Can we survive like this for long? (I've namechanged for this)

[pennypincher]

Would appreciate some opinions please? I've recently gone back to work, DH is staying at home with DS. I am on just over £20k a year. Out of that we have to cover mortgage, council tax, utility bills and household/life insurance which come to around £800. Then there's food, running the car which we need, DH's credit cards (minimum payments), clothes for DS, absolute minimum work clothes for me, cat care, DH's CSA payments (has to pay minimum even though not earning), DS nursery for one day a week (so DH can try to find part time work) - all out of the remaining £500 or so (including tax credit and child benefit). I can't afford new casual clothes, shoes or a haircut; we hardly ever go out or have takeaways; don't know when we'll next get a holiday, etc. God forbid that the boiler breaks down or anything.

The last bit about not affording clothes, shoes, haircuts, etc. has been pretty standard for the last few years but now I've got DS to think of as well. We've got to be able to get things for him. I'm trying to cut down on the food bills as much as poss, but need to make sure DS especially gets a good balanced diet. I make all his food from scratch and most of ours.

This isn't a whinge, I just wanted to put over the situation and get opinions on how sustainable this is in the long term in case DH doesn't have much luck with part time work. Also some advice on money saving would be great. Thank you!

pp, do you get working family tax credit? I've read the whole thread but can't remember if you mentioned it.

We get child tax credit. With child benefit that's about another £120 a month on top of my salary. It's that which will be paying for the nursery. It will go down later this year when DS is one. We're over the threshold for working tax credit.

You're not over the threshold for wftc, it's about £58k iirc!

Just remembered someone asked about life insurance. It's life and critical illness cover - fairly high as DH is older than me. It is assurance, not insurance - ie it goes down as mortgage goes down.

My DH has a FT managerial job, not terribly well-paid, and also works 2 weekend nights (10pm-3am) at a local posh hotel which does a lot of weddings - he wrote letters to a lot of places, hotels and supermarkets, before getting this one. I don't think there was an actual application form, just an interview.

He can function on very little sleep, luckily, and we don't have any small children either . I realise your DH might not be able to cope with the hours and loss of sleep, but it pays minimum wage, c £60 before tax for the weekend, and your DH wouldn't pay any tax, would he? That would add 20% to your net family monthly income (leaving aside CSA contributions)

Can I just add PP that if you were to reduce your income by dropping a day and earn under a cetain amount, off the top of my head I can't recall what it is, then there are tax benefits, as well as salary benefits. It's what I did. We thought we were going to really struggle when I worked only one day per week, but the savings in NI etc made it less of a hardship and of course it meant we didn't pay childcare.
I think there are many ways to help socialise your Ds and provide support for your Dh at the same time, libraries run groups for young babies, some P/T groups are a bit motherly, but I'll be honest most of the guardians in the one I run are grandparents as parents can't afford to SAH any longer. PP's Dh take note! We welcome anyone who wants to come, honestly. WFTC you should get or even income support, but others will advise you better on this. Could you work slightly longer days to have a day off to provide childcare, I'm just thinking that you may find it quite stessful to work from home if Dh is there with your son. From experience my Dh gets very little done on the day he works from home and makes it up during the week/end. If your Dh still hasn't got a job by then then he may well be tempted to see the day you're at home as another day off.
In our house cats who turn their noses up at food go hungry btw

CHILD tax credit has that threshold. WORKING tc is a lot lot lower - around £15k cut off I think but will check.

I really feel for you as your situation brings back strong memories for me. I was the sole breadwinner for a year or two when my youngest ds was a toddler. My dh was unhappy in his job, his take home salary wasn't massive so, to save nursery fees so he gave in his notice. He then looked after ds full time. My salary was a bit more than yours, but not a lot more.

I would say it got harder and harder financially. I don't think we budgeted as strictly as we could have, but we were careful. However, crunch times came with things like sudden car repairs needed, vets bills (we had 4 elderly cats!), washing machine/tv needing repair, ds growing out of shoes and coats etc. Clothes, cars and houshold equipment simply wore out.

We relied on a second income - I ran a market stall sometimes and dh helped with this - but the income was very unreliable.

We had plans to get us out of this. The first plan was for dh to go back to college full time to study nursing, a long held ambition of his (also hoping to enter a field where there was less age discrimination). There was a college creche place for ds. So dh was working towards future employment and ds was looked after for very little money. And we got a grant which would have kept us going. All was fine until a year into the course, dh decided nursing was not for him - he was doing really well, but realised he did not have the vocation for it. It was a hard time for both of us.

Plan B involved us deciding to sell our house, cash in on some of the equity and move to a cheaper area with a smaller mortgage. This was a lifesaver.

Dh did find work in a field he wanted, and it did work out in the end, but it was hard.

Do you have the option of cashing in any equity on your property? If you and your dh feel that in a year or so, he will be earning an acceptable salary, this might be a good option to tide you over.

If not, I think your dh must find a way of bringing in some extra income somehow. Has he tried finding work with your local council - even driving jobs etc? IME councils and public sector employers in general do not discrimimate on age.

It seems to me that you can just about manage on what you are getting now, but don't have any reserves to cope with the emergencies that inevitably crop up. Your DH working a couple of days will really help I think as that will be the extra money you need for things like the car going wrong etc.

What did your DH do before ? Is it anything that could be used for him to start his own business with minimal outlay ? The guy who does our garden is 50 plus and retired but always seems to have found something, Sainsburys, B&Q etc to tide him over when the weather is too bad to work outside. Having said that he is very handy round the house and seems to be able to fill up his weeks with doing bits and pieces around the house for his regular gardening customers.

