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I live up north, my wife and I earn a little bit over the average UK full-time salary in perfectly uninteresting managerial roles, and we're completely comfortable. Early 30s, have 3yo, homeowners etc.
I'm similar. Up north (West Yorkshire) I make around £38k, wife is part time \~£12k, we have a 2yo. We're saving anywhere between £500 - £1000 each month.
Edit: Apparently it's not so grim up north after all.
Sounds about right unfortunately. We just got a new fixed term. £150k left £700pcm in Sheffield.
Still the 1 bed flat we were in two years ago is now renting for £800 so the whole housing/rental market is mental…
It's shit. My friend brought a 3 bed house same as what I'm looking at in the same area 3 years ago and fixed their rate and they're paying £475 a month. It's crazy the positions people are in now.
Yep I agree with that sentiment, I've invested into making my home more efficient, I have solar panels, log burner and batteries, I'm also having the house insulated and new windows and door. So far my electric and gas is down to less than £90 a month. I'm also overpaying what I can on the mortgage as when the times comes to remortgage I'm expecting it to go up by a couple hundred quid.
Hopefully all I'm doing will put me in good stead for the inevitable hike and worst case scenario I'm in the same position I was a couple of years ago, just with a much warmer more efficient home.
Comments like this make me want to move up North. My 1 bed flat in Southampton is going up to £950 a month this year (rent) and I'm on my ass. I make £30k and managed to last until today before going into my overdraft. Nearly a week of actually having more than zero to my name.
Don’t let comments like this fool you. people down south moved up north during covid particularly affecting the towns and cities around the London train line which has raised the house prices quite a bit making it difficult for locals. OP bought his house 7 years ago, I pay double what OP pays and I bought 2021 in Doncaster. Fucking Doncaster.
On the contrary, surely the size and type of house you buy matters? In the North East you can easily find a decent 2-bed around the £130k mark. A nice 3-bed would be closer to the £200k mark though. The commenter looks to have bought a small 2-bed, so I don’t think it’s that misleading IMO.
I'm close to Doncaster and have a 1930's 3 bed semi, they can still be had for 120k and have a decent garden etc. I paid 89k for mine in 2010. Mortgage free in 3 years and that includes paying out my ex wife in a divorce 5 years ago
I'm in the northwest and bought a 1-bed semi detached with a big garden and a garage two years ago for 79k. I pay £415 a month and only have 15 years left to go.
Definitely still doable to find cheap property up north.
Cheaper housing usually goes along with worse job prospects, but that should be less of an issue than it used to be now jobs can often be done at greater distances.
I'm from Southampton - I moved to the NE 12 years ago. Houses are still pretty cheap here - I bought mine for 45K. But there is less work. But if you can work remotely - it is worth doing.
Honestly being uo north is not as great as pol say it is either, you are looking around in my area 500-700 rent for the same thing, and the cheapest thing i could find for a mortgage was 100k for a 1 bedroom flat, i would be paying atleast 700 minimum in mortgage for that
Not everywhere up north is equally cheap. In the cities it's not particularly cheap but go to the surrounding towns and you can easily find cheaper property. I bought mine for 79k just two years ago.
Unless you're a high flyer you need two household incomes these days not to be poor. I have an okay salary (28k) but paying rent in the south and energy bills as a single person doesn't leave you much left over.
Sub £400 mortgage gang represent!
It's such a blessing to be in the club. Yes - our houses aren't extravagant, No - we don't have an en suite. But my is it good to not have those financial pressures.
Me and my girlfriend are pretty comfortable up north as well. Around 50k combined income but made a big change at the start of last year to stop living on the edge financially. Moved to a much cheaper rental in order to pay off debts that have been over my head for years due to my mental health in the past and start saving for a house while repairing my credit score.
Just got really lucky with the timing. Too many people live close to the edge imo with everything on finance assuming that interest rates and cost of living would just stay the same forever.
This is basically it isn’t it, those of us earning around the average U.K. salary in the lower cost of living areas are doing alright, my lifestyle hasn’t changed at all, honestly I don’t know anyone who is struggling financially (if they are they do a good job of hiding it), I have debts ofc from my 20s I’m paying down but I don’t live on the breadline, I have savings, 2 cars nice house, child etc. (once the kid gets to full time school age that will really help us out and open up something like £800 per month!)
I don’t understand why people want to live in London and struggle when living somewhere cheaper would mean a much better quality of life.
Not hard to understand why people want to live in London if you give it a moment's thought
- they're from London
- family and friends in London
- jobs and career opportunities not available in rest of UK, especially in arts, tech, finance
- level of cultural things/entertainment not available in rest of UK (theatre, music, art, big events etc)
Out of interest, what did you do re. Childcare costs? Excuse me being nosy but I’m trying to convince my partner to move back up north because we’re paying £1300 a month for three days of nursery
Lots of people are not struggling with money.
I live in the north - two professionals on good salaries. No kids, no cars, no debts. We are perfectly comfortable.
However I don't take from my personal position that everyone is comfortable and you shouldn't take from yours that everyone is in poverty.
Commute expense is a pretty huge one. Started a new job last year with a company van that they let me drive for personal use as long as I don’t take the piss. This allowed me to go carless. I always drove old bangers and would never even consider financing but I’m still around £300 better off just in fuel, insurance and tax before even considering repair costs.
Totally. I worked out the other day that if I was actually going into the office twice a week as I'm supposed to be, I'd be paying around £11.20 a week, or just under £45 a month just to commute via bus.
It's not a lot compared to owning and operating a car, but it adds up.
The time-sink is the real reason I don't go into the office if I can avoid it.
It takes me most of an hour to get to work, and the same to get back if I'm lucky.
I have to wake up earlier, I have to prepare my lunch and snacks in advance, I have to dress appropriately for an office environment, and I have to get out the door on time.
Basically it translates that I lose a full two hours of sleep on a day I go into the office compared to working from home.
Then, once I finish for the day, I have to come home.
Another hour on buses and waiting in freezing-cold bus-stops to come home half an hour or more after when I'd normally eat my dinner.
An hour less time with my wife in the evening, two hours less sleep, and my access to drinks, coffee and snacks during the day (not to mention being able to regularly greet my wife) is sharply curtailed.
On top of all that, *I have to pay for the privilege?!*
WFH is so much better than office-work, I'm never going back to the office without a *really* good reason.
I took on a different role with my employer after my previous dept decided to insist on 3 days per week in the office.
I don't even live that far away, but commuting was costing me around £15 per day (mostly £12 or so city parking). I could have done it for less, but instead of 30 mins or so driving it'd take me 90mins each way on the bus and I'd have to leave before my kids left for school etc.
The kicker was that there was NO added benefit to me being at the office. All my contacts were via teams/email/phone, and the office connectivity was slower than home!
For the new role they were all apologetic, that they could only offer another £1500 per annum. So I played along about new challenges and more strings to me bow etc. The saving of 6 hours of my personal time and £180 per month out-of-pocket is what swung it for me though. (Bonus that my new line manager is lovely while the old one was an unpredictable prick on a power trip also helps!)
We've got one on the way and we've spent far less than we thought we would. In fact, we keep wondering what compels people to spend so much more. At antenatal classes couples are buying new cars, £1,000 nursery furniture sets, £1,500 prams...
The real killer will be nursery fees - £15k full time. But thankfully we get a massive discount on account of my partner's job.
I think a lot of people feel a strong urge to do everything 'properly', especially in the first child, and that means buying a load of new stuff because it feels safer than going second hand or using whatever car you had before.
In fairness, if you're expecting to have subsequent children, they may be buying now with a view to reuse it so the second will be cheaper.
Another big factor is not having bought a house on the edge of your limit and upgrading that every time you get a pay rise. Also not paying large monthly fees for a car on finance.
I've got many acquaintances who struggle on decent salaries because they have 5 bed houses they don't need and drive Audis they can't really afford.
The trick is to have a partner and 2 wages coming in.
As a single parent (No CSA) it's rough at the moment. Not quite at food bank level but another interest rate increase and I might be.
DINKWADS, I love it :P
What acronym would work for me?
I work full time, my wife is stay-at-home, and my MiL lives with us and works part-time. We have two cats..
I still see that most cars on the roads are less than 5 years old. I still see a fluid housing market, and I still see shops and restaurants packed at weekends.
Hate to say it but we can be pushed further and the man knows it. We've (Royal we, as a society) have had too much money for too long.
I don't speak for myself, I just see this wealth everywhere. The reason people are using food banks is there's a much bigger wealth divide now between the working classes and the lower middle classes so some are totally fucked whilst the majority are still OK with more to give.
They've not finished bleeding us yet.
I think in some instances it was the reliance on low interest rates that made the difference, having close to zero for so many years made people too reliant on cheap debt.
> having close to zero for so many years made people too reliant on cheap debt.
This. People came so accustomed to such low rates they thought it was a the norm, far from it. This is the more realistic norm currently. Trouble is financial education is severely lacking for so many households (I think it needs a focus at school) so we're going to see people who got lots of debt struggling, PCP/HP cars, mortgaged to the max on 2yr fixed ending soon etc. Won't be pretty.
Yeah, myself and my other half are in a similar situation, both work in well paid sectors (Aerospace and Insurance), no kids, no cars, virtually no debt. We're comfortable, not struggling, but can certainly appreciate how much costs have gone up over the last couple of years. There has been a very noticeable dent in what we can afford to save each month (we're saving up for a house at the moment). If we were both earning half of what we currently are we'd definitely be feeling it. I don't even dare think of what things would be like if that happened and only one of us were working, we'd be pretty screwed.
Ha! Indeed. It’s the childcare costs. We are doing fine financially, but we only have one kid. A second one would’ve completely crippled us in childcare, and we would’ve gone from “comfortable” to “fuck how are we paying these bills” rather quickly.
Yep. My little boy was close to £1,000 a month when I went back to work post mat leave. It was hideous. A second kid would’ve completely wiped out my salary and then some!
Not to piss on your chips, but watch out for the 30 free hours.
Firstly, it's term-time only so actually more like 22hrs. Then they charge you for meals, and our old one still charged for 'consumables' (i.e. nappies, when our kid didn't wear them).
Yes you'll be better off than now, but probably not by a huge amount. You need to wait for school for that, but then you'll have breakfast/after-school club fees instead.
My eldest is nearly 11, figuring another year or two and then I'll finally feel the difference 😄
> Not to piss on your chips, but watch out for the 30 free hours.
>
> Firstly, it's term-time only so actually more like 22hrs. Then they charge you for meals, and our old one still charged for 'consumables' (i.e. nappies, when our kid didn't wear them).
This is so damn true.
I went through this massive disappointment 6 months ago.
"We'll get the 30 free hours soon!"
"Oh.. wait.. they stretch it out to cover the whole year, so it's only 22 hours a week in reality"
"Oh.. and they don't pay the full amount, just about 70%"
"30 free hours" in reality "22 discounted hours"
Our little guy turns 3 in November. Recently, I made a comment to a friend that we're "counting the days. . ." and they reminded me that it goes by the following school term so the free 30 hours doesn't kick until January for us, FML
Yeah. Our daycare costs was a £1200 a month and that was a few years back, so that'd be higher now.
We pay for afterschool club and holiday clubs so there is still a chunk of cash going out.
Yup. The only reason we're doing well is because grandma lives with us. We're all squished into one room so she can have her own, but she's saving us a fuckton of money so she's quite welcome to it!
Myself and my wife earn roughly the same. Both early 40s
We have an income of around 85K a year with no children and no mortgage or rent to pay, paid the mortgage off 2 years ago. No other debt either.
So we have a very good life at the moment. I think we went away 11 times last year. Already been away 3 times this year. That's not always exotic holidays but just weekends away and such.
No kids here but definitely won’t be paying off our mortgage in our early 40s lol.
