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.

What a horribly smug and patronising post.

You make it sound as if buying a property these days is as easy as buying an overpriced takeaway coffee.

There will always be some kind of safety net for people with children. Hopefully OP and her husband are on the waiting list for some kind of social housing.

You’re such a superior being. I’m in awe. DFOD. HTH

ah thank you I didn’t realise that

Because

1. the person working is contributing to both the economy through taxes and productivity AND is more likely to be financially self sufficient in future
2. noone is being forced back to work, you can stay home if you are happy to live within your one income (& any savings you made before DC). But taxpayers should not fund this choice.

I’m a charity sector worker. I think it’s quite well known that our rate of pay is in the lowest third generally. My DH is private sector.
I understand your wishes but
2 x part time jobs
2 x charity sector jobs
and 3 x children IS an expensive place to be and all as a result of your choices.

I’ve been part time since the DC were born and could only do that as DH had a private sector role with a bigger salary. He wanted to go PT to spend time with the DC but wasn’t allowed.
Our DC are teenagers now and life has got so expensive I’ve had to take a second job!

we stopped at 2 because we couldn’t afford three.

you only really have 2 things you can do:
increase income
decrease expenditure

I suspect you are feeling a bit raw about sharing outgoings here, so why don’t you try the money saving expert forum?

good luck.

It’s also worth remembering that children do get more expensive. Which shouldn’t be a shock but it is to so many people when they are paying out for shoes, activities and school trips etc.
I had a friend who kept having children and repeated how they weren’t costing her anymore - hand me down clothes etc. by the time the 5 of them were teenagers she was broke. she has not been able to help any of them with uni which is sad.

My point exactly she has come for advice not to be told she is irresponsible. She already has the children so why can we just give her advice like she asked for instead of bashing her lifestyle choices.

Thanks.

Both parents choosing to work fewer hours, and choosing to do that in a low paid sector
(whilst ringfencing as untouchable money for soft play) is why the OP has the responses they got.

When did she say that ?

Well she does mention soft play - which was a once a twice a year activity when mine was young - she doesn’t mention the frequency of soft play

Because it’s her lifestyle choices that are causing the problem.

Indded - though I was raised in a 3 child household in the 60s and 70s. Only my Dad worked until I was about 14, then Mum got a part-time job because my little brother went to school (no nurseries available and you didn't go to school until just before you were 5) - but we lived in a 2 up, 2 down house with no bathroom or inside toilet, no central heating and to be brutally frank, real poverty. There was little in the form of 'credit' (only things like hire purchase and buying from catalogues), so my parents had to make do with what little we had.

Of course, there was no soft play, few of the kinds of activities that families now expect, no electronic devices (therefore no phone contracts to be paid for - we didn't have a landline, either).

Most people now expect a much higher standard of living than that which I was brought up in - but if you can't afford it (as my parents couldn't), you either have to increase your income or cut out the things which aren't essential.

I thought your point was that you were managing fine on one wage with three children.

What very sweeping statement. I was at home for 11 years until my youngest started secondary school then went back to work part time around school hours. I never claimed benefits either. My sons were definitely not disadvantaged in any way. In fact they benefited hugely from having me at home. I never claimed any benefits either apart from child benefit. Both graduated with first class honours and are now Chartered Engineers and have bought their own home.

Never judge a book by its cover.

In the original post, op mentioned ‘..never going to soft play again’ which implies it’s a regular event.

But the op is renting and can’t afford to live. I also stayed at home for a while but because we could afford it.

Like you, my children weren’t disadvantaged by this because we made sure we were financially secure before we made the decision that I would not work but that’s not the situation that the OP is in.

Of course mothers took paid employment but it largely wasn’t recorded as “proper jobs”. My mother, like every other mother we knew took in work and went out at times when either my father was at home or when women did child swaps on particular days.

Come the census she was recorded by the enumerator as a ‘housewife” because they were not “proper jobs”. At the next level of income you also had men recording wives has housewives on the census and other documents because of the “my wife doesn’t need to work” phenomenon, despite the fact that their wives also took on the patchwork of casual jobs. It was called “pin money” and largely ignored when collecting jobs data.

