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!!

i will be forever intrigued at the British perception of going away on holiday as an entitlement.

it's nice, but you can actually survive very well without it.

you can do other things with annual leave that don't involve going away at a huge price.

As I said evertyhing is relative - I have a GP friend with 3 kids and she spends £250 per week on food.

Happywomble, childcare in the SouthEast is horrendously expensive if you go for expensive nurseries or similar. But then I don't know anyone around here who can afford nursery, so we all use childminders. Comes quite a bit cheaper. Also know lots of parents who work shift, so one parent works in daytime and the other in the evenings/at weekends. People are very inventive with these things.

High mortgages are a problem and not a lot you can do if you were unfortunate enough to buy after the boom. This is not about being good with money, but just bad luck.

But things like holidays don't have to be to Egypt and cost 2500 to be relaxing. Most people manage to relax in much cheaper ways and have just as much fun.

Lots of life enriching activities are not expensive. I would like for dd to be able to do horseriding as I know it could help with her chronic pain condition, but we can't afford the price of lessons nor the cost of a car to take her there- that's just it. She'll have to get her exercise in some way that doesn't cost a lot. Kids accept these things.

I think the OP would have got a better reply if her original post had been a bit quieter in tone: it sounded as if she thought she was particularly hard done by. In fact, I think we are all going to have to learn to tighten our belts and learn to do more with less within the next few years. It doesn't have to be a dreadful epxerience, at least not for all of us.

ladies,is there any need to insult the OP?

it's hard to know what the OP's outgoings are-huge mortgage? big house to heat? need 2 cars? there's not much to be done about that i guess...

not sure about making money (other than getting a job )but ways to save money-

look at outgoings, see what you can save on
insurance-car and house
can you switch electric/gas suppliers to save money?
mobiles- threaten to switch networks if your contracts are up for renewal and they'll give you a much cheaper deal
broadband/telephone line suppliers...shop around

meal-plan to save on groceries
shop somewhere cheaper than you do at present

have cheaper holidays!

me and dh earn a bit less than you between us and at present have one dd in childcare and are both paying to commute. I guess we don't go out much. We live in a small house in a modest part of London and I would say are comfortably off and currently managing to save money for the time when our childcare costs double in a year or so

but sounds like you have more mouths to feed but (perhaps no childcare to pay...so shouldn't be much worse off than us?but again depends on size of mortgage, number of cars etc so who knows!)

I think...you just have to get together with your dh and take a careful look at what you're spending.

thank you, have just switched my mortgage (well "our" mortgage but couldnt get hold of DH at work!) to a tracker at 1.38% above base rate, excellent. It can't commence until 1st Feb though so I hope we get to enjoy some of this low rate, when is the next review?

yeah , when we first got this house it had 3 bedrooms, which was fine for 3 kids, then had 4th ,had extension,(more debt, but 3, 6ft plus teenage boys in one room?) but still, house bigger than some, but much smaller than others.
( 'family home' can be a carvan...........it overs a wide area, esp if you talk to estate agents !!!)

and my kids do do one or two activities each.
i do pay for maths tutors, my eldest recently did his maths GCSE, and he was expected to get a D, we paid for a tutor , and he got a C, this helped him get in to 6th form.
It still was digging in to debt. I did stop paying for a couple of after school things, like music lessons, but when your child is doing GCSE music, well, your over a barrel arent you?

i am aware that the small things do add up to a large whole.
Certainly over the years i have counted carrots , darned tights, and not brought the tv times etc. it didnt bring any feelings of satisfaction or result in reducing the large number of outgoings.

we do work hard, but that doenst mean less debt, and I certainly lived with it as a child.

we still look at cheaper areas to live, but am not particularly happy with the idea of my children living were i used to, call me a snob, but having lived in a rough area, I KNOW first hand how good it is where I am now.
On another note wouldnt want to live in remote expensive village either, not suitable for teens etc, or walking to local schools if you need a car all the time.

We are hanging on by the skin of our teeth, and plan to keep going for another 5-6 years.
i am very concerned and old fashioned about leaving children who although at senior school on their own for too long after school.
I want to know how there day has been, if they are ok and happy.
Having worked part time, exhaustion levels mean that concentrating on the kids is more difficult.
Certainly when is comes to health, sometimes work is not the highest priority.