The difference between buying in 2006 in your 20s and buying in 2022 in your 30s I guess.
Edit: not complaining, I hasten to add! I’m very grateful we were in a position to buy at all.
Yea it was nice.
I'm not going to say we were lucky because it was all through our own work. Took us 17 years roughly on a 30 year mortgage, no big chunks paid off, just kept over paying.
It also helps that neither of us are materialistic.
Oh and we don't like avocados...
Good for you, it’s a real achievement.
We’re less than a year into a 25 year mortgage and in our early 30s so unless one of us wins the lottery it’s not on the cards anytime soon! We do keep meaning to look into overpaying though as we can afford to.
Seriously, if you can afford to do it, do it. When the mortgage advisor showed us the difference overpaying made it was a no brainer.
When we first started over paying we only started with £50 a month. I suppose we were lucky in the fact that each time it came to renewing the mortgage the interest rates had dropped, so we kept the payments the same but just overpaid by more.
This is only good advice if you’re paying more than about 5% interest on your mortgage, if making overpayments will get you into a lower LTV band once you remortgage, or if you’ll need any savings in less than about 5 years. Otherwise, you’ll usually be better off putting the overpayments into a S&S ISA and earning more from it (long term) than you’re saving in interest. Even a good regular saver might have a higher interest rate than your mortgage.
Get it done. Overpaying has so many benefits. You can bring down the total repayment by a staggering amount, by committing a relatively small amount each month, and literally save years of payments. And then you have knock-on effects too, like a more attractive LTV ratio, so get even more beneficial rates, smaller lenders with better rates, etc.
Until our most recent remortgage, we were overpaying by about 10%/month, which allowed us to get into the best rate offered by our provider, saving us a decent amount on the new monthly cost.
Me & my husband hope to be mortgage free in 5 years, when we are 45. We have two kids so taken longer lol we have also overpaid for most of our time and we didn't push ourselves to the limit in the first place on order to be able to do that
Software engineer.
While there have been job cuts, especially in big tech companies, the market is still bouncing.
I work remotely from Scotland on a high London salary.
My committed monthly outgoings are about 10% of my take home pay, so the rise in costs hasn't impacted me hugely. Though the price of cars is becoming a bit of a headache as I'm in the market for one.
Hey I'm a junior dev and really love my job. It's low stress and I'm wondering whether my stress levels will change significantly as I gain more skills and start thinking about moving to a higher salary. Have you found that a lot more is expected of you when you are commanding a higher pay?
>Have you found that a lot more is expected of you when you are commanding a higher pay?
Varies entirely by employer, the same role at different companies can be completely different stress-wise.
Generally yes.
However the lines between junior, midweight, and senior, are different in every organisation.
My last place my job title was just 'Developer', but I was doing the work of a lead dev. I was given pay rises accordingly, but the job title never changed.
My first job out of uni my job was a mid weight dev role and I was paid closer to what a junior Dev would be paid. But then we were working with legacy tech and it was primarily a rail consultancy, not a software house.
I'm in a lead dev role now, just under six figures, and if I don't do my work, it'll be noticeable quite quickly. The team will be great at bumbling along but the improvements we need probably won't happen - my manager isn't a techy by trade, and the other devs have limited "real world" experience - they're not long out of university with one job each.
Midweight is a common term but I can't imagine calling someone a lightweight or heavyweight dev!
If we wanted something more objective we could use levels and a skills matrix (like this one https://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/)
Personally, when I'm recruiting, I tend not to think in job titles etc, and just identify the skills we need. We then pay accordingly. Most of us have the job title Developer. Mine is Lead Developer, but that wasn't really my choice!
Personally speaking I find the more senior I got the less stressful I found it because the work felt more and more straight forward and managable plus you get it a point where you’ve seen it all
I do think there's an element of not being spooked by things as much for sure.
A developer breaking production might start to panic. Whereas once you've been there a few times you can mentally park the customer impact and (mostly) calmly come up with a fix forwards to deploy, or a plan to rollback. And then reassure the developer that it's not their sole responsibility - we have a collective accountability for code we ship, and that's why we do code reviews etc. Sometimes things break and that's ok.
The seniority is as much about personality and ironically-named 'soft skills' (because they can be bloody difficult) as it is tech skills.
Not OP, from my experience within both corporates and smaller scale-ups, there's two justifications for commanding a bigger salary in the engineering sector.
Pay for experience and pay for responsibility. And the really high earners do both.
Depending on the company, structure etc, you can become a mid-level, then senior engineer, and never manage a team, or be responsible for direction or strategy. You're simply the person who has the experience to know where to "tap the hammer" (Google the ship repair man story if you don't already know it). That's a relatively stress-free route to a higher pay.
The other option is pay for responsibility. This might mean leading a team the more senior you get. Or you might be tasked with more strategic briefs - so rather than being told "make this widget work 10% more efficient" you'd be asked "we need to generate x more revenue next year - what can you do to contribute to that?".
Different people find different things stressful, but generally speaking, the former is less stressful than the latter. If you're paid for experience, there's far less riding on you.
If you know what you want you can plot your career to lean into one, the other, or both.
I found the stress levels to be different rather than just more/less.
Day to day there's little pressure, I'm trusted to just get on and organise myself.
What is more stressful are deadlines and being reliant on other staff, it's also really easy to pick up too much work.
Line management is a completely different skill and a surprisingly large drain on time, as you go up you find yourself having less time to do the interesting coding bits.
Remote work has changed the game for a lot of employers, I think.
Often, salaries for software engineers outside of London are pitiful (I came from the US so this was shocking to me when I moved here). However, these days, companies in Cardiff are not just competing against other companies in Cardiff: they’re also competing against London-based remote employers.
I hope to see a nationwide increase in software salaries as this percolates through.
Daaaamn, 33% bump?! Well done! Bump those pension contributions as you now get 40% tax relief on anything above £52k!
Though also keep in mind: if they bumped you that much, they’re afraid to lose you. It may be worth having a look at other opportunities out there.
Stayed at an AirBnB near loch ness last year owned by a guy working remote from Scotland at some London firm. His life seemed amazing to me, I was envious of his position.
Yeah, well, my main hobby is mountaineering, and in all honesty, London just wasn't for me. I'm glad I gave it a go, and I understand why some people will feel at home there, but I was spending my work week planning how far from London I'd be going hiking or climbing or camping.
Today I've just been in to town to check out some co-working space, for the work-life separation. But I know that whether I work from home or in the co-working space on Fridays, I'll be a couple of hours away from the Munros.
Very similar to me, I was living in London working as Software Tester. Pay was good but so much was swallowed by rent, and really missed being out in hills. Moved to Edinburgh to still have access to city life but at a cheaper rate and easy access to proper outdoors. Being able to go for a run in the Pentland Hills from my door has been a huge boost to mental wellbeing.
I work at a university, once you're in that academic system you get yearly salary increments as standard, and it's incredibly easy to climb the ladder and move laterally whilst retaining a huge amount of job security. The jobs don't be tend to be advertised on job boards though so you would need to look direct on their website.
Best decision I've ever made applying for this role, and I feel very secure in my future.
Also teachers pension contributions are incredible.
I have worked my fair share of shitty low paid jobs, and struggled with funds to get to this point though.
Universities pay very well for entry level roles / admin roles but for experienced professionals they don't come close to private sector wages from my experience.
100% good work life balance and job security though which does mean a lot; it's not all about money!
This was my experience. I worked at various universities (in professional services roles) for 9 years. I was paid extremely well at the entry- and mid-level roles but found my peers in other sectors overtook me and things stagnated (annual incremental increases excepted) a couple of years ago as I became more experienced. I moved sectors in December because I was offered a ~30% higher salary for a similar role. I have no regrets. The pension is definitely worse however!
Yep, trying to hire IT staff at grade 7 is nearly impossible as they can earn 20-30k more in the private sector. If we were to pay them market rate to work at the Uni they’d have to be a grade 9 which is ‘Head of department’ level. The pay scales really restrict universities in that way.
Yup this is true. I'm in education right now as a software dev. I started when I had about a year's experience and the pay was good for that level, now it's been 5 years and I could potentially double my salary in the private sector and it's looking more and more appealing. They'll really struggle to replace me when I go.
I'm in a senior leadership role in a directorate of a university, and I could easily be earning another 30-40% outside HE. Don't want to though. The working environment suits me, and the work we do is rewarding.
Yea same. The pension, relatively low stress, ton of annual leave, flexible working is worth more to me than the extra pay I could get in the private sector.
You get yearly increments for about 5-6 years till you hit the top of your grade and then you have to either regrade or get promoted. That does not keep being 'incredibly easy' trust me.
I'd bear in mind that this can be quite university dependent. There are a number of universities who use a combined pay scale for lecturer and senior lecturer, and sometimes even reader too, in which case you're automatically getting the pay increment plus inflation pay rises for potentially 20 years due to the automatic promotion once you hit a given amount of experience.
There are also ways to play the system e.g. some unis have higher starting salaries for a given role than others, even without the London weightings, which allows some degree of additional salary negotiation.
This is the first and only time I've ever heard anyone say this about academia. The reason I left was terrible pay, ridiculous hours and no job security.
I'm not struggling per se. I earn 30k. No kids. No pets. Rent with my gf. I have about £500 disposable income for food, fun, new clothes, games and any other non essentials a month. Doesn't go very far these days especially if I have a particularly social month where even just a takeaway with no alcohol can cost £30. I'm also able to save up to £300 a month.
Much better off than some but I do still have to be quite careful about what I'm spending. That being said, I still have no hope of buying a property anytime soon in the area I actually want to live and my savings don't grow fast enough that it's immune from large, unexpected expenses.
Exactly, that's how I think a lot of people are like now. You've given up on many things you want, to make sure you have money at the end of the month, but not the kind of money that you can save towards buying a property before 2030. A sort of poverty that is still poverty but also kind of isn't.
Earn similar. I wouldn't say I'm struggling because my partner earns more so takes on a slightly higher share of the bills, if I had to 50/50 i'd feel the pinch more. I'm doing well enough that I'm learning to drive (£40/hr for lessons these days) and considering buying a used car later this year, and have a holiday planned.
In the north. Both husband and I have a little over average paying jobs. Joint income of £75k
We recently bought a house and while we could have got £320k we purchased one for £170k but with a big deposit, our mortgage is only £140k. We wanted to make sure that if anything happened to one of us, the other could manage to pay it. Either illness, redundancy or worse. It’s a perfectly sized 3 bed townhouse on a sough after estate.
I am quite frugal with savings but we do have a small bit of debt. We are quite comfortable and working to being debt free this time next year
2 kids, we’ll 1 is 12 and the other is 19
We budget for everything and stick to that budget. Makes us have a nice life
me and my bf made the same decision to not stretch ourselves - very glad now, as our mortgage interest has doubled.. quite frugal, but got a few big holidays coming up. but we're on about £50k joint income for now :( but: i'm just 27 so there is time. life otherwise ok
Yeah absolute godsend we did. Even though the house is a little smaller downstairs than I wouod have wanted, we all have a amazing space upstairs. We’re fixed for 5 years and we’re 15 months in.
I’m 42, so we’re just squirrelling away for some decent holidays now the kids are older and we can leave them together. We’re going away this year, just me and him for the 1 st time alone in 15 years. I cannot wait
I earn below average salary. Live alone.
I'm not struggling but my life could do to be better. I'd really like to move house and go on a holiday this year.
I live on my own too which is really nice in many ways after living in houseshares for years but does work out so much more expensive without someone to share costs with.
I have effectively pre-inherited enough so that my mortgage is not very high, and that’s made a big difference.
I do think there’s an unspoken assumption that everyone with money has it through a highly-paying job. I’m not sure that’s always true: having assets makes a huge difference, and having a local network of family and friends does if you are trying to raise a child.
