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!!

Yes inflation for the moment is not going to rise. BoE obviously agrees otherwise there would not have been the cut there was yesterday.

Firstly it means that our £ will be devalued -which is not good. Stuff from overseas will cost more to import for example.

Also in a deflationary spiral goods/services cost less - but companies make less profit and that leads to job losses etc..

'Completely agree. £65k SHOULD buy you quite a nice life but it doesn't, necessarily, because of stupid house prices,'

Nice is relative. The OP is planning a fancy holiday so must be able to afford it. Nice life is being able to heat your home, buy decent food and maybe go out once or twice a year. If you can do that I reckon you're pretty well off. And if you get to go to Egypt then you are rich!
The OP can afford to live in this country despite the title of the thread and sound reasonably well off. Now she may aspire to more, who doesn't! She's got lots of tips about reducing spending - have jotted a few down myself'
65K would have most of us feeling very comfortable indeed.

So, Jeee, what does DH do and where does he work? As a public sector employee I need to know.

we'd be skint on 65k

Agere totally lowenergy. Inflation is off the agenda for now. Most pundits now seem to expect deflation in a year.

I'd be surprised if a £4k monthly mortgage is that unusual in the SE.

65k is what I aspire to on a joint income! It would make us very comfortable indeed! We just about manage on DH salary but he has a large private pension going out which takes a big chunk of our income, so if needs must then that will be cut to the minimum.

£4k is more than your monthly take home would be on a £65000 income - so it couldn't have been OP's.

Thanks lightbulb.

Yes, if I'm honest, I'd rather we lived in a cheaper part of the country and had more disposible income.

I love living in London.

I do have a (?common) delusion that by throwing huge sums at a mortgage every month (like redcardigan) we will one day have made money on the house and be able to move elsewhere and improve our standard of living. Not sure how true that is though.

"If you take mortgage out of the equation, 65k is a good income but add in a high mortgage and the disposible income can come out the same as someone earning 25k with a far lower one (obviously). "

thats what i was trying to say earlier myredcardigan. its all relative!

I'd like to aspire to 65 but as dh will never work full time again it ain't never gonna happen. We'll never get up above 20K.
Frugal is a way of life.
I do harbour a secret wish to go on a proper holiday one day that doesn't involve tents and muddy cold fields! But that wont happen either.
But there are far worse things that not being able to go on holiday (as we have discovered unfortunately)
I don't know WG and she hasn't said much but its possible she is living a quite nice life but its not as 'nice' as maybe her neighbours or her husband's collegues? Maybe they are bragging about posh holidays or cars and she is feeling a bit disgruntled?
I feel jealous next door can have their heating on all day so you do feel jealous of whats around you.

myredcardigan - glad you clarified about the 4k mortgage - I was puzzled as to how the OP could afford that per month as that would be more than her dh earns! (and couldn't be bothered reading through to find out...)

Well we have a big mortgage and high salaries but (within reason) we only ever spend our money on things that retain some sort of value and quality in the long term. So property has always been big for us as have quality art work and certain collectibles such as gold soevereigns. We drive shockingly crappy cars, rarely eat out and holiday cheaply. I bring a packed lunch to work every day and buy all my clothes (albeit designer) on ebay. Although our income is high, we watch every penny and never waste it.

We are a real oddity in our group of friends. Most have Nannies (despite school age children), housekeepers etc and expensive hobbies such as shooting. I estimate we earn half as much as most of them bur I guarantee you that when we die, our estate will be worth twice as much.

Also wanted to add that when we both left uni, I started teaching on a salary of 15k and DH started his legal training on 16k.

We had a mortgage and huge student debt yet I felt we did ok. At that time I would have thought a joint income of 65k would have been beyond our dreams and would have meant never worrying about money or watching pennies. But as his salary gradually went up, we adjusted our spending and expectations accordingly. It just evolves that way. He know earns far more than the OP's DH yet We have no more money to play with each month than we ever have had IYKWIM. AsI said last night, we all seem to live up to the limits of our means.

er....hasn't the way they calculate inflation totally changed?I thought that, for example, commodities were no longer included (Gordon changed the rules)

I think that the point that the OP and others have made is this, we are living in a society now where the cost of living is totally skewed.

65K is a good salary, and Dr's deserve that level of pay to reflect their skill set. However when you take out housing costs, tax, fuel costs etc it can get eaten away scarily quickly.

My husband is pretty near the top of his profession and is earning £45K. When we started out 12 years ago he was earning £14K - and yet our 'quality' of life hasn't improved in line with our rise in income. We earn a good whack, but after paying housing costs, council tax, running an old banger of a car, paying for food etc we don't have any money left in the pot at the end of the month. And recently we have had more month than money.

There has been a total mismatch between the cost of living and income, and there needs to be a correction somewhere along the line.

myredcardigan - its true, spending expands to fill salary

suey2, the fall in the price of commodities such as oil will translate into falling prices for everything that involves transportation, packaging and so on and so on which in turn feeds into inflation measures.

I just think that people have gotten used to spending more than they earn. They borrow to pay for things like a new 3 piece suite, or kitchen or a new car or holiday. When you didn't have any money you simply didn't get new things, you made do with old ones. But once you have money you start spending it. You don't realise it, it almost becomes second nature and you can't imagine life without a second winter holiday or without that new leather sofa.

We live in a very capitalist and consumerist society. Banks have encouraged people to spend spend spend, adverts have convinced us that our cars are too old, our clothes out of fashion, that we need as many shoes and handbags as we can possibly get our hands on.

Sure costs have gone up, but I'll bet that you spend more on consumables now than you did when you weren't earning as much. Do they bring you more happiness? Is your quality of life better for them?

wish energy prices would come down. I'm fed up of being cold and not being able to have heating on. That and food is our main expenditure as we don't buy clothes, holidays, and stuff like that.

but isn't it based on the retail price index rather than the consumer price index? I remember watching a programme rcently which described inflation as twice the advertised rate, based on pre 1997 calculations.

I agree that house prices are the main issue. Also a mortgage based on dinky couples can be much more painful when children come along with one parent giving up or having the cost of childcare to add in.
The fact that women now have careers before children has probably fuelled the house price rise. (not that I am suggesting that we shouldn't)

Yes they count TV's but not electricity, I think it's called the CPI basket, more Labour spin.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7669072.stm

Calculate what your personal inflation is here

Not sure I understand your point sue2. Brown switched to CPI from RPI years ago. In any event, falling commodity prices will lead to falling prices for a huge number of items which in turn are used to calculate the rate of inflation.

Housing costs are excluded.