go in my freezer! We also pay more in car tax and insurance than we would in the UK, so I am watching my outgoings more than I would have previously.....I think things are tighter irrespective of your income and we are all going to have to readjust to saving before buying and thinking about if we really need something. I am going to have to break my Amazon habit.

Comfortable middle class trappings - if that includes 2 holidays, mortgage on a 3 bed house, good food, private school (?) you are looking at more like £200k per annum which is about £140k net in London. It is absurd and we all need to re- assess what is important in life.

If someone had said to me 5 years ago that our 1 income family would be earning £50k now, i would have thought that was a huge amount to live on. The reality is, its not.

but in real terms it is because most people dont

My father was a lecturer and my mother did not work. We had a very comfortable life on the equivalent of about £35k a year now. You could afford a 5 bedroom house in SW London on a single teacher's salary then. Impossible now.

I would have put have families who send kids to private school in the upper class category.