I am sure if the market goes back to something that means our home is worth selling we will downsize, and of course I will be back at work full time like my husband.

We dont talk much about pensions, we have some, but who knows how much we will get in the end?

If op lives in SE could you not consider relocating to a cheaper area of the country? Doctors can work anywhere in the country and a doctor's salary would give you a very nice life style where I live.

"DH earns good salary, no school fees/foreign holidays and we have to be careful with money"...Lizzylou I think if the op was the same she might have received a less hostile response. But talking of spending £2000 on Egyptian holidays and then complaining of not being able to afford to live was bound to antagonise. She was bound to lose any sympathy then given the plight of many in the current economic climate.

And then there's my friend (single by the way) who takes home nearly 25K per month - yes, per month and still has to be careful.

Is this a joke???

OP's DH will be paying LOADS of tax which will be contributing towards NHS, benefits system etc.

okay williamsmummy To me a 4 bed house (or even a 3 bed) is an unachievable dream. Am stuck with two and a crawl-in loft space where ds has made his 'room'.
So to me what you have is a huge house. Hence my comment.
Roffle at teh estate agent describing a caravan as a family home - they are a breed apart arent' they.

But sorry to hear you are struggeling. All you can do is cut back where you can.
I have cut the dc's activites to two each (and one of those two is rainbows / cubs which is cheap luckily)
I made dd give up dancing as it was getting to expensive (feel guilty about it though) and am about to pull ds out of swimming (even though he woudl probably benefit from keeping going as he is not very sporty, but the £65 per term are jsut too much)

I agree with you about letting teens home alone after school. For that same reason I work school hours only on a temporary basis, adn we struggle financially.

I think you can only do so much. Do the best you can and your dc will have a great childhood regardless of how much money you spend on them

I think the OP has a valid point. Someone on that level of salary would be feeling the pinch at the moment, whereas a couple of years ago would probably have felt quite comfortable.

Quite at the holiday though. We wouldn't dream of spending that amount despite an income above that of the OP.

sorry, you ahve already done the cutting of activities. promise to read better..

We have a household income of around..... 57K and have to say we don't feel that well off. Our car is 10 years old and is a heap, our house is a disaster area - we really need double glazing and carpets as are freezing in this weather, and our 3 children don't do any activities after school.

Where does the money go?

Fuck knows. I'm thrifty with food, buy my clothes from charity shops, and we haven't been abroad in 7 years (and have camped or done cottages in UK, but only once every 2 years).

Lots of money goes on commuting, on house repairs (just had to have back of house repointed and have had lead pipes replaced/new boiler/leaking roof repairs. Huge heating bills (as no double glazing or carpets), higher rate tax, huge council tax bills.

I look at our household income and think - we only have what two nurses who live together would have. Less actually - as dp pays higher rate of tax on some of his income.

So yes - do sympathise with you OP. Even if everyone else thinks you're talking bollox.

Pamelat - where did you get your mortgage. I want one of those please .

Winegoddess come back! You should have seen my first thread which was something like "WTF do stay at home mums DO all day? Are they all lazy or what?"

apparently the answer was "not"

I still have scars

pramspotter, are you for real?? Anyway, did anyone actually see the OP again?

To her original Q, if you really feel you can't afford to live in this country, and i say this with the greatest of respect - fuck off somewhere else!

Yes sorry of course if you have remortgaged it would be more

Come on back winegoddess. Oh dear @ the thread title; still it was a good way to meet everyone all at once.

My DH earns £50Kish and we are by no means well off. We have a £900 mortgage and just get by. DH pays loads of tax.

lol at morningpaper

guy, possible , of course....I suppose, a lot of people moving to more affordable arreas have longer commutes...it's part of what you have to put up with...

However, I can NOT understand how someone can think they can't afford to live in this country on that kind of money...
yes, people may have committed themselfs to things they now find difficult....but then...those people don't plan on a big holiday, presumable....as OP did...

PMSL @ Morningpapers first thread

Oh and yes we are lazy - I'm a slattern - my housework gets left until the DS's are in bed, and while DS3 is currently napping I have been busy............................MNing

Morningpaper . I do wonder what we SAHM mums do all day to.