Tax returns were completed by men with the wife’s earnings being bundled in with his own, although most of the patchwork jobs were cash in hand and probably wouldn’t have been enough to trigger tax.

There were day nurseries and nannies but for most low income women childcare was informal and arranged within families or social groups other than during the war where suddenly nurseries sprang up like magic to make it easier to demand more paid hours from working women.

Where the raw data from that generates an assumption that such a low percentage of women worked?

I hope OP has taken on board some of the considerations

Do you use a spreadsheet? Mine's tight. I bring in 1.5k/m. So about the same as each of you.

My incomings and outgoings are tracked and tweaked on an ongoing basis to ensure I am left with money at the end of each month. I might tighten the shopping budget or underpay the gas bill, or not put a tenner in my emergency account that month. Anything but operate on a negative.

But UC pays my full rent. Does it pay all of yours? Do you need to apply for discretionary housing payment?

UC gives me 900/m of my total income and I only make about 800/m and work part time because with children under 3 I don't have to work.

I'm upskilling instead so that when my youngest is 3 I can take on some higher paid work.

I save in a credit union, put my child benefit in there, and add a monthly amount also. Then I take out 1k every 6m to tide me over and do big house improvements.

When my shares exceed my loan amount I will start taking my shares instead.

I get by and provide a nice quality of life to my kids this way.

Phone bills are sim only and one off phone purchases so it's about 20 a month for me and my older kid and about 150 per phone.

I've a credit card for emergencies also.

You have to tweak things little by little and make sure you're maximising your situation and not overspending. Large phone contracts, for example, are not necessary.

Netflix is a fiver with ads.
I shop around supermarkets and use offers frequently.

That is exactly what the raw data says and it's right.
Yes, of course women have always earned some cash.
I read that farmers' wives traditionally kept the money from selling eggs as their 'pin money' put aside for a 'rainy day'.
If you're talking about the 1939 census, the ones I've read used the term 'domestic duties', not housewife.
Of course that would have included an element of paid work but it's not the same as being in employment because the wages were insufficient to live on, the hours likely were not regular and the work tended to be dhort term, payment cash in hand.
Of course women have worked hard throughout history, usually as domestic servants in 19 th cenury if employed.
However it's demonstrably true that 'womens work' has been centred in the home throughout history up to the two WWs.

Work a second job when the other parent is at home. This was common amongst working class families in the 80s and 90s- I knew of a lot of families where the mum worked evenings and weekends when the dad was at home (after school clubs etc didn’t really exist).

That's how long maternity leave is. Why should those who don't work be entitled to be a SAHM for 3 years? Mothers go back to work at 9 months after maternity leave all of the time so it doesn't need to be 3 years for those who don't work.

If someone wants to be a SAHM for 3+ years, they should need to fund it themselves just as they would if they weren't claiming UC.

I was asking what raw data you used but typo'ed. Where is the original data coming from and what question was it answering when gathered and what definitions were they using for the data?

No I’m not talking about a 1939 census, I’m talking about the one collected in the 60s. Most of the census data describes married women as home duties/domestic duties/housewife whether or no they were full time SAHMs because obviously as mothers their really important job was considered to be the home. MC professional women were more likely to have their work recognised.
You are dismissing the paid work of women as small and insignificant in exactly the same way that the men gathering data and writing reports did at the time. My DM and her friends were not working antisocial hours and piece work for fun, they needed the money (and not for soft play). It wasn’t “an element” of paid work it was essential income to pay the bills. Men also often did extended overtime/extra shifts.

The fact that women were so heavily restricted and discriminated against in the workplace and were forced to juggle their patchwork hours, take work in or do night and weekend shifts does not make it “demonstrably true” that their work was “centred in the home” any more than MC professionals WFH are “centred in the home” and considered non working. It was not just paying for extras.

As I said - I did not know a single family where the mother was a true SAHM even though some were forced to be WAHMs having been sacked for either getting married or being pregnant.

UC pays your full rent????? 😯😯😯