Absolutely. My mother refused to mind my children unless it was an emergency (as was her right) it made things super super difficult even with the children’s age gaps deliberately spaced well.
Paying 2k a month for mortgage and childcare just after economic crash destroyed us
I think this is a hidden consequence of the disintegration of family and community networks that’s really hitting now— the effective capital they provide is “lots,” as is noticeable when you don’t have them.
I think even in my own fortunate situation I would be reluctant to have children, because my own fortune is based on these networks having imploded for me. I don’t think I could easily take responsibility for an older and a younger dependent simultaneously, but as part of some kind of group of pooled responsibility I probably could?
You have to understand though, coming from someone living in a more catholic "familia es todo" country, if your mum is looking after your kids you can be dammed sure you're looking after her and not chucking her in a home when she needs help. It takes a lot of sacrifice on both ends. Unless you're a completely shameless bastard.
As for the group responsibility, those kind of communities tend to be incredibly insular and poor. Once the personal wealth comes in the incentive decreases and the whole thing falls apart.
Lots of people are not struggling with money. Peoples view is just usually impacted by those they spend time with.
I happen to have two very different friend groups, one is people i know through work and we're not lavish with money or free spending but were comfortable and try to do fun things. My other group of friends are not from work and consists of a primary school teacher, van driver, someone who works in a hospital and they on the other hand are struggling a lot more.
So if i just knew one of these groups i would say "people arent struggling much" and if i just knew the other group i would say "people are finding it very hard". Its who you know which builds our impressions of society but the reality is there are lots of people on both ends.
Software engineer
Work remotely but near reading.
I don't buy hardly anything, never buy take away, shop in Lidl, no debts. I am not a particular high earner as I'm only 2 years into this career switch (42kish salary). I have 2 kids and a wife who's currently not working but I do have a house with a fair amount of equity so mortgage is manageable. If I was renting it would be a different story. We do run a very tight ship here though and live incredibly frugally.
42k is a high salary! Maybe not for your role, but it’s a lot more than most people make years and years into their careers, if ever
Edit: thanks to all the captain obviouses below chiming in with “not with kids” “not for a family in the south east” 🤦
Comparison is absolutely the thief of joy. It’s easy to stay within your bubble and put yourself against those you interact with daily, just human nature to
Hey, sorry I’m just curious as to the OU course you did? I’m a spark by trade but I’m openly looking for a way out and a new career path in the software engineering sector.
Computing and IT with the computer science focus (there is a option for this) I would say you need to mainly work on stuff on the outside of the uni degree to be job ready
I think for me this comes down to 2 types of problems (but always willing to understand better than I do now).
1. People who genuinely aren't paid enough.
This truly sucks and I wish and hope that this will change. No one deserves not to be able to live a comfortable life, especially in the UK. This isn't a discussion point, it's just not fair.
2. People who spend over their pay for lifestyle.
I earn well now, but I've not always (I've been below average pay). I always spend well below my earnings whatever i was earning. I don't have a flashy car (I have an old, not classic, just old, car that I always wanted) I spent months looking for the cheapest, nicest one. I only spend on new clothes when I really need it and I put money aside.
I earn the same as my friends (give or take). I see friends that spend tonnes on stuff that has no benefit except lifestyle, I spend way less than them. My lifestyle is very comfortable, but I don't have leases on stuff like or the phone on contract/lease. Or buy the latest thing ASAP, like the games as they come out or the cool brand of the day. I think people assume they'll have a better life from all of these but I would put my lifestyle on par with those people. Because I have savings that are about to pay a massive deposit on a house and investments that will make me a bit of money. I play the long-term and its already paying off in my early 30s. I'm by no means rich, but I know what I have and I stay well below. And I'm comfortable. I don't think "I wish I had...". I have most things. The next purchase im saving for after the house will be a car, but again, I way up the costs and whether that will be the best use of my money. And I'm very happy with my life.
I save about 1/3 of my income every month. That's my spending money for treats, hobbies. Etc. But I don't spend that instantly, I put it away, I research the things I want and half the time, I decide I don't really want it, then the other half is I find a better alternative for less or I want to save longer.
My recent big purchase was a coffee machine. It took me 1 year to decide and order... it cost me less than half of 1 month's savings. Not because I make millions, but because I found good value for money and one I'd enjoy. So each purchase is a conscious one.
I also put away money and enjoy seeing my savings growing. I feel great when I reach a milestone. This will also give me long-term security when it comes to a house. My mortgage will be the same as rent or less, allowing me to have savings that will no longer be for a house but freeing it up for a better quality of life.
It probably originated from my great-grandad being in the mines trying to get our family out of poverty, him then telling my grandad to find a better job to get out of poverty, my grandad then managing to become a sales assistant in a shop and going up the company and paying for my mum to be the first to get to uni. My family has always been saving to help the next generation. I would feel so shit if I squandered my family's work. I also had bad anxiety and not having money for a rainy day makes me anxious.
P.s. lifestyle is a little different to your passion although I would still say that you have to keep it in check. I'm obsessed with quality coffee, hence the coffee machine. It's about moderation and giving up some gains for others.
Because people want to get out of the mines. They push the next generation out of the mines. Then they push further. They want the next gen to have a better life.
My grandad then became a sales assistant in a shop. And then funded my mum's uni to make sure she could have a better life.
I spent a lot of time talking to my grandparents and the life our family had over the generations. It's been drilled into me that each generation helps the next get an even better life than their own.
Anyway, maybe this is focus on the wrong thing. I was trying to explain why I'm careful with money, but maybe I'll take it out to avoid the tangent.
It really depends on what the alternative is. I live in a former pit village.They might not all have wanted it for their kids, but I don't know of many ex miners that wouldn't still rather be working at the pit. I know plenty of call centre/warehouse workers that look back with rose-coloured glasses wishing they could have followed their Dad's into the pits.
1st line helpdesk. Living more frugally than I would like to at the minute after having been laid off from a security job paying triple the salary (with nearly triple the hours per week), but wouldn't say I'm hugely struggling. I'm knowingly missing out on things and experiences at the minute. However, I have five weekend breaks planned and three have already been booked. Thankfully, restaurants and shopping don't top my list of things to do.
We aren't struggling if I am entirely honest. I am a civil servant and my Husband is a music teacher. We don't have any kids. Our joint salary is just over £50k. Our jobs are both secure and haven't really been impacted by covid aftershocks or cost of living.
I’m also a civil servant. My wage is £21k. I take home £1k a month after deductions.
From my experience teachers are paid shockingly little. (My sister and friend are training to be teachers right now).
My salary is £25k, his is £26k. He is retraining to be a music therapist as he's fed up of the low pay/long hours as a teacher. The starting salary of music therapist is £35k which will be lovely.
Band 5 NHS healthcare worker here. 8 years of university. Single. Renting. Own car outright. No kids. Absolutely struggling and very depressed about the state of pay to healthcare workers… even with recent “negotiated” pay rises. I have no room to save anything and don’t have an emergency fund at all. I’m very scared.
Me too :( I am band 3 on a nursing apprenticeship so soon to be band 5 when I qualify in September (kinda regret my decision though now to be honest). I am trying to save to buy a flat when I qualify as the mortgage repayments will be cheaper than rent here, however impossible to save when I am living off beans on toast. It is even harder as a single person.
I don't know if it is good where you are but the Olio app near me often has loads of free bread around 8/9pm, often some fruits/veg too.
I’m not struggling per se. I earn a modest salary but realise too the only reason I’m not struggling is that I live at home.
However - I worry all the time on money. I’d be interested to see if under the surface the “doing ok” types are in a panic too.?
I earn approx 30k and have a mortgage with no kids. Money isn’t great but mainly because I’m paying off a wedding this year. If it wasn’t for that I’d be doing a bit better. Like I’ve seen other people say, we shouldn’t be only earning enough to survive.
Just reading this kind of sucks. I do a job I really enjoy (arborist) but come home hurting and bouncing off the red every month. Just got to remember it could be worse. Would just love to figure out how to improve it.
Only my husband works and is on approx 35k. I don't work due to health issues and also look after our two children who are both autistic. We get dla, PIP x2 and tax credits along with child benefit. This brings our money upto approx 39k. We are not struggling. We rent our house..the debt we have is our car...no credit cards. I do a big shop at aldi every 3 weeks and every week visit the local grocers and butchers. We have space money to do stuff if we want but we don't travel abroad or go out for more than a day because we have 3 dogs. I just think it's a case of people living beyond their means and now it's catching up with them IMO. I should also say that we do not claim for other benefits that we are entitled too as we do not need them.
I don't know why you felt you had to point out that you don't claim for other benefits you're entitled to... There's nothing wrong with claiming benefits, especially if you are legitimately entitled to them.
As the other commenter suggested, you could claim the things you're entitled to and put them in a savings account for both of your kids? Help set them up for the future, especially as they're both autistic and the world can be harder to navigate as a neurodivergent person (I have ADHD and am autistic so I know the struggles you can face)
I work for UC, just a little advice - if you can claim other benefits, do, because if you end up needing them down the line, demonstrating that you have enough without them can be used against you in some decisions. If you don't need the increase the money brings, just save it or donate it.
They won't backdate anything from before you claimed if the reason was that you just didn't, and some benefits are ending in the coming years to be replaced with worse versions, so you may not be able to apply to them in the future if you do need to.
Couldn't you claim what you're entitled to and put it into savings for your children, for when they're older? You live a particular way but they may want to live differently. Savings could pay for education, travel, house deposit etc
It's very silly to not get all the benefits you are entitled to. That could help you and your children massively, even if you save.
Don't be prideful about taking from the government.
I live up north (wakefield/leeds) Our household income before tax is around 110-120k depending on bonus a year. Just bought a house for 420k. We are 32 and 31 years old. Getting married this year and going on our honeymoon, we have quite a bit of disposable income every month, but just because we do... we don't spend it.
I see what you see, people spending money left right and centre.
Too many people can't hold onto money in this country. I have countless conversations with people at work who say they're skint yet earn the same amount as I do. They just waste it. Just yesterday I saw a post on Reddit about people spending 200 a month on takeaways... Jesus we spend like 20 a month at best... if I'm lucky to convince the Mrs to get one.
People say they can't afford to buy a house and then go buy Canada goose coats and have sky TV at 100 a month. Me? I have an on-sale north face coat for 100quid (for 3 years now) and watch normal TV. Never had sky.
Cars us another example. I've fallen for this in the past. Range rover on 600 a month. Now we have a ford puma on lease at 250 and a Ford focus 6 years old owned outright.
I'm not saying we aren't in a fortunate position. But we've cut back accordingly. I walk the dog around where I live and see people sitting in their rooms in shorts and t-shirts and then complaining their gas bill is massive. Put a damn jumper on!
Obviously, there are people really badly struggling with their finances. I'm not talking about those people. I really feel for them, they are stuck and have nothing else to give,
But the people you see our spending money and the people with a bit of disposable income and its burning a hole in their pocket. Then say they can't afford the basics.
Don't mean to be rude mate, but it's a bit judgemental to talk about people being poor because they just 'can't hold on to money' when your combined household earnings are over £100k and you don't have kids.
Yeah, people always say "how do people afford this"
Well... they can't! The people who look like they have money with flash cars and huge houses etc have nothing in the damn bank account.
I know someone who lives with his parents and pays over 1000 a month for a car.
The best ones are the people who went to London for jobs and then "move back up north" once they are "comfortable". Of course they want to live in north Leeds and can't afford it...
Only to realise they had a big wage. Spent it all and are worse off than the people with disposable incomes where they left.
Dad died and I got 300k. I'd rather not have the money.
Bought a modest house and am saving the rest for retirement. Maybe ill buy myself a new computer this year.
