Nursery Fees Ate My Botox Budget!!

[Kerrik]

Excuse the sensational title! And please don’t come at me because I already know how First World Problems this sounds, but honestly… what am I missing here?

Early 40s. One toddler. London. Two-bed flat. Nursery fees that currently resemble a second mortgage (£1,000 a month). Actual mortgage now £2,500 a month because apparently interest rates hikes decided we’d all had enough joy in life.

I earn £75k a year working for a giant billion dollar tech company, husband earns slightly more, and yet by the end of the month we both seem to just sit there and stare at each other thinking “where did it all go??!!”

We haven’t had a holiday in two years. Saving? Hilarious. Moving to somewhere bigger? Only if we win the Euromillions or discover a wealthy elderly relative we didn’t know about.

But the thing that’s genuinely getting me down is this: I feel like I can no longer afford to maintain myself as a middle-aged woman. Not in a glamorous Real Housewives way… just basic “try not to look like a sack of old s**t” way.

Hair = £200. Botox = apparently now the GDP of a small nation. Nails, beauty treatments, supplements, veneers, replacing make-up / skincare products… all somehow seem impossible now.

Before child + mortgage apocalypse + cost of living crisis, these things were manageable. Now every salon appointment feels like I’m applying for a bank loan.

And yes, I know Botox and balayage are luxuries before anyone tells me people are living off beans. I do know that. But I also work really hard, climbed the career ladder, got the degree, did all the supposedly sensible life things, and I honestly thought by your 40s you’d reached the stage of life where you casually booked a haircut without first checking three banking apps and briefly considering selling your kidney on the black market.

Meanwhile everyone else online appears to have:

• immaculate hair
• matching gym sets
• glowing skin
• extensions
• bi-monthly spa days
• houses with utility rooms
• holidays in Tuscany
• children called Rafferty doing forest school in cashmere

HOW?

Are people secretly in massive debt? Is everyone getting parental help? Are there just far more seriously wealthy people around than I realised? Or am I catastrophically bad with money?

Because right now I genuinely feel like I’ve worked all this time just to become a permanently tired woman in a tiny London flat Googling “how long can Botox realistically last” to ensure I get my moneys worth!

According to chatGPT you have £5,850 left each month after mortgage and nursery fees. That's so much more than most people have so you are not budgeting properly and have got into bad habits.

Yep!

I didn’t care that much to start with tbh, but I was late 30s with a baby and a toddler before social media was a thing.
I moved out of London decades ago. The northern pound goes a bit further.

Have u considered moving out of London?

Primark make up is lovely and it's cruelty free. As is their perfume and it's very cheap. You don't need to spend a fortune to look good. I buy clothes second hand too.

Yeah I mean say they are putting £1,000 (net) per month into savings/pension, bills of £750 per month (based on ours in a 4 bed with 2 wfh) living London so no car needed so say £300 on public transport, food say£200pw/£800pm -that still leave £2800 per month play money, which is what alot of people start off with before any of those expenses. So where is that going?

Your nursery bill seems cheap if that’s a full time nursery place in London! We are that for 3.5 days in what most people would call a cheap area in Wales with much lower average wages and no funded hours until the term after kids turn 3.

I don’t know exactly what you both take home but I have a similar mortgage payment and nursery bill and we can afford holidays etc. Could you just do with sitting down and going through everything to make sure you’re not overspending unnecessarily?

£150k combined salary in London isn’t that much, which is presumably why you’re renting. It does sound though like you should have a decent amount of disposable income? £1k for nursery is very cheap! My DC goes 3 days a week and it’s £1.3k a month, my elder DC went full time and it was over £2k!

She said she has a mortgage.

Is this post for real? I hope not because, otherwise, the OP comes across as vain, selfish and incredibly gullible.

Christ, all those TAs, baristas, and supermarket workers in London must be destitute and living in shop doorways if you can only just scrape by on £75k 😂.

GOOD GRIEF- it’s thread shows me too many people have no idea how tax works

£75K salary is 4.5k a month, probably just over 4 if OP is paying 8-10% pension contributions to get company matching

Its not a lot in London (although you have two earners at least), too much for any benefits including child benefits, too little for an especially comfortable life

OP - you and husband are paying c 50k tax a year combined- that’s where it’s going

...but also lots of people blaming "London" when OP has given (presumably the 2 biggest) expenses and still has at least a whole -larger than average - wage left.

If they live in London they might have reasonable travel costs (its way cheaper to travel by public transport in London) and several other costs will be similar to elsewhere

Classic MNs thread, half the posts are saying you still have a decent chunk after bills so should be able to afford botox. The other half are saying you are poor and botox is unaffordable.

Stop poisoning your face and save a few quid.

Well you get universal credit top ups, child benefits etc in lower incomes. Also if you don't have kids your costs are a lot less, flat share rather than paying for three beds, costs of uniforms, feeding a family, council tax, running a car etc.
I had loads of spare income when it was just me living in a flat share, with no kids.
I recently did a benefits checked and found out that if I gave up work entirely and went in universal credit then my net income would be not much less than it is now on 75k. So yeah, i am scraping by.

You would not get almost 75k a year on UC even if you had kids
I'm on Uc and disability benefits and my total income a year without kids including rent paid is less than 23k. You would not get 75k adding kids into the mix given the rate of child element per month

I’d be interested in seeing how you came up with your figures.
Maybe all the NMW workers would benefit from your wisdom.
You realise there is a large gulf between the lowest earners and 75k, and most are entitled to maybe child benefit and that’s it.

We all know London is more expensive than most other places, but not to the degree where 150k “isn’t that much”.

If you gave up work you would probably be sanctioned

Why the hell we pull anyone live in London if you’re just scraping by at £150k combined salary! Bonkers!!

Would holidays not come before botox etc...?
Your child will remember those instead of a botoxed Mama.

One post and 11 pages of responses. I feel silly for biting on this one but will still do so.

As other have pointed out, 2x £75k is an excellent household income - one that gives you a post tax income of significantly more than a single breadwinner on £160k+.

Your mortgage is actually relatively small compared to your combined net income, as are your nursery fees. You are both well away from the 100k childcare & tax cliff.

You are either chosing to save / invest good sums of money / pension / overpaying mortgage, or you are just truly terrible with money.

I did an entitled to benefits checker.
If i worked 16 hours a week on minimum wage, I would get a combined benefits and take home pay net amount of 3206 per month
If i worked 30 hours per week on minimum wage my combined be efits and tame home pay would be net 3477 per month
If i earn 75k per year with a modest 3 percent penaion co tribution then i take home 4396 from my work with no benefits.
The calculations done for having two children.
Not a huge difference there for someone earning 75k doing 40 hour weeks and someone workimg minum wage for 16 hours work a week.

But the inner london housing rate is 450 per week for a 2 bed and about 500 per week for a 3 bed. So if you lived in london you would get 26k in housing benefit per year for a three bed property or 23k for a 2 bed before you add on the universal credit element that is not housing.

It's not quite as much as that as far as I'm aware.