Both work and we claim UC but still can't afford to live.

[Mocha1]

We have 3 kids, 2 who aren't at school yet, my husband and I both work 30 hours a week for charities so not highly paid. We also have childcare for part of the week and then juggle the kids between us the rest of the time (We don't want to work more as we dont want the kids in fulltime childcare). We rent and down't own. We claim UC but we are still really struggling to make ends meet. We really try to live to a tight budget but I have no idea how to lower our expenses any more.

Am I missing something? Is this normal? does anyone have any tips for saving money/ making more income somehow? I feel a bit at a loss as we keep dipping into our savings for just day to day expenses and we're nearly at the end of those.

Our income at the moment (I'm on MAT leave) - £3980
Outgoings- £4250

Do these outgoings seem like a lot for a family of 5 living in the south west? I've been going over our budget and I have no idea how to save any more unless we literally never bought another birthday present or went to a soft play ever again.

@Digdongdoo I don't really need anyone to believe me it's just an anon forum. That's our money. We don't allocate every penny. The CB is for the kids as I said, so if I need to transport them to a club, I use their money. I said in my OP that me and my OH have a "personal spends pot for tat". Tat to me is bus fare etc. It works for us.
Income is £2,200
Outgoing bills are around £950.
Even with savings and food gone were left with around £400/500 to separate for ourselves and anything extra such as birthdays and holidays x

@Statsquestion1 the car is neither of those just good economically? Maybe it's different by area.
Thank you 🥰 x

Respectfully - you’re struggling because you’ve got three children and neither of you work full time

My car is tax free due to the rules when it was manufactured. It's a 2013 Ford fiesta. There's some weird anomalies out there!

You're the car sickness poster right? So your kids are toddler and baby? Things will get tighter as they get older.
Not saying you're lying btw, apologies if thats how it came off - I'm just impressed and incredulous. I can't fathom managing on that. Our mortgage and council tax is more than your entire income, and our house is very modest!

Ah I see. Thank you.

@Digdongdoo yep that's me 🥰
We are very lucky in regards to where we live, but everyone around here is similar so it's pretty "normal" to us.
We're expecting the jump in expenses as they get older but once they're in full time education I'll be going back to work so hoping this helps balance things back out. For now we manage and I prefer being home with them x

National Minimum Wage statistics - House of Commons Library

Only 6.5% of all jobs in the UK are paid NMW. Identical jobs in charity and private sector have significant difference in pay, but private sector is much harder work with usually less flexibility. It's usually possible to get a better paid job, it's just difficult and requires extra effort.

So true! Big families were very common up until fairly recently.

I don't understand why people who don't work full time get UC to make up the 'shortfall'. Surely the answer is to work more and be self sufficient?

No, just people who don't want to pay for lazy people who could work full time but don't.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/25/low-birthrates-in-england-could-lead-to-closure-of-800-primary-schools-by-2029

Primary schools near me have already been letting staff go and closing classes.

I don’t know how recent ‘fairly recently’ is, but in my cohort of friends (children all now mid twenties), most stopped at two, a lot for economic reasons, and this was back in the late nineties/early 2000s. I know very few families with three or more children.

my oh car is an old diesel and it’s a tenner a year.

You’re missing the fact you could both earn more but do t want to!

Depends what you mean by common and fairly recently.

SAHMs/tradwives/home makers, whatever you choose to call the role, can and do work hard.
I was incredibly impressed by my MiL who was amazing at running the home and worked really hard at it.
However, there's a difference between working inside or outside the home.
If my MiL felt a bit under the weather she could take the day off; okay, the dust may accumulate a bit and the family may just get beans on toast for dinner but nobody's operations got cancelled, nobody's children weren't in a classroom without a teacher, nobody's colleagues got inconvenienced by picking up the slack...
And, however important it is you feel to not have your children in childcare, what do you want for your daughters? Is it unfair for them to want a career but also to have children?
And how would you, say, see female doctors? It's a difficult profession to take years of childcare out.