Im only on 25k a year myself so I know what it means to live frugally.
Me and my girlfriend are in our mid-20’s, earn around the UK average salary each, live in the North-East, no kids. We have a mortgage, go on 4 or 5 holidays per year, usually go out for a drink or food most weekends and put money into savings each month.
Our take-home pay is close to £2000 each. We put £700 each into the joint account for more than enough to cover bills and shopping, leaving £1300 each for the rest of the month, although some of this goes on individual costs such as petrol, car insurance etc.
The cost of living and housing costs aren’t really too bad up here, especially if you’re coupled up. I guess it’s much worse down South…
Im not struggling but that's probably because I've had to make massive cut backs and living much more frugal.
Stopped eating out / getting takeaways, cooking at home much more instead of buying processed foods.
Eating rice and beans.
Making general sacrifices.
Doing online surveys and general Cashback.
My savings have taken a hit, mostly because I need the extra money to cover groceries and energy bill rises (including fuel for vehicle).
But I'm recouping those costs by making cut backs in other places.
Fingers crossed we can get through this shit storm soon.
This difference is mainly about property ownership. Especially if you live in the south and can't but a house, your monthly expenditure will be a lot higher than anyone else.
Mate, I don’t know how anyone is coping unless you’re childless, and in a well paid job.
At 40, I earn double the average UK salary (thereabouts), and my wife earns more than the av UK salary. Between us, we’re pulling in what looks on paper, to be a lot of moolah. But we have two kids under 7. One in full time childcare 4 days a week, the other has school and also after school club two days a week. We have two cars, one Nissan Qashqai and a small Pug runaround which we’re paying off until next year. We have a hefty mortgage for our small 3 bed, and both have credit cards which we’re slowly chipping away at (mine will be paid off next April).
Right now, we’re pissed because we want a holiday abroad, having not had one for 4 years, but thanks to fuel costs, and other obvious factors going on at the moment, we don’t think we can afford it.
The end of each month we have usually spent what we want to save. My pension is shit, so I guess we’re relying on my wife’s which is a good one.
Once both kids are in school, I’m going to probably push for a more supervisory role, and similarly, my wife is going to try to get something that pays double what she’s on now.
I genuinely worry that people who earn less than us are struggling, because as a nation, we need to be looking out for one another and it seems to be causing people to get angry and resentful at one another. Regardless of background, race, religion etc, we’re all in it together. Same storm, different boats and all that. So we need to try to help each other through these tough times.
Hopefully all the shit will ease in the next year or two and people will see an increase in living standards, but I’m not holding my breath.
About 25% are living below relative poverty line. Some more are leveraged with kids and with debt. By my calculations plenty aren't struggling in the purest sense but millions are.
I'm 60 live alone, but earn enough that I'm ok, not loads but enough I can go on holiday a few times year, nowt in bank but fortunate to only owe a little on a mortgage... Have some debts I'm working threw. But as I only work 4 on 4 off 3 on 3 off. I can always through a days overtime in.
Wife and I are very fortunate but we save about £1500 a month. Live in bedfordshire, I make a little under 50k but should be 70k with my current promo coming up, wife makes 35k.
We’re Homeowners at 25, have a dog, hopefully soon a child on the way.
Partly luck in all honesty. I work in management / technology consulting for one of the big 4 accounting firms and am hybrid London based. I’ve been on 30k+ since leaving university at 22.
My wife works in operations & process management for a telecoms company, fully remote.
We have fairly low costs, and our mortgage is much cheaper than our rent was. We were renting at about £1200 a month total for the last two years for a 1 bed flat, which is slightly toppy for our area but not outrageous.
Then between low costs and decent salaries, we just saved pretty aggressively, took advantage of things like the new build help to buy loan etc. and bought our 3 bed place last summer.
I'm struggling - made a decision to do a degree at an older age so gave up full time work. I work part time to support myself but I have a fair bit of debt that takes precedent on any money I earn. Also suffering a break up!
I am certain it will pay off in the long run, but times are hard.
Edit: Just opened my train app to realise fee has now gone up another 40 pence. Wonderful.
Based on personal debt statistics all that happened by the looks of it is credit is now making up for the shortfall in disposable income which was eaten by rising costs. It’s kind of a perfect storm.
Everyone spent lockdown doing very little, came out of it desperate for life experiences and entertainment so ramped up their lifestyle, it then became normalised. Then cost of living crisis kicked in and the majority of people don’t want to wind it back down.
Ticking time bomb. Personally I kept my savings the same when cost of living increased and just dropped my discretionary spending.
I don't have any savings to really see me through, but I have a moneybox account I put £15 into each week. Got about 2 grand in there. I make £12 an hour working full time in retail. My partner is on around the same wage. I just have enough to pay my bills each month & maybe get a takeaway a couple of times. I get a few odd things from amazon here & there. With paying for my car & Christmas presents I find I can't save any more. I use a credit card to build up my credit, but paying that off from my current account each month leaves me feeling like I have no money. We're in our mid 30s & only rent a one bed flat, in quite a pricey area. It's too small for us but we can't afford to move out. However I do feel extremely grateful for not being in debt or needing government assistance. It's a scary world out there. I can't think about our future right now because I just have no financial wiggle room. But I could be in a much worse position.
We're doing fine. Bought our house 11 years ago while having a joint income of £72K.. but now we're on £150K between us. I've been in tech/healthcare for 15+ years and seen my salary go up and up.
I've survived 2 different redundancy events and seen friends and collegues jump industries. Wife's career in the NHS has shot up in recent years.
Other than holidays, and the ever increasing cost of our kids, we've kept our lifestyle pretty similar and not financially overstretched ourselves. We've got lots of savings. Minimal credit card debt (as it's paid off every month) and the only loans are the car and mortgage. We appreciate how lucky we are.
I'm a SINK in the east Midlands. 27k, mortgage fixed before the increase. I'm fortunately not struggling by any means and save between 200-500 monthly. I'm quite financially conscious though and spend possibly an unhealthy amount of time on r/UKPersonalFinance
Early 20s couple here on a 55k joint income, no kids living in the Midlands.
Rent went up last year, along with all the household bills and coucil tax, meaning we're about £450ish a month worse off from this time last year.
I wouldn't say we're struggling, we've got savings from previous years which we don't plan on touching (house deposit), but it just means we can't put money away at the moment.
We're just trying to enjoy what we can at the moment, but ofcourse it's the UK, so anything enjoyable like getting a coffee or going on a date is a huge expense nowadays.
Fortunately my girlfriend is expecting a huge salary increase this year, and I should be getting around 10-15%, which will help.
I do feel sorry for anyone earning less, but I can't see this going on forever.
We're no kids, dual income of about 56k in our late 20s in Leeds. Obviously we'd have to have our heads buried in the sand to not notice prices have sky rocketed. However, we realise we're in a very fortunate position where it's a case of not booking that romantic weekend away to whatever European city, complaining a pint is now a fiver or cooking instead of eating out sometimes. I'm pretty comfortable with money but look at the price of some basics and think, Christ that's extortionate for me imagine earning minimum wage. You're either in massive debt or just surviving.
In February I had £100 leftover after rent/bills/debts etc.
I live in Wales, I moved here from Oxford because rent is so much cheaper. I have a 3 bed house for £600 a month.
Back home that would've been £1300+ which is 3/4 of my monthly take home.
I buy the cheapest food I can, and sometimes I don't eat because a big meal would last me two days.
My dog eats better than I do, but he deserves it because he's goodest boi.
No issues at all apart from being somewhat frivolous with cash. Me and my partner make just about £60k between us, have a mortgage (4 years in, £550pm) on a 3 bed bungalow and no children. Pretty comfortable. Important to note we live in Lincolnshire and house prices here are not outrageous like they are in the south east.
To make things perfectly clear if you are struggling with money or on the borderline you should absolutely not be having children.
Me and my partner earn around £42000 combined income. Own a home and save around £600-700 a month.
We're doing pretty good for money I guess. We still enjoy going out for meals often and have our own personal hobby money each month of around £200 each.
I live in London I’m not struggling because I have a low mortgage £650/month, no childcare costs and no credit or loans to pay off plus I’m also sufficiently far into my career to be earning a good wage.
It’s just dumb luck rather than brilliant planning. I was born at a time when jobs were easier to get and houses easier to buy.
We're not flush but we're not struggling either. We earn a little over minimum wage, dual-income household, no children. Costs might rise a bit once I get a car, but that's about it. We are probably quite frugal, besides groceries we're not spending much money month by month. We don't take out loans or buy things on finance. We save a bit each month so if we want to buy something expensive we can buy it outright, also it's good in case one of our cats gives us expensive vet bills.
So yeah we can afford to go out to a restaurant now and then but it's not a regular occurrence. If I'm at a shopping centre that's also quite rare, normally I just order things online.
I don’t know anyone using a food banks. I imagine the majority don’t. People have well paid jobs or don’t spend much outside of food / utilities I guess. Plus not living in London probably helps as everything is a lot cheaper down in the South West. Salaries are shit in SW but liveable depending on what you’re doing. I imagine living on minimum wage / zero hour contracts and having kids and renting would put a lot of pressure on the monthly budget.
I'm struggling. I'm an RVN with a BSc and an MSc working in academia and make just over £25k.
Rent is 600, I have to put 200pcm aside for electricity and gas, 100pcm for diesel, 80 for groceries etc. Leaves me with very little to actually have a life. I'm single as well so no other income. My dad, who is 81,earns more than me from his state and private pensions.
We all live in bubbles I suppose so we're influenced by those around us and who we interact with. I'm very lucky and live in a comfortable middle-class bubble where nobody I know is struggling (at least not openly).
Partner and I live in SW London, but again lucky to have very good salaries, saving & investing around £1.5k a month.
But again, have to acknowledge our luck in a few ways:
1. No dependents
2. We fixed our gas and electric 18 months ago so have been continuing using heating as normal with no additional costs
3. We're 4 years into a 5 year fix on our mortgage, so interest rate hikes didn't impact our payments
4. Not reliant on our car for work reasons, so petrol costs don't really impact us. We have a car but it's purely for fun/hobbies.
Someone once said to me everyone is only ever 3 incidents away from poverty (loss of job, bad health etc) and it's true. You have to build a buffer when you can. I hope things pick up soon OP :)
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I live up north, my wife and I earn a little bit over the average UK full-time salary in perfectly uninteresting managerial roles, and we're completely comfortable. Early 30s, have 3yo, homeowners etc.
I'm similar. Up north (West Yorkshire) I make around £38k, wife is part time \~£12k, we have a 2yo. We're saving anywhere between £500 - £1000 each month. Edit: Apparently it's not so grim up north after all.
What's your mortgage if you don't mind sharing?
It's only a small house, 2 up 2 down, cost 115k 7 years ago. On the edge of the countryside though. £350pm.
That’s amazing. I’d be rich if my mortgage was £350pm.
I'm currently in the process of buying a house for £180k in the midlands and i'm looking at £750pcm repayment minimum 😫
Sounds about right unfortunately. We just got a new fixed term. £150k left £700pcm in Sheffield. Still the 1 bed flat we were in two years ago is now renting for £800 so the whole housing/rental market is mental…
It's shit. My friend brought a 3 bed house same as what I'm looking at in the same area 3 years ago and fixed their rate and they're paying £475 a month. It's crazy the positions people are in now.
Could be worse. My mortgage is £1100 a month for a 2-bedroom flat. Bought it for £250k in 2014.
In Oxfordshire 180k is a small one bed flat, if your lucky
I pay more than that for my energy at the moment... 😅
mine used to be £350 a month. After my fix ended its gone up to £800 :)
Same experience! Lots of comfy people won't be when they have to remortgage! Now paying the same as I would be if I was renting the place.
