How to survive on one wage

[BibiThree]

Advice needed please! I'm thinking of taking a career break when the twins arrive. I worked out that if I went back to work part time, or even full time, I'd only be working to pay for childcare and we'd effectively be living on DH's wage anyway, so would rather take a break and look after my own children.

We can't currently run our house on DH's wage alone - what can we do? Mortgage is £73,000 which isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but with bills, food and petrol on top, we'd be spending his wage and have nothing to spare for things like clothes, shoes, or any ad hoc payments or unexpected costs.

Basically, can you live on one wage with 3 children nowadays?

Hav you worked out if you'd be entitled to child tax credit? If you are then this may help. We have 2 children on one wage atm and it can be a struggle but it all depends how much your dp earns and what your outgoings are etc.

We get tax credits now, but I can't see it making that much of a difference, I'll have to check online, I'm sure you can do that somewhere.

Our other option is to down scale with the house, but we've only got a modest 3 bed semi and could do with another bedroom really. We could get a same-sized terrace for the same ro less than ours is worth, but to reduce the mrotgage, we'd have to move into one that needed a lot of work, which we wouldn't have the money to do.

Such a pickle!

Is your mortgage fixed? or can you look around for a better rate of interest?

You could always extend your mortgage period by say 5 years which will lower your payments, then you could overpay when you do return to work to make it up.

As regards food shopping then I'm sure we can help reduce that bill!

We've got a fixed rate mortgage for another 2.5 years.

I've just done a tally of our outgoing for the last 18 months and we average £2500 out, so we fall far short - by about £700!

It's going to mean a house move isn't it?

can yoiu move to interest only mortgage for a few years ?

moneysavingexpert has a budget calculator.
Have you got 2 cars? Can you sell one? That would bring costs down a lot.

Well here's a breakdown of our monthly lavish lifestyle:

£600 - mortgage
£100 - council tax
£260 - loan
£400 - groceries
£250 - petrol
£110 - insurance
£120 - gas, electric, phone, water
£240 - creche fees

The other £400 goes on things we need month to month for the house, repairs etc, putting a little away to pay for car insurance, home insurance, Christmas, the once a year holiday, which we know we can't have from now on.

I really don't think we live a frivilous lifestyle. We don't go to the cinema more than 3 times a year, we don't eat out more than once every other month, neither of us drink or smoke. We don't go on foreign holidays, buy expensive clothes, or even have credit cards, store cards or catalogues.

I'm not expecting sympathy here, and I know we live nicely at the moment, I'm just asking for advice on how to cut back.

We've also just got rid of my car to downsize for a tiny 107 which should be much cheaper to run. Unfortunately due to where we both work and where childcare is (mixture of nursery and grandparents), one car would be impossible if I continued to work, but if I give up work then obviously we'd go down to one.

its the petrol and creche fees that seem high...will they be reduced if you don't work

ok if you were at home full time then you could automatically take £240 off your monthly outgoings (so £2880) as presumably you then wouldn't be needing the creche.

You could probably knock at least £100 off your monthly grocery shop (£1200 in a year)

And if you currently have £400 that you 'put away' - and included that in your monthly income that's £4800. Total of £8800 a year.

How much does your DH contribute towards your monthly outgoings??

Definatley look into changing mortgage to interest only, will save you about £200 A month.

Can you restructure your debt, and add the loan being repaid to your mortgage? What are the creche fees for - won't these disappear? The petrol bill is quite high -does this drop if you don't work?

Our average mothly outgoing for the last 18 months also include unexpected or non-typical things like:

boiler bursting (not covered by insurance)
shower breaking
funeral expenses
clearing old credit cards

but things like that always crop up, so having the money to be able to fix them has been nice. I worry what would happen if we only had one wage and no means of finding the extra cash.

don't forget that you'll also get an extra £88 (roughly) in child benefit a month once the twins arrive (working out on £11 per child per week). And at least for the 1st year you'll get a little bit more Tax Credit simply on 'baby element' alone.

£600 for a £73K mortgage?! That sounds mighty high to me!

that is high thinking about it.......we're currently paying £600 for a £110k mortgage......but that includes the money which is repaying our arrears!!

Hey Bibi, I did the same as you, I am 1 year into my career break with no. 2 on the way, so admittedly not in quite teh same situation but as I brought home more than DH it has meant a seismic shift in priorities!

We got rid of one car and he uses his motorbike, that halved those costs, you will find with the new car it does make a difference, plus you won't use the car so much so that might help.
We buy as much food as we can from the market.
We added onto our mortgage and cleared all overdrafts, credit cards and other debts. as others have said I would look into changing your mortgage if you can without penalties as it sounds a bit high.
We got all of DD's clothes as handmedowns, I basically asked everyone I knew (family, neighbours etc) for any clothes they don't need.
I only buy clothes from tesco or asda sales, or with birthday money.
I started doing avon at home, only brings in about 40-50 quid every 4 weeks but it is enough for my little bonus treats.
Tax credit was a problem though, and be aware that the first year they will count in what you earnt for the last 12 months, so although I dropped 22k a year, I only got 90 quid a month(ooh, so helpful!) and that dropped to 40 once DD turned 1.

I hope some of this helped and wasn't too obvious, but I have been wage free for a year now so it can be done!

PLUS, as terms of my career break I have to work 10 days a year which I get paid for, so thats another 70-80 quid a month.

Fixed rate mortgage for 5 years did bump the mortgage up a fair amount, but we panicked about the interest rates and tied outselves in!

Creche fees would drop to £0 after October if DD gets her place in school and I was at home with the twins and the petrol should drop dramatically this month now i'm driving a 1 litre car. It's the distance we both travel back and forth work and childcare that bumps the petrol up.

I wish we hadn't had the loan but we took that out when it was only the 3 of us and we intended to keep it that way. We paid off my car, bought dh his car and had a cheapo bathroom put in with it. Then we decided one more baby would be nice and manageable since dd would be going to school soon, and got twins instead!

It will be fabulous when we find a way to work it out, and I woudln't change the babies situation for the world, I'm just worries sick we won't be able to cope. I know I can't expect my gran to look after twins, she's in her 70s and is finding dd hard, and MIL isn't in great health either, so it's all abit scary at the mo. I know we could get the groceries down and the petrol will come down, but I'm a big ole fraidy cat when it comes to debts.

Thanks Chirpy, ti's ncie no know it can be done.

Sorry for getting narky Fio, but compared to most people my age, I don't feel very frivilous.

If you needed extra cash there is often casual evening and weekend stuff available even if it doesn't pay mega bucks.

When will your loan be paid off as that is a lot each month.

I also agree that you seem to be paying too much for your mortgage.

Lots of people on mumsnet (sadly not me!)have mastered the art of spending about half your current costs on food and have some great tips.

I think you need a detailed budget to work out if you can do this and then get other people to challenge what you might currently see as essential - eg sky, mobile costs or whatever; also make sure you are not paying too much for utlities, mortgage, insurances etc

Good luck, hope you can make it work!