I do see your point about the nursery and I think it makes sense to keep but place but on the proviso that your DH starts job hunting or something to bring in some money as soon as possible.

KP - you're absolutely right and that's what's really worrying me. The recent £750 bill for the car was horrendous. DH is thinking along those lines actually. There is loads more he could do from home if we had a garage or something he could use as a workshop.

He can go out tomorrow and put leaflets through people's doors offering to do their gardens etc and that could build up, depending if you live in an area where people pay for those kinds of services. He could do that initially on the day the child is at nursery. Shortgage of window cleaners around here - again you don't need that much kit, just the long ladder, a cloth etc.

no reason you can't take the child with you to do gardening .. friend of mine did

although when I had an allotment for a year I found I didn't get much done when I took the children.... Can you mow grass with a baby in a sling? They would love the rocking motion and white noise but I imagine it's too dangerous. As I've 3 student chidlren we get to hear a bout a lot of part time casual work but we live in or near London so I suppose in some parts of the country there just aren't jobs around for people who are very keen to do them and even setting things up like going to people's homes to cut their hair or organise children's parties etc people locally are just as poor as you are and don't have the money to pay for them so it's probably a regional issue as to whether there is that kind of casual work and how easy or hard it is to build up.

Sorry, have to disagree. There is no way I could have taken my DS1 out gardening with me, (or cleaning in my case). I could hardly put him down without him screaming, would only fall asleep whilst moving in the buggy and would wake up the minute I stopped. I took him cleaning with me once out of necessity and I spent just about as long clearing up after him as I had cleaning. Also find that if people are paying you they are worried about getting their money's worth if you have a baby in tow.

However, I do notice in several of your posts that you say yours dh's idea of money saving is not the same as yours - does he spend money on things that you consider unnecessary but because you feel sorry for him/grateful to him for supporting you when you were ill you don't like to "stop" him?

BTW we were seriously hard up for several years and £20,000 would have been heaven, (more like £14,000 plus WFTC). I wouldn't have dreamed of putting my son into a nursery, (well I certainly dreamed about it but never could you justified it)!!

Also, I know this may be utterly wrong, but is your husband too proud to go for a "lesser" job than he was on previously? A friend of mine was seriously hard-up and needed money desparately, but there was no way she was going to let her friends see her sat at the till at the local supermarket - whereas I cleaned toilets and am now through the worst of it. Don't mean to offend in any way - but I just wonder if he realises quite how worried you are.

Just read Xenia's comment that she knows other people, "as poor as you are". Classic!!! To an awful lot of people I know a salary of £20,000 means you are not bad off at all, certainly not poor. In my opinion it just depends how you, "cut your cloth".

As we were spending more per month than we had coming in, (absolute basics), my dh started his own business, (5 years ago exactly actually!!), and through a lot of hard work he now earns at least double what he did when he was employed - so sometimes out of adversity prosperity comes, (sorry, sure that's not right but it sounds good anyway)!!! I do know that even though we now have double what we used to we still often wonder where it all goes - it is so easy to fritter it away without noticing - do you dare ask your husband to keep a money spending diary? It may be quite revealing!

I am sure you could cut your life/critical illness insurance costs.

We (Dh and I) pay under £40 a month for nearly £300K worth of cover with Legal & General . Check out one of the comparison sites, u-switch.com or confused.com - you will be able to check whether you are getting a good deal

And, critical illness insurance is so full of exclusions that it is a bit of a cashcow for the providers. Do you think it is a good deal?

Really feel for you. I think the reality is that for hundreds of thousands of families (mine included) it is just impossible to live on one income. We live in the smallest house we can possibly fit into, buy secondhand clothes, have very rare holidays (camping) and do BOGOF shopping and we still need to both earn. We've done the sums as to what would happen if one of us was to stay at home, and even with the slight benefit of tax credits, we just wouldn't be able to pay the monthly bills. And when you factor in the unexpected - eg car bills - it's a nightmare! There have been some really good suggestions on here about helping support dh back into some kind of paid employment, and tbh I think this is the only way forward. Think in terms of short term strategy - eg starting with evening bar work - it would give you some financial back-up; and long term strategy - eg maybe dh could do some study/retraining to increase his earning power. And remember altho' this pre-school period is a tremendous pressure financially, nursery fees don't last forever. Once ds is in school you can both work and you'll have no childcare costs for the bulk of every day. Light at the end of the tunnel!

Helenn - didn't spot that one. No I wouldn't say we're poor, but I think we fall into the trap that many people do where we're too well off to get any help. So we possibly end up worse off and with much less disposable income (none?) than someone earning less but with more financial help IYSWIM?

Kaz33 - know what you mean but I wouldn't dare cancel it now. That's tempting fate of the worst kind I think.

H, ooops; I do try to avoid Marie Antoinnette type comments if I can. We've been living without central heating downstairs for the last 2 months because I didn't want to incur the repair bill but I'd never suggest in any sense are we badly off and I think I have maintained a reasonable understanding of managing on less despite earning more. I tink it's good for my student children to have a limited budget too so they always remember what that is like, the walking to save the tube fare, the selling possessions on Ebay etc.

The other problem with being at home and not working is you have all that extra time to spend money and you're not at an employer who is paying to keep you heated and warm each day so your heating costs at home go up too.

I still think trying to earn more is a lot easier than making the odd cut back on spending when spending is already down as low as it can be. Is the car needed?

Actually, you know, I'm really pleased to hear that there are other people in similar financial positions. When you watch the news and hear stuff about soaring house prices, consumer spending etc. it sometimes feels like we're the only ones

Hi Xenia. Yes I think the car is needed - I went into that one a few posts back so won't repeat myself.