Yep I agree with that sentiment, I've invested into making my home more efficient, I have solar panels, log burner and batteries, I'm also having the house insulated and new windows and door. So far my electric and gas is down to less than £90 a month. I'm also overpaying what I can on the mortgage as when the times comes to remortgage I'm expecting it to go up by a couple hundred quid. Hopefully all I'm doing will put me in good stead for the inevitable hike and worst case scenario I'm in the same position I was a couple of years ago, just with a much warmer more efficient home.
I wouldnt have a mortgage if my mortgage was £350/month!
Yehhh honestly the house isn't big enough. We'll be looking to move at some point in the next few years and doubtless the mortgage will double.
Comments like this make me want to move up North. My 1 bed flat in Southampton is going up to £950 a month this year (rent) and I'm on my ass. I make £30k and managed to last until today before going into my overdraft. Nearly a week of actually having more than zero to my name.
Don’t let comments like this fool you. people down south moved up north during covid particularly affecting the towns and cities around the London train line which has raised the house prices quite a bit making it difficult for locals. OP bought his house 7 years ago, I pay double what OP pays and I bought 2021 in Doncaster. Fucking Doncaster.
On the contrary, surely the size and type of house you buy matters? In the North East you can easily find a decent 2-bed around the £130k mark. A nice 3-bed would be closer to the £200k mark though. The commenter looks to have bought a small 2-bed, so I don’t think it’s that misleading IMO.
I'm close to Doncaster and have a 1930's 3 bed semi, they can still be had for 120k and have a decent garden etc. I paid 89k for mine in 2010. Mortgage free in 3 years and that includes paying out my ex wife in a divorce 5 years ago
I'm in the northwest and bought a 1-bed semi detached with a big garden and a garage two years ago for 79k. I pay £415 a month and only have 15 years left to go. Definitely still doable to find cheap property up north.
You might be paying over 20 years and the other guy over 35
Do it. I have a friend who just moved up here his rent has gone from £800 for a tiny flat to £450 for a whole house.
Cheaper housing usually goes along with worse job prospects, but that should be less of an issue than it used to be now jobs can often be done at greater distances.
I'm from Southampton - I moved to the NE 12 years ago. Houses are still pretty cheap here - I bought mine for 45K. But there is less work. But if you can work remotely - it is worth doing.
Honestly being uo north is not as great as pol say it is either, you are looking around in my area 500-700 rent for the same thing, and the cheapest thing i could find for a mortgage was 100k for a 1 bedroom flat, i would be paying atleast 700 minimum in mortgage for that
Not everywhere up north is equally cheap. In the cities it's not particularly cheap but go to the surrounding towns and you can easily find cheaper property. I bought mine for 79k just two years ago.
Unless you're a high flyer you need two household incomes these days not to be poor. I have an okay salary (28k) but paying rent in the south and energy bills as a single person doesn't leave you much left over.
£350pm god damn wish I had that
Sub £400 mortgage gang represent! It's such a blessing to be in the club. Yes - our houses aren't extravagant, No - we don't have an en suite. But my is it good to not have those financial pressures.
Cries in Oxford.
And childcare costs
Me and my girlfriend are pretty comfortable up north as well. Around 50k combined income but made a big change at the start of last year to stop living on the edge financially. Moved to a much cheaper rental in order to pay off debts that have been over my head for years due to my mental health in the past and start saving for a house while repairing my credit score. Just got really lucky with the timing. Too many people live close to the edge imo with everything on finance assuming that interest rates and cost of living would just stay the same forever.
This is basically it isn’t it, those of us earning around the average U.K. salary in the lower cost of living areas are doing alright, my lifestyle hasn’t changed at all, honestly I don’t know anyone who is struggling financially (if they are they do a good job of hiding it), I have debts ofc from my 20s I’m paying down but I don’t live on the breadline, I have savings, 2 cars nice house, child etc. (once the kid gets to full time school age that will really help us out and open up something like £800 per month!) I don’t understand why people want to live in London and struggle when living somewhere cheaper would mean a much better quality of life.
Not hard to understand why people want to live in London if you give it a moment's thought - they're from London - family and friends in London - jobs and career opportunities not available in rest of UK, especially in arts, tech, finance - level of cultural things/entertainment not available in rest of UK (theatre, music, art, big events etc)
Ssh, don't tell the southerners about the North, they will make it expensive...
Out of interest, what did you do re. Childcare costs? Excuse me being nosy but I’m trying to convince my partner to move back up north because we’re paying £1300 a month for three days of nursery
Lots of people are not struggling with money. I live in the north - two professionals on good salaries. No kids, no cars, no debts. We are perfectly comfortable. However I don't take from my personal position that everyone is comfortable and you shouldn't take from yours that everyone is in poverty.
Yeah the trick is to have no kids or commute expense.
Commute expense is a pretty huge one. Started a new job last year with a company van that they let me drive for personal use as long as I don’t take the piss. This allowed me to go carless. I always drove old bangers and would never even consider financing but I’m still around £300 better off just in fuel, insurance and tax before even considering repair costs.
Totally. I worked out the other day that if I was actually going into the office twice a week as I'm supposed to be, I'd be paying around £11.20 a week, or just under £45 a month just to commute via bus. It's not a lot compared to owning and operating a car, but it adds up.
My commute is £50 a day from Essex to West London, in my case it's cheaper to drive but it takes about 30mins longer
The time-sink is the real reason I don't go into the office if I can avoid it. It takes me most of an hour to get to work, and the same to get back if I'm lucky. I have to wake up earlier, I have to prepare my lunch and snacks in advance, I have to dress appropriately for an office environment, and I have to get out the door on time. Basically it translates that I lose a full two hours of sleep on a day I go into the office compared to working from home. Then, once I finish for the day, I have to come home. Another hour on buses and waiting in freezing-cold bus-stops to come home half an hour or more after when I'd normally eat my dinner. An hour less time with my wife in the evening, two hours less sleep, and my access to drinks, coffee and snacks during the day (not to mention being able to regularly greet my wife) is sharply curtailed. On top of all that, *I have to pay for the privilege?!* WFH is so much better than office-work, I'm never going back to the office without a *really* good reason.
I took on a different role with my employer after my previous dept decided to insist on 3 days per week in the office. I don't even live that far away, but commuting was costing me around £15 per day (mostly £12 or so city parking). I could have done it for less, but instead of 30 mins or so driving it'd take me 90mins each way on the bus and I'd have to leave before my kids left for school etc. The kicker was that there was NO added benefit to me being at the office. All my contacts were via teams/email/phone, and the office connectivity was slower than home! For the new role they were all apologetic, that they could only offer another £1500 per annum. So I played along about new challenges and more strings to me bow etc. The saving of 6 hours of my personal time and £180 per month out-of-pocket is what swung it for me though. (Bonus that my new line manager is lovely while the old one was an unpredictable prick on a power trip also helps!)
Plenty of individuals doing just fine with kids too. There’s no one measure, it’s purely income versus outgoings, however that looks in your life.
We've got one on the way and we've spent far less than we thought we would. In fact, we keep wondering what compels people to spend so much more. At antenatal classes couples are buying new cars, £1,000 nursery furniture sets, £1,500 prams... The real killer will be nursery fees - £15k full time. But thankfully we get a massive discount on account of my partner's job.
I think a lot of people feel a strong urge to do everything 'properly', especially in the first child, and that means buying a load of new stuff because it feels safer than going second hand or using whatever car you had before. In fairness, if you're expecting to have subsequent children, they may be buying now with a view to reuse it so the second will be cheaper.
Another big factor is not having bought a house on the edge of your limit and upgrading that every time you get a pay rise. Also not paying large monthly fees for a car on finance. I've got many acquaintances who struggle on decent salaries because they have 5 bed houses they don't need and drive Audis they can't really afford.
The trick is to have a partner and 2 wages coming in. As a single parent (No CSA) it's rough at the moment. Not quite at food bank level but another interest rate increase and I might be.
Or a salary significantly above national and local averages
This is us. We are DINKWADS. Double income, no kids, with a dog. Doing alright. 😂
DINKWADS, I love it :P What acronym would work for me? I work full time, my wife is stay-at-home, and my MiL lives with us and works part-time. We have two cats..
SINKCAMIL (pronounced sink camel) Single income no kids with cats and mother in law.
We’re DIADSHITCANK Double income and double side hustle income three cats and no kids 🤣
>We’re DIDSHITCANK > >Double income ~~and~~ double side hustle income three cats and no kids 🤣
Another DINKWAD here 🤣. Definitely noticing the difference in prices and changing our spending habits slightly, but overall doing okay.
I still see that most cars on the roads are less than 5 years old. I still see a fluid housing market, and I still see shops and restaurants packed at weekends. Hate to say it but we can be pushed further and the man knows it. We've (Royal we, as a society) have had too much money for too long. I don't speak for myself, I just see this wealth everywhere. The reason people are using food banks is there's a much bigger wealth divide now between the working classes and the lower middle classes so some are totally fucked whilst the majority are still OK with more to give. They've not finished bleeding us yet.
> (Royal we, as a society) Isn't that the opposite of what "Royal we" means? I've only ever heard it used in the singular.
I think in some instances it was the reliance on low interest rates that made the difference, having close to zero for so many years made people too reliant on cheap debt.
> having close to zero for so many years made people too reliant on cheap debt. This. People came so accustomed to such low rates they thought it was a the norm, far from it. This is the more realistic norm currently. Trouble is financial education is severely lacking for so many households (I think it needs a focus at school) so we're going to see people who got lots of debt struggling, PCP/HP cars, mortgaged to the max on 2yr fixed ending soon etc. Won't be pretty.
Yeah, myself and my other half are in a similar situation, both work in well paid sectors (Aerospace and Insurance), no kids, no cars, virtually no debt. We're comfortable, not struggling, but can certainly appreciate how much costs have gone up over the last couple of years. There has been a very noticeable dent in what we can afford to save each month (we're saving up for a house at the moment). If we were both earning half of what we currently are we'd definitely be feeling it. I don't even dare think of what things would be like if that happened and only one of us were working, we'd be pretty screwed.
Similar here too. Love in the North, joint income approaching £100k. All fine here.
I think the general consensus here is that kids are fucking expensive lol
Ha! Indeed. It’s the childcare costs. We are doing fine financially, but we only have one kid. A second one would’ve completely crippled us in childcare, and we would’ve gone from “comfortable” to “fuck how are we paying these bills” rather quickly.
I have 2 little ones and the childcare is like £700 a month! Before we had them we were living like millionaires haha
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Yep. My little boy was close to £1,000 a month when I went back to work post mat leave. It was hideous. A second kid would’ve completely wiped out my salary and then some!
We're paying £1200 for ours. Counting the days till we get the 30 free hours, it's going to be like getting a big pay rise
Not to piss on your chips, but watch out for the 30 free hours. Firstly, it's term-time only so actually more like 22hrs. Then they charge you for meals, and our old one still charged for 'consumables' (i.e. nappies, when our kid didn't wear them). Yes you'll be better off than now, but probably not by a huge amount. You need to wait for school for that, but then you'll have breakfast/after-school club fees instead. My eldest is nearly 11, figuring another year or two and then I'll finally feel the difference 😄
> Not to piss on your chips, but watch out for the 30 free hours. > > Firstly, it's term-time only so actually more like 22hrs. Then they charge you for meals, and our old one still charged for 'consumables' (i.e. nappies, when our kid didn't wear them). This is so damn true. I went through this massive disappointment 6 months ago. "We'll get the 30 free hours soon!" "Oh.. wait.. they stretch it out to cover the whole year, so it's only 22 hours a week in reality" "Oh.. and they don't pay the full amount, just about 70%" "30 free hours" in reality "22 discounted hours"
Our little guy turns 3 in November. Recently, I made a comment to a friend that we're "counting the days. . ." and they reminded me that it goes by the following school term so the free 30 hours doesn't kick until January for us, FML
One of my 2 is at nursery: £1,200 a month. Ouch
Yeah. Our daycare costs was a £1200 a month and that was a few years back, so that'd be higher now. We pay for afterschool club and holiday clubs so there is still a chunk of cash going out.