Thank you, this is what I also meant to say earlier in my post about OP (perhaps) crunching the numbers when she did her research. Not everyone can work the high flying jobs that would drastically improve the lives of OP and her family, if OP and her partner somehow got those elusive jobs. So it's better for them to stay as they are - the monthly shortfall is only £250, which could be gained from a few cuts in their non-essentials spending.

We earn a lot more than you do, and stopped at two kids as we couldn’t afford three. I went back to work when they were 6mths.
With three kids you don't have the luxury of not working full time. Things will hopefully get better when they are school age.

Why are you both only working 30 hours a week and both choosing to work in a low paid but worthy sector. You don’t have that luxury. Can’t one of you work full time?

unfortunately many people seem to have little sympathy for those struggling financially who post for advice on here, I stupidly posted before and people think it’s really to ‘move somewhere cheaper’, ‘get rid of the car’ ‘work more hours’! This hugely depends on where you live, in the southwest rent will be more expensive! I am in the southwest too and £1400 would be considered relatively cheap in my area, any cheaper would be 1 bedroom properties.

I don’t have much advice op but we earn a similar amount, 2 school aged children so no childcare and it’s tight every month. I hope it gets easier for you. The price of everything - food, fuel, utilities is a killer and that’s before everything such as clothes for the kids, Christmas etc!

I try and write everything down, I’m probably stating the obvious but I write down every single outgoing, even the very low amount ones and write down everything coming in. It helps me to not overspend elsewhere when I know important bills have to come out.

They were many years ago - but no one worried about childcare in those days. Younger children were in the care of older siblings playing out, and kept an eye on by “the village” their mothers would have been around locally, not getting in a car/train and being an hour away for the working day.
I’d say two kids has been the norm since the 1990’s unless very rich, very poor or very religious!

If both of you are part time Is one of you able to work more hours 35-40 full time with the other doing more childcare. I understand about childcare at young ages. If you haven’t already use tools on Martin Lewis to budget look at every expense compare prices. Try to build up small savings the habit might lead to greater savings. Just ignore the 3 child comments everyone’s circumstances are different. If your biggest expense is rent is it because there’s a shortfall between what UC will contribute towards it. Anyway of moving to a cheaper rental?

She is currently on maternity leave so there shouldn't be any childcare costs at the moment Her husband could work full time or get a second job to make ends meet.

But in the longer term they both need to look at increasing their hours and changing sector.

Charity sector jobs have traditionally been poorly paid because there are lots of people who are happy to earn less money in exchange for the warm and fuzzy feeling that they're doing some good in the world. That's why the charity sector, particularly in London, tends to be dominated by people from privileged backgrounds who have other sources of income or were bought houses by their parents, and recent grads who later move to higher paid jobs in the private sector when they realise that houses and children cost a lot of money. Now perhaps in the future fewer and fewer people will be willing to work for low pay in exchange for nice colleagues and warm and fuzzy feelings, and there won't be so many candidates for these jobs, and charity sector bosses will have to pay their staff more. But that's not currently the case, so people who aren't privileged need to get the best paid jobs they can, even if they are less fun and feel good.

If they'd tried to get full time jobs in a better paid sector and with the cost of childcare the maths still wasn't mathing, then yes, you'd have a point. But they haven't.

I'm sorry, I don't want to derail the OP's thread, but I'm still reeling at having learnt on this thread that you can choose to work PT and claim UC to top it up! And then not only get the money itself that UC provides but also all the free and subsidised things you are allowed to get if you prove you receive UC, including the staggering cost of secondary school meals and all sorts of other expensive stuff.
I genuinely, truly thought UC was for those working FT who needed financial assistance due to their low salary, or for people who are unemployed.
I never, ever knew you could work PT through choice and claim UC to top it up.
I'm sort of feeling an idiot for not knowing this whilst flogging myself to death working FT and raising 2 DC.