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!!

Actually, Houseprices have come down....so....tis all relative anyway....

williamsmummty - sorry, the term 'a family home' usually implies a house of a half decent size, especially if you have 4 dc - I would assume at least 3 bedrooms?
But am happy to be corrected.

Either way, could you cut the dc's activities - limit them to one or two each? I know you want to give them all you can, but at waht cost?

Erm...we bought our House in 2005....so...I suppose I am o.k. to have an opinion....

Average home costs £170k and mortgages on silly multiples are no longer available. In reality, anyone earning 65k is most likely to be living somewhere where a very average, ordinary home would cost much more than £200k.

coolma I think calling the OP a snotty cow is uncalled for.

Does she mention anywhere that she sends her children to 'posh schools' anyway?

She made a mistake, which she has acknowledged and apologised for.

Of course it is possible, even if you don't fall into that category
Lots of people manage!

Upwind, your argument only stands if the OP bought recently. If they bought their house years ago it is likely to be big and they could downsize?
Which of course in teh current climate is tricky.

So we are back to ideas to make money - anyone have any more tips?

If you look on the holiday thread the OP's youngest is only a year old, so it's perfectly reasonable for her not to work. Right?

(waits for the shouting to resume, assuming it ever stopped)

pamelat it's here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/642305-Interest-rate-cut-from-4-5-to-3-shock hope that link works. So you see you will be ok! Unless you had a fixed rate of less than 3. Which seems unlikely.

well...I would love to live in a better area, you know...but, we had to think of what sort of mortgage we could afford, which size house we wanted and all that bladibla...just like the rest of the world....
it's LIFE
Just because you earn 65K a year you don't HAVE to live in whatever area...you still could see where your priorities lie...

You don't need to leave. Just name-change. We won't know.

We aren't private renters or in social housing but we did buy a long time ago. So you might say we are also cushioned in a different way,

We have no debt (other than mortgage 3x salary), DH earns good salary, no school fees/foreign holidays and we have to be careful with money, so I can sympathise with Op tbh.
I always thought that once you earned £50k+ you were in clover, it's not true. We have to budget and watch what we are spending, but I know we are comfortable compared to many people.

I have just started own business from home, so hopefully this time next year we can have some luxuries.

I don't think Op has deserved the abuse she's got on here.

65K per annum
£3800 in your hand every month

Council Tax £150
Gas/Elec £150
Food £600
Car/House Insurance £100
Telephone/Internet/Mobile £50

So I've just spent £1050 (with very conservative estimates) - not even including a mortgage or loans or credit cards.

Everything on MN is relative. What is a lot to some is nothing to the next.

Shocked people are asking how mortgages can have gone up. Our has, by £400. You know, when Northern Rock crashed and burned and they priced themselves out of renewing with us and by that point my DH was redundant so our combined salary was much lower so we got offered a crappy credit crunch deal at a much higher percentage?

Sheesh.

Anyway, OP made mistake of thinking she was conversing with a load of middle class pals - at least she'll live and learn. FWIW I earn more than that and we are struggling but, the point of clarification is WE ARE STRUGGLING TO MAINTAIN THE SAME LIFESTYLE THAT WE HAD BEFORE THE CREDIT CRUNCH AND BEFORE DH LOST HIS JOB!. I'm sure the OP is not thick. Push comes to shove you just start cutting back on the luxuries you take for granted - flipping ballet lessons, monkey music, lunch en famille at pizza express of a weekend. Hardly the tough stuff is it?

Moving on...

"Just because you earn 65K a year you don't HAVE to live in whatever area...you still could see where your priorities lie.."

But that is of course limited if your job is in one place, and all the areas surrounding it are expensive to live in. Short of trying to find a new job elsewhere and moving out of the area it could be entirely possible that they are already living in a less desireable area.

Someone else mentioned downsizing, yes wonderful idea in theory - but in the current climate probably extremely difficult - as to downsize you have to be able to sell your current larger house.

Now am I being unreasonable to think that:
DH earning 65k is not something to be ashamed of
and we all make misguided posts occassionally
so she shouldn't have to name-change.

I mean, are people rally going to ostracise her for this?

*really

Food £600 - and that's conservative estimate !!!!

It's all about disposable income. My in laws earn a quater of what we earn but have much more cash to play with every month. I know this could get me flamed but what the hell-

Our joint income is over double your husband's and we are very worried about money atm. We have stretched ourselves on a mortgage and that is up for renewal in Feb. We currently have 5% below base tracker and the best deal we can get is almost 2% above. We have had third child and when I go back to work my whole income as a doctor will go (for the first 6 months) on childcare as we will have 3 kids at nursery.
Now fair enough we are spoilt to have a nice flat and top quality childcare but having made those decisions we don't have a lot of spare cash. We don't go out much and have in freq UK based hols. Problem is that having set ourselves up to have little spare income each month we are in trouble with food prices and bills going up same as everyone else.

Now is someone said they earned double our income I would think that was obscene and ask what the hell they do with it all. But I'm sure they could have committed to stuff without a crystal ball and find they may be in trouble.

Trillianastra, I hope not, come back Winegoddess, you've nowt to be ashamed about

hg - that leaves you £2,500 for mortgage adn other 'stuff'. Wow, that is a lot of money to have after the bills are paid

I name changed after my initiation flaming and felt much more comfortable after

I'm with you OP.

Don't expect sympathy on here though!

Other people do npt know your outgoing so how can they judge? Ignore.

Well yes.... that's a lot of money left over for loans and credit cards. Unless the mortgage is very very big.

Perhaps credit card spending could be one of the first things to go?