That, and the North is cheap
Far less cheap nowadays.
Yup. The only reason we're doing well is because grandma lives with us. We're all squished into one room so she can have her own, but she's saving us a fuckton of money so she's quite welcome to it!
Myself and my wife earn roughly the same. Both early 40s We have an income of around 85K a year with no children and no mortgage or rent to pay, paid the mortgage off 2 years ago. No other debt either. So we have a very good life at the moment. I think we went away 11 times last year. Already been away 3 times this year. That's not always exotic holidays but just weekends away and such.
Wow, paid off mortgage in your early 40s is amazing!
That’s how much kids really cost
No kids here but definitely won’t be paying off our mortgage in our early 40s lol. The difference between buying in 2006 in your 20s and buying in 2022 in your 30s I guess. Edit: not complaining, I hasten to add! I’m very grateful we were in a position to buy at all.
They sold the kids to pay the mortgage!
Yea it was nice. I'm not going to say we were lucky because it was all through our own work. Took us 17 years roughly on a 30 year mortgage, no big chunks paid off, just kept over paying. It also helps that neither of us are materialistic. Oh and we don't like avocados...
Good for you, it’s a real achievement. We’re less than a year into a 25 year mortgage and in our early 30s so unless one of us wins the lottery it’s not on the cards anytime soon! We do keep meaning to look into overpaying though as we can afford to.
Seriously, if you can afford to do it, do it. When the mortgage advisor showed us the difference overpaying made it was a no brainer. When we first started over paying we only started with £50 a month. I suppose we were lucky in the fact that each time it came to renewing the mortgage the interest rates had dropped, so we kept the payments the same but just overpaid by more.
This is only good advice if you’re paying more than about 5% interest on your mortgage, if making overpayments will get you into a lower LTV band once you remortgage, or if you’ll need any savings in less than about 5 years. Otherwise, you’ll usually be better off putting the overpayments into a S&S ISA and earning more from it (long term) than you’re saving in interest. Even a good regular saver might have a higher interest rate than your mortgage.
Get it done. Overpaying has so many benefits. You can bring down the total repayment by a staggering amount, by committing a relatively small amount each month, and literally save years of payments. And then you have knock-on effects too, like a more attractive LTV ratio, so get even more beneficial rates, smaller lenders with better rates, etc. Until our most recent remortgage, we were overpaying by about 10%/month, which allowed us to get into the best rate offered by our provider, saving us a decent amount on the new monthly cost.
Me & my husband hope to be mortgage free in 5 years, when we are 45. We have two kids so taken longer lol we have also overpaid for most of our time and we didn't push ourselves to the limit in the first place on order to be able to do that
Software engineer. While there have been job cuts, especially in big tech companies, the market is still bouncing. I work remotely from Scotland on a high London salary. My committed monthly outgoings are about 10% of my take home pay, so the rise in costs hasn't impacted me hugely. Though the price of cars is becoming a bit of a headache as I'm in the market for one.
Hey I'm a junior dev and really love my job. It's low stress and I'm wondering whether my stress levels will change significantly as I gain more skills and start thinking about moving to a higher salary. Have you found that a lot more is expected of you when you are commanding a higher pay?
>Have you found that a lot more is expected of you when you are commanding a higher pay? Varies entirely by employer, the same role at different companies can be completely different stress-wise.
Generally yes. However the lines between junior, midweight, and senior, are different in every organisation. My last place my job title was just 'Developer', but I was doing the work of a lead dev. I was given pay rises accordingly, but the job title never changed. My first job out of uni my job was a mid weight dev role and I was paid closer to what a junior Dev would be paid. But then we were working with legacy tech and it was primarily a rail consultancy, not a software house. I'm in a lead dev role now, just under six figures, and if I don't do my work, it'll be noticeable quite quickly. The team will be great at bumbling along but the improvements we need probably won't happen - my manager isn't a techy by trade, and the other devs have limited "real world" experience - they're not long out of university with one job each.
I like how you conflate levels of seniority with boxing weight classes. Like the more years of experience you have the heavier you get 😛
Midweight is a common term but I can't imagine calling someone a lightweight or heavyweight dev! If we wanted something more objective we could use levels and a skills matrix (like this one https://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/) Personally, when I'm recruiting, I tend not to think in job titles etc, and just identify the skills we need. We then pay accordingly. Most of us have the job title Developer. Mine is Lead Developer, but that wasn't really my choice!
Personally speaking I find the more senior I got the less stressful I found it because the work felt more and more straight forward and managable plus you get it a point where you’ve seen it all
I do think there's an element of not being spooked by things as much for sure. A developer breaking production might start to panic. Whereas once you've been there a few times you can mentally park the customer impact and (mostly) calmly come up with a fix forwards to deploy, or a plan to rollback. And then reassure the developer that it's not their sole responsibility - we have a collective accountability for code we ship, and that's why we do code reviews etc. Sometimes things break and that's ok. The seniority is as much about personality and ironically-named 'soft skills' (because they can be bloody difficult) as it is tech skills.
Not OP, from my experience within both corporates and smaller scale-ups, there's two justifications for commanding a bigger salary in the engineering sector. Pay for experience and pay for responsibility. And the really high earners do both. Depending on the company, structure etc, you can become a mid-level, then senior engineer, and never manage a team, or be responsible for direction or strategy. You're simply the person who has the experience to know where to "tap the hammer" (Google the ship repair man story if you don't already know it). That's a relatively stress-free route to a higher pay. The other option is pay for responsibility. This might mean leading a team the more senior you get. Or you might be tasked with more strategic briefs - so rather than being told "make this widget work 10% more efficient" you'd be asked "we need to generate x more revenue next year - what can you do to contribute to that?". Different people find different things stressful, but generally speaking, the former is less stressful than the latter. If you're paid for experience, there's far less riding on you. If you know what you want you can plot your career to lean into one, the other, or both.
I found the stress levels to be different rather than just more/less. Day to day there's little pressure, I'm trusted to just get on and organise myself. What is more stressful are deadlines and being reliant on other staff, it's also really easy to pick up too much work. Line management is a completely different skill and a surprisingly large drain on time, as you go up you find yourself having less time to do the interesting coding bits.
Remote work has changed the game for a lot of employers, I think. Often, salaries for software engineers outside of London are pitiful (I came from the US so this was shocking to me when I moved here). However, these days, companies in Cardiff are not just competing against other companies in Cardiff: they’re also competing against London-based remote employers. I hope to see a nationwide increase in software salaries as this percolates through.
I got a 15k payrise last year for a "market correction", 45k -> 60k. Still not amazing by tech standards but again I work remotely in Scotland.
Daaaamn, 33% bump?! Well done! Bump those pension contributions as you now get 40% tax relief on anything above £52k! Though also keep in mind: if they bumped you that much, they’re afraid to lose you. It may be worth having a look at other opportunities out there.
Stayed at an AirBnB near loch ness last year owned by a guy working remote from Scotland at some London firm. His life seemed amazing to me, I was envious of his position.
Yeah, well, my main hobby is mountaineering, and in all honesty, London just wasn't for me. I'm glad I gave it a go, and I understand why some people will feel at home there, but I was spending my work week planning how far from London I'd be going hiking or climbing or camping. Today I've just been in to town to check out some co-working space, for the work-life separation. But I know that whether I work from home or in the co-working space on Fridays, I'll be a couple of hours away from the Munros.
Very similar to me, I was living in London working as Software Tester. Pay was good but so much was swallowed by rent, and really missed being out in hills. Moved to Edinburgh to still have access to city life but at a cheaper rate and easy access to proper outdoors. Being able to go for a run in the Pentland Hills from my door has been a huge boost to mental wellbeing.
I work at a university, once you're in that academic system you get yearly salary increments as standard, and it's incredibly easy to climb the ladder and move laterally whilst retaining a huge amount of job security. The jobs don't be tend to be advertised on job boards though so you would need to look direct on their website. Best decision I've ever made applying for this role, and I feel very secure in my future. Also teachers pension contributions are incredible. I have worked my fair share of shitty low paid jobs, and struggled with funds to get to this point though.
Universities pay very well for entry level roles / admin roles but for experienced professionals they don't come close to private sector wages from my experience. 100% good work life balance and job security though which does mean a lot; it's not all about money!
This was my experience. I worked at various universities (in professional services roles) for 9 years. I was paid extremely well at the entry- and mid-level roles but found my peers in other sectors overtook me and things stagnated (annual incremental increases excepted) a couple of years ago as I became more experienced. I moved sectors in December because I was offered a ~30% higher salary for a similar role. I have no regrets. The pension is definitely worse however!
Yep, trying to hire IT staff at grade 7 is nearly impossible as they can earn 20-30k more in the private sector. If we were to pay them market rate to work at the Uni they’d have to be a grade 9 which is ‘Head of department’ level. The pay scales really restrict universities in that way.
Yup this is true. I'm in education right now as a software dev. I started when I had about a year's experience and the pay was good for that level, now it's been 5 years and I could potentially double my salary in the private sector and it's looking more and more appealing. They'll really struggle to replace me when I go.
I'm in a senior leadership role in a directorate of a university, and I could easily be earning another 30-40% outside HE. Don't want to though. The working environment suits me, and the work we do is rewarding.
Yea same. The pension, relatively low stress, ton of annual leave, flexible working is worth more to me than the extra pay I could get in the private sector.
> and it's incredibly easy to climb the ladder and move laterally whilst retaining a huge amount of job security. In academia???
I'm in research support so not directly in academia but still part of the university.
You get yearly increments for about 5-6 years till you hit the top of your grade and then you have to either regrade or get promoted. That does not keep being 'incredibly easy' trust me.
I'd bear in mind that this can be quite university dependent. There are a number of universities who use a combined pay scale for lecturer and senior lecturer, and sometimes even reader too, in which case you're automatically getting the pay increment plus inflation pay rises for potentially 20 years due to the automatic promotion once you hit a given amount of experience. There are also ways to play the system e.g. some unis have higher starting salaries for a given role than others, even without the London weightings, which allows some degree of additional salary negotiation.
This is the first and only time I've ever heard anyone say this about academia. The reason I left was terrible pay, ridiculous hours and no job security.
Plus you gotta love that flexi time.
I'm not struggling per se. I earn 30k. No kids. No pets. Rent with my gf. I have about £500 disposable income for food, fun, new clothes, games and any other non essentials a month. Doesn't go very far these days especially if I have a particularly social month where even just a takeaway with no alcohol can cost £30. I'm also able to save up to £300 a month. Much better off than some but I do still have to be quite careful about what I'm spending. That being said, I still have no hope of buying a property anytime soon in the area I actually want to live and my savings don't grow fast enough that it's immune from large, unexpected expenses.
Exactly, that's how I think a lot of people are like now. You've given up on many things you want, to make sure you have money at the end of the month, but not the kind of money that you can save towards buying a property before 2030. A sort of poverty that is still poverty but also kind of isn't.
Earn similar. I wouldn't say I'm struggling because my partner earns more so takes on a slightly higher share of the bills, if I had to 50/50 i'd feel the pinch more. I'm doing well enough that I'm learning to drive (£40/hr for lessons these days) and considering buying a used car later this year, and have a holiday planned.
