Cost Of Living (how much do you earn?)

[SouthMan28]

Sorry if this is really personal for you all.

But just wondering, how much you all earn? And can you afford things ok? Would you be able to afford a holiday this year?

As me and my partner earn £2,300 take home per month (is this a good wage per month?) And we feel like we can't afford anything and are just are home bound all weekend as we don't have enough for extras once bills etc are paid for!

Is anyone else feeling the pinch?

Is that your combined salary or do you each earn 2300?

As for whether this is a good wage, it all depends on your outgoings and general situation.

Me and my partner are on low wages (just above NMW) but we have low outgoings. Some people on higher wages have a lot of financial commitments which can cause issues if the cost of living goes up.

We don't really do much at the weekend, reading, Netflix, go for a walk, maybe a cheap pub meal. A night or two away camping sometimes. We are lucky enough to be going glamping in the UK in a few weeks. A family member paid for this as a wedding present.

We're pretty happy with our low-key lifestyle but I can imagine people who are more social or who want the finer things in life might not enjoy it!

£2300 is combined salary. Do you think it's good?

Each or joint?

That’s quite low but will depend on your outgoings

Just saw your reply. Isn’t that around minimum wage for you both? So no, not great to be honest. How old are you? What are your career plans?

Joint

We have about the same for a family of 4 plus dog and manage ok- but it depends on what your housing costs etc are. We are lucky to have a small-ish mortgage and work from home. A big mortgage/high rent would make it much more difficult.

It's low but what are your outgoings? Our combined is much higher, we have a big mortgage though. You can't compare really

I think ours is around £3,500 ish. I’d consider us decently off and we own our home.

We're both 30 and don't have much in terms of career plans as we both don't have any higher education than basic College diplomas which were level 2! As for work expierence we've stuck at are jobs for over 5 years, but both feel like we can't do anything else!

I’m currently sahm while my youngest two are not school age so we live off DHs £2,500 a month. It’s definitely got tighter but still manageable for a family of 5. We’re lucky that our mortgage a isn’t too much per month (less than 1k but not under £400)

DH had said if I wanted to quit work once my career break is over or maybe get a new different lower paid job he would happily support that but I think I’ll end up going back because if things carry on this way we’ll need my £1900 a month salary

Everyone is different as people have said. For someone with little or no mortgage, few or no debts, car loans and, credit card bills outstanding, kid's expenses, school costs, and a low if any commute, your take home would be excellent. You could live very well on that, even if you have to pay more for utilities.

On the other hand someone with twice your take home with a shedload of debts and all the other costs above and more will definitely be feeling the pinch.

It really all depends on your essential outgoings.

That's less than NMW if it's joint assume you both work FT. I earn £1,700 and DH £2,200 and we nearly always end up overdrawn. Luckily our mortgage isn't huge at £900 but council tax is nearly £300 plus fuel bills over double what they were last year.

No chance of a holiday this year and we are feeling the pinch and we're already having to reassess things like kids sports clubs and eating out but now at the stage where clothes are either 2nd hand or birthday/Xmas presents, colouring and cutting hair at home etc. It's a bit shit but we're not unhappy, have our health and family and a nice house so can't complain.

It also does massively depend on outgoings - I’ve always got a lot of our kids clothes second hand for environmental reasons, which is cheaper, and we don’t go on holidays abroad because we enjoy camping type holidays in the UK. So our outgoings might be less than some peoples.

What to say ? DH and I take home is around £11,000 a month. Yes we can afford things, we are going away this Summer. Not sure how this helps you. DSiS take home similar to yours, life's much tougher for them.

I am guessing you (both?) work part-time from that combined income. Any way of picking up more hours?

So my salary is £1400 a month based on a 37.5 hours per week contract and my partner works 22 hours per week taking home £900 per month. We don't qualify for benefits apparently as we earn just over the threshold!

That's the maximum hours I can work in my job. But my partners employer doesn't have more hours for her.

Is your partner looking after children? What are the plans when they get older?

If her low hours aren't due to caring/childcare would she be able to work a small second job? I've worked in a bar/restaurant part time and also tutoring as a way to get a bit more income.

Yes I can afford a holiday
Ive had 2 weeks in the canary’s
1 week In Greece
weekend in London over the August bank holiday
two weeks in September in Canaries

but kids are grown up and no mortgage

My partner and I have a gross household income of 68k. I earn 36k, he earns 32k. After tax, NI and pension it's around 2.2k for me and 2k for him.

We can afford holidays and some nice days out/weekends away but for the most part we're homebodies anyway so don't spend a huge amount on social lives. Us two and a dog at home.

I take home your combined wages by myself every month OP.. DH is earning about 60% less than me. We live in London in a flat with a mental high mortgage and communal charges, plus we rent a garage, plus we are paying off a loan that helped us to upgrade said flat. So my outgoings are HIGH. We have luxuries like sky and Netflix and we shop at Sainsburys not Aldi just because we don't have a car and Aldi is too far to go by bus. My husband's wage hasn't changed for five years. Mine has gone up, but our energy, communal charges, council tax and food bills are cancelling it out. I think we are no richer in relative terms over the last year.

We aren't going on holiday together this year because our shifts and allocated leave don't coincide. I'm going camping with my daughter in a week or so, just for a weekend, and I might take another trip with DH and DD over a weekend in the summer holidays but that's it.

Once DD finishes her very good school and I've paid off the loan we are moving away to a cheaper area with fewer outgoings.

She does work in the care sector, but doesn't have the experience of working in other sectors and doesn't have the confidence to do much in other jobs!

Definitely feeling the pinch. We'll be going on holiday twice this year.

We've already had one trip that was unplanned and I used some freelancing income to pay for it.

The other holiday is our holiday we had planned from 2019. We had to defer to 2020 due to a family bereavement and then the world was cancelled in 2020. After lots of heartache we got a refund and decided to wait into 2022 to take our 2019 holiday.

We wouldn't be going away if it wasn't for the fact we had a holiday booked for 2019.