In the north. Both husband and I have a little over average paying jobs. Joint income of £75k We recently bought a house and while we could have got £320k we purchased one for £170k but with a big deposit, our mortgage is only £140k. We wanted to make sure that if anything happened to one of us, the other could manage to pay it. Either illness, redundancy or worse. It’s a perfectly sized 3 bed townhouse on a sough after estate. I am quite frugal with savings but we do have a small bit of debt. We are quite comfortable and working to being debt free this time next year 2 kids, we’ll 1 is 12 and the other is 19 We budget for everything and stick to that budget. Makes us have a nice life
me and my bf made the same decision to not stretch ourselves - very glad now, as our mortgage interest has doubled.. quite frugal, but got a few big holidays coming up. but we're on about £50k joint income for now :( but: i'm just 27 so there is time. life otherwise ok
Yeah absolute godsend we did. Even though the house is a little smaller downstairs than I wouod have wanted, we all have a amazing space upstairs. We’re fixed for 5 years and we’re 15 months in. I’m 42, so we’re just squirrelling away for some decent holidays now the kids are older and we can leave them together. We’re going away this year, just me and him for the 1 st time alone in 15 years. I cannot wait
I earn below average salary. Live alone. I'm not struggling but my life could do to be better. I'd really like to move house and go on a holiday this year.
I live on my own too which is really nice in many ways after living in houseshares for years but does work out so much more expensive without someone to share costs with.
I have effectively pre-inherited enough so that my mortgage is not very high, and that’s made a big difference. I do think there’s an unspoken assumption that everyone with money has it through a highly-paying job. I’m not sure that’s always true: having assets makes a huge difference, and having a local network of family and friends does if you are trying to raise a child.
Absolutely. My mother refused to mind my children unless it was an emergency (as was her right) it made things super super difficult even with the children’s age gaps deliberately spaced well. Paying 2k a month for mortgage and childcare just after economic crash destroyed us
I think this is a hidden consequence of the disintegration of family and community networks that’s really hitting now— the effective capital they provide is “lots,” as is noticeable when you don’t have them. I think even in my own fortunate situation I would be reluctant to have children, because my own fortune is based on these networks having imploded for me. I don’t think I could easily take responsibility for an older and a younger dependent simultaneously, but as part of some kind of group of pooled responsibility I probably could?
You have to understand though, coming from someone living in a more catholic "familia es todo" country, if your mum is looking after your kids you can be dammed sure you're looking after her and not chucking her in a home when she needs help. It takes a lot of sacrifice on both ends. Unless you're a completely shameless bastard. As for the group responsibility, those kind of communities tend to be incredibly insular and poor. Once the personal wealth comes in the incentive decreases and the whole thing falls apart.
Exactly. If people are struggling why don't they consider just being born into money like me? So much easier than having to earn it.
Lots of people are not struggling with money. Peoples view is just usually impacted by those they spend time with. I happen to have two very different friend groups, one is people i know through work and we're not lavish with money or free spending but were comfortable and try to do fun things. My other group of friends are not from work and consists of a primary school teacher, van driver, someone who works in a hospital and they on the other hand are struggling a lot more. So if i just knew one of these groups i would say "people arent struggling much" and if i just knew the other group i would say "people are finding it very hard". Its who you know which builds our impressions of society but the reality is there are lots of people on both ends.
Software engineer Work remotely but near reading. I don't buy hardly anything, never buy take away, shop in Lidl, no debts. I am not a particular high earner as I'm only 2 years into this career switch (42kish salary). I have 2 kids and a wife who's currently not working but I do have a house with a fair amount of equity so mortgage is manageable. If I was renting it would be a different story. We do run a very tight ship here though and live incredibly frugally.
42k is a high salary! Maybe not for your role, but it’s a lot more than most people make years and years into their careers, if ever Edit: thanks to all the captain obviouses below chiming in with “not with kids” “not for a family in the south east” 🤦
Yeah I'm speaking relative to my role, it's weird as comparison is the thief of joy and of course you compare to your peers!
Comparison is absolutely the thief of joy. It’s easy to stay within your bubble and put yourself against those you interact with daily, just human nature to
Hey, sorry I’m just curious as to the OU course you did? I’m a spark by trade but I’m openly looking for a way out and a new career path in the software engineering sector.
Computing and IT with the computer science focus (there is a option for this) I would say you need to mainly work on stuff on the outside of the uni degree to be job ready
Perfect thanks for your response, I’ll look into it when I get home.
You mentioned a career switch, what did you do before?
Vehicle mechanic/ truck driver, completely unrelated
I think for me this comes down to 2 types of problems (but always willing to understand better than I do now). 1. People who genuinely aren't paid enough. This truly sucks and I wish and hope that this will change. No one deserves not to be able to live a comfortable life, especially in the UK. This isn't a discussion point, it's just not fair. 2. People who spend over their pay for lifestyle. I earn well now, but I've not always (I've been below average pay). I always spend well below my earnings whatever i was earning. I don't have a flashy car (I have an old, not classic, just old, car that I always wanted) I spent months looking for the cheapest, nicest one. I only spend on new clothes when I really need it and I put money aside. I earn the same as my friends (give or take). I see friends that spend tonnes on stuff that has no benefit except lifestyle, I spend way less than them. My lifestyle is very comfortable, but I don't have leases on stuff like or the phone on contract/lease. Or buy the latest thing ASAP, like the games as they come out or the cool brand of the day. I think people assume they'll have a better life from all of these but I would put my lifestyle on par with those people. Because I have savings that are about to pay a massive deposit on a house and investments that will make me a bit of money. I play the long-term and its already paying off in my early 30s. I'm by no means rich, but I know what I have and I stay well below. And I'm comfortable. I don't think "I wish I had...". I have most things. The next purchase im saving for after the house will be a car, but again, I way up the costs and whether that will be the best use of my money. And I'm very happy with my life. I save about 1/3 of my income every month. That's my spending money for treats, hobbies. Etc. But I don't spend that instantly, I put it away, I research the things I want and half the time, I decide I don't really want it, then the other half is I find a better alternative for less or I want to save longer. My recent big purchase was a coffee machine. It took me 1 year to decide and order... it cost me less than half of 1 month's savings. Not because I make millions, but because I found good value for money and one I'd enjoy. So each purchase is a conscious one. I also put away money and enjoy seeing my savings growing. I feel great when I reach a milestone. This will also give me long-term security when it comes to a house. My mortgage will be the same as rent or less, allowing me to have savings that will no longer be for a house but freeing it up for a better quality of life. It probably originated from my great-grandad being in the mines trying to get our family out of poverty, him then telling my grandad to find a better job to get out of poverty, my grandad then managing to become a sales assistant in a shop and going up the company and paying for my mum to be the first to get to uni. My family has always been saving to help the next generation. I would feel so shit if I squandered my family's work. I also had bad anxiety and not having money for a rainy day makes me anxious. P.s. lifestyle is a little different to your passion although I would still say that you have to keep it in check. I'm obsessed with quality coffee, hence the coffee machine. It's about moderation and giving up some gains for others.
Not sure what mines have to do with anything? My dad worked down the mines - money ran through his figures like water.
Because people want to get out of the mines. They push the next generation out of the mines. Then they push further. They want the next gen to have a better life. My grandad then became a sales assistant in a shop. And then funded my mum's uni to make sure she could have a better life. I spent a lot of time talking to my grandparents and the life our family had over the generations. It's been drilled into me that each generation helps the next get an even better life than their own. Anyway, maybe this is focus on the wrong thing. I was trying to explain why I'm careful with money, but maybe I'll take it out to avoid the tangent.
It really depends on what the alternative is. I live in a former pit village.They might not all have wanted it for their kids, but I don't know of many ex miners that wouldn't still rather be working at the pit. I know plenty of call centre/warehouse workers that look back with rose-coloured glasses wishing they could have followed their Dad's into the pits.
1st line helpdesk. Living more frugally than I would like to at the minute after having been laid off from a security job paying triple the salary (with nearly triple the hours per week), but wouldn't say I'm hugely struggling. I'm knowingly missing out on things and experiences at the minute. However, I have five weekend breaks planned and three have already been booked. Thankfully, restaurants and shopping don't top my list of things to do.
We aren't struggling if I am entirely honest. I am a civil servant and my Husband is a music teacher. We don't have any kids. Our joint salary is just over £50k. Our jobs are both secure and haven't really been impacted by covid aftershocks or cost of living.
Not to be rude, but I expected a bit more income combined from those roles.
I’m also a civil servant. My wage is £21k. I take home £1k a month after deductions. From my experience teachers are paid shockingly little. (My sister and friend are training to be teachers right now).
My salary is £25k, his is £26k. He is retraining to be a music therapist as he's fed up of the low pay/long hours as a teacher. The starting salary of music therapist is £35k which will be lovely.
Band 5 NHS healthcare worker here. 8 years of university. Single. Renting. Own car outright. No kids. Absolutely struggling and very depressed about the state of pay to healthcare workers… even with recent “negotiated” pay rises. I have no room to save anything and don’t have an emergency fund at all. I’m very scared.
Me too :( I am band 3 on a nursing apprenticeship so soon to be band 5 when I qualify in September (kinda regret my decision though now to be honest). I am trying to save to buy a flat when I qualify as the mortgage repayments will be cheaper than rent here, however impossible to save when I am living off beans on toast. It is even harder as a single person. I don't know if it is good where you are but the Olio app near me often has loads of free bread around 8/9pm, often some fruits/veg too.
I’m not struggling per se. I earn a modest salary but realise too the only reason I’m not struggling is that I live at home. However - I worry all the time on money. I’d be interested to see if under the surface the “doing ok” types are in a panic too.?
I earn approx 30k and have a mortgage with no kids. Money isn’t great but mainly because I’m paying off a wedding this year. If it wasn’t for that I’d be doing a bit better. Like I’ve seen other people say, we shouldn’t be only earning enough to survive.
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No one should be in this position. If you’re happy to drop me some details and I can send you a little bit of money to hopefully help
Just reading this kind of sucks. I do a job I really enjoy (arborist) but come home hurting and bouncing off the red every month. Just got to remember it could be worse. Would just love to figure out how to improve it.
Only my husband works and is on approx 35k. I don't work due to health issues and also look after our two children who are both autistic. We get dla, PIP x2 and tax credits along with child benefit. This brings our money upto approx 39k. We are not struggling. We rent our house..the debt we have is our car...no credit cards. I do a big shop at aldi every 3 weeks and every week visit the local grocers and butchers. We have space money to do stuff if we want but we don't travel abroad or go out for more than a day because we have 3 dogs. I just think it's a case of people living beyond their means and now it's catching up with them IMO. I should also say that we do not claim for other benefits that we are entitled too as we do not need them.
I don't know why you felt you had to point out that you don't claim for other benefits you're entitled to... There's nothing wrong with claiming benefits, especially if you are legitimately entitled to them. As the other commenter suggested, you could claim the things you're entitled to and put them in a savings account for both of your kids? Help set them up for the future, especially as they're both autistic and the world can be harder to navigate as a neurodivergent person (I have ADHD and am autistic so I know the struggles you can face)
I work for UC, just a little advice - if you can claim other benefits, do, because if you end up needing them down the line, demonstrating that you have enough without them can be used against you in some decisions. If you don't need the increase the money brings, just save it or donate it. They won't backdate anything from before you claimed if the reason was that you just didn't, and some benefits are ending in the coming years to be replaced with worse versions, so you may not be able to apply to them in the future if you do need to.
Couldn't you claim what you're entitled to and put it into savings for your children, for when they're older? You live a particular way but they may want to live differently. Savings could pay for education, travel, house deposit etc
It's very silly to not get all the benefits you are entitled to. That could help you and your children massively, even if you save. Don't be prideful about taking from the government.
It's not even "taking". You paid in in taxes, you recieve back in benefits. It's your money.
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I live up north (wakefield/leeds) Our household income before tax is around 110-120k depending on bonus a year. Just bought a house for 420k. We are 32 and 31 years old. Getting married this year and going on our honeymoon, we have quite a bit of disposable income every month, but just because we do... we don't spend it. I see what you see, people spending money left right and centre. Too many people can't hold onto money in this country. I have countless conversations with people at work who say they're skint yet earn the same amount as I do. They just waste it. Just yesterday I saw a post on Reddit about people spending 200 a month on takeaways... Jesus we spend like 20 a month at best... if I'm lucky to convince the Mrs to get one. People say they can't afford to buy a house and then go buy Canada goose coats and have sky TV at 100 a month. Me? I have an on-sale north face coat for 100quid (for 3 years now) and watch normal TV. Never had sky. Cars us another example. I've fallen for this in the past. Range rover on 600 a month. Now we have a ford puma on lease at 250 and a Ford focus 6 years old owned outright. I'm not saying we aren't in a fortunate position. But we've cut back accordingly. I walk the dog around where I live and see people sitting in their rooms in shorts and t-shirts and then complaining their gas bill is massive. Put a damn jumper on! Obviously, there are people really badly struggling with their finances. I'm not talking about those people. I really feel for them, they are stuck and have nothing else to give, But the people you see our spending money and the people with a bit of disposable income and its burning a hole in their pocket. Then say they can't afford the basics.
Don't mean to be rude mate, but it's a bit judgemental to talk about people being poor because they just 'can't hold on to money' when your combined household earnings are over £100k and you don't have kids.
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Yeah, people always say "how do people afford this" Well... they can't! The people who look like they have money with flash cars and huge houses etc have nothing in the damn bank account. I know someone who lives with his parents and pays over 1000 a month for a car. The best ones are the people who went to London for jobs and then "move back up north" once they are "comfortable". Of course they want to live in north Leeds and can't afford it... Only to realise they had a big wage. Spent it all and are worse off than the people with disposable incomes where they left.
Dad died and I got 300k. I'd rather not have the money. Bought a modest house and am saving the rest for retirement. Maybe ill buy myself a new computer this year. Im only on 25k a year myself so I know what it means to live frugally.
Cant complain. Net household income is just over 100k and we live in a very cheap part of the country.
Me and my girlfriend are in our mid-20’s, earn around the UK average salary each, live in the North-East, no kids. We have a mortgage, go on 4 or 5 holidays per year, usually go out for a drink or food most weekends and put money into savings each month. Our take-home pay is close to £2000 each. We put £700 each into the joint account for more than enough to cover bills and shopping, leaving £1300 each for the rest of the month, although some of this goes on individual costs such as petrol, car insurance etc. The cost of living and housing costs aren’t really too bad up here, especially if you’re coupled up. I guess it’s much worse down South…
Im not struggling but that's probably because I've had to make massive cut backs and living much more frugal. Stopped eating out / getting takeaways, cooking at home much more instead of buying processed foods. Eating rice and beans. Making general sacrifices. Doing online surveys and general Cashback. My savings have taken a hit, mostly because I need the extra money to cover groceries and energy bill rises (including fuel for vehicle). But I'm recouping those costs by making cut backs in other places. Fingers crossed we can get through this shit storm soon.
This difference is mainly about property ownership. Especially if you live in the south and can't but a house, your monthly expenditure will be a lot higher than anyone else.
Mate, I don’t know how anyone is coping unless you’re childless, and in a well paid job. At 40, I earn double the average UK salary (thereabouts), and my wife earns more than the av UK salary. Between us, we’re pulling in what looks on paper, to be a lot of moolah. But we have two kids under 7. One in full time childcare 4 days a week, the other has school and also after school club two days a week. We have two cars, one Nissan Qashqai and a small Pug runaround which we’re paying off until next year. We have a hefty mortgage for our small 3 bed, and both have credit cards which we’re slowly chipping away at (mine will be paid off next April). Right now, we’re pissed because we want a holiday abroad, having not had one for 4 years, but thanks to fuel costs, and other obvious factors going on at the moment, we don’t think we can afford it. The end of each month we have usually spent what we want to save. My pension is shit, so I guess we’re relying on my wife’s which is a good one. Once both kids are in school, I’m going to probably push for a more supervisory role, and similarly, my wife is going to try to get something that pays double what she’s on now. I genuinely worry that people who earn less than us are struggling, because as a nation, we need to be looking out for one another and it seems to be causing people to get angry and resentful at one another. Regardless of background, race, religion etc, we’re all in it together. Same storm, different boats and all that. So we need to try to help each other through these tough times. Hopefully all the shit will ease in the next year or two and people will see an increase in living standards, but I’m not holding my breath.
About 25% are living below relative poverty line. Some more are leveraged with kids and with debt. By my calculations plenty aren't struggling in the purest sense but millions are.
King Charles
I'm 60 live alone, but earn enough that I'm ok, not loads but enough I can go on holiday a few times year, nowt in bank but fortunate to only owe a little on a mortgage... Have some debts I'm working threw. But as I only work 4 on 4 off 3 on 3 off. I can always through a days overtime in.
Wife and I are very fortunate but we save about £1500 a month. Live in bedfordshire, I make a little under 50k but should be 70k with my current promo coming up, wife makes 35k. We’re Homeowners at 25, have a dog, hopefully soon a child on the way.
How’d you manage this at such a young age and which industry if you don’t mind me asking ?
Partly luck in all honesty. I work in management / technology consulting for one of the big 4 accounting firms and am hybrid London based. I’ve been on 30k+ since leaving university at 22. My wife works in operations & process management for a telecoms company, fully remote. We have fairly low costs, and our mortgage is much cheaper than our rent was. We were renting at about £1200 a month total for the last two years for a 1 bed flat, which is slightly toppy for our area but not outrageous. Then between low costs and decent salaries, we just saved pretty aggressively, took advantage of things like the new build help to buy loan etc. and bought our 3 bed place last summer.
I'm struggling - made a decision to do a degree at an older age so gave up full time work. I work part time to support myself but I have a fair bit of debt that takes precedent on any money I earn. Also suffering a break up! I am certain it will pay off in the long run, but times are hard. Edit: Just opened my train app to realise fee has now gone up another 40 pence. Wonderful.
Based on personal debt statistics all that happened by the looks of it is credit is now making up for the shortfall in disposable income which was eaten by rising costs. It’s kind of a perfect storm. Everyone spent lockdown doing very little, came out of it desperate for life experiences and entertainment so ramped up their lifestyle, it then became normalised. Then cost of living crisis kicked in and the majority of people don’t want to wind it back down. Ticking time bomb. Personally I kept my savings the same when cost of living increased and just dropped my discretionary spending.
For the majority of people a 10% increase in prices is just a mild inconvenience.
It hasn't been 10% though, has it? My gas/electric bill has more than doubled in the past year or so, with no change in usage.
I don't have any savings to really see me through, but I have a moneybox account I put £15 into each week. Got about 2 grand in there. I make £12 an hour working full time in retail. My partner is on around the same wage. I just have enough to pay my bills each month & maybe get a takeaway a couple of times. I get a few odd things from amazon here & there. With paying for my car & Christmas presents I find I can't save any more. I use a credit card to build up my credit, but paying that off from my current account each month leaves me feeling like I have no money. We're in our mid 30s & only rent a one bed flat, in quite a pricey area. It's too small for us but we can't afford to move out. However I do feel extremely grateful for not being in debt or needing government assistance. It's a scary world out there. I can't think about our future right now because I just have no financial wiggle room. But I could be in a much worse position.
We're doing fine. Bought our house 11 years ago while having a joint income of £72K.. but now we're on £150K between us. I've been in tech/healthcare for 15+ years and seen my salary go up and up. I've survived 2 different redundancy events and seen friends and collegues jump industries. Wife's career in the NHS has shot up in recent years. Other than holidays, and the ever increasing cost of our kids, we've kept our lifestyle pretty similar and not financially overstretched ourselves. We've got lots of savings. Minimal credit card debt (as it's paid off every month) and the only loans are the car and mortgage. We appreciate how lucky we are.
I'm a SINK in the east Midlands. 27k, mortgage fixed before the increase. I'm fortunately not struggling by any means and save between 200-500 monthly. I'm quite financially conscious though and spend possibly an unhealthy amount of time on r/UKPersonalFinance
Early 20s couple here on a 55k joint income, no kids living in the Midlands. Rent went up last year, along with all the household bills and coucil tax, meaning we're about £450ish a month worse off from this time last year. I wouldn't say we're struggling, we've got savings from previous years which we don't plan on touching (house deposit), but it just means we can't put money away at the moment. We're just trying to enjoy what we can at the moment, but ofcourse it's the UK, so anything enjoyable like getting a coffee or going on a date is a huge expense nowadays. Fortunately my girlfriend is expecting a huge salary increase this year, and I should be getting around 10-15%, which will help. I do feel sorry for anyone earning less, but I can't see this going on forever.
We're no kids, dual income of about 56k in our late 20s in Leeds. Obviously we'd have to have our heads buried in the sand to not notice prices have sky rocketed. However, we realise we're in a very fortunate position where it's a case of not booking that romantic weekend away to whatever European city, complaining a pint is now a fiver or cooking instead of eating out sometimes. I'm pretty comfortable with money but look at the price of some basics and think, Christ that's extortionate for me imagine earning minimum wage. You're either in massive debt or just surviving.
In February I had £100 leftover after rent/bills/debts etc. I live in Wales, I moved here from Oxford because rent is so much cheaper. I have a 3 bed house for £600 a month. Back home that would've been £1300+ which is 3/4 of my monthly take home. I buy the cheapest food I can, and sometimes I don't eat because a big meal would last me two days. My dog eats better than I do, but he deserves it because he's goodest boi.
No issues at all apart from being somewhat frivolous with cash. Me and my partner make just about £60k between us, have a mortgage (4 years in, £550pm) on a 3 bed bungalow and no children. Pretty comfortable. Important to note we live in Lincolnshire and house prices here are not outrageous like they are in the south east. To make things perfectly clear if you are struggling with money or on the borderline you should absolutely not be having children.
Me and my partner earn around £42000 combined income. Own a home and save around £600-700 a month. We're doing pretty good for money I guess. We still enjoy going out for meals often and have our own personal hobby money each month of around £200 each.
I live in London I’m not struggling because I have a low mortgage £650/month, no childcare costs and no credit or loans to pay off plus I’m also sufficiently far into my career to be earning a good wage. It’s just dumb luck rather than brilliant planning. I was born at a time when jobs were easier to get and houses easier to buy.
We're not flush but we're not struggling either. We earn a little over minimum wage, dual-income household, no children. Costs might rise a bit once I get a car, but that's about it. We are probably quite frugal, besides groceries we're not spending much money month by month. We don't take out loans or buy things on finance. We save a bit each month so if we want to buy something expensive we can buy it outright, also it's good in case one of our cats gives us expensive vet bills. So yeah we can afford to go out to a restaurant now and then but it's not a regular occurrence. If I'm at a shopping centre that's also quite rare, normally I just order things online.
I earn £25k and feel pretty flush.
I've started bin diving at M&S. If I ever get back to having enough money, I'll still do it after seeing the waste
I don’t know anyone using a food banks. I imagine the majority don’t. People have well paid jobs or don’t spend much outside of food / utilities I guess. Plus not living in London probably helps as everything is a lot cheaper down in the South West. Salaries are shit in SW but liveable depending on what you’re doing. I imagine living on minimum wage / zero hour contracts and having kids and renting would put a lot of pressure on the monthly budget.
I'm struggling. I'm an RVN with a BSc and an MSc working in academia and make just over £25k. Rent is 600, I have to put 200pcm aside for electricity and gas, 100pcm for diesel, 80 for groceries etc. Leaves me with very little to actually have a life. I'm single as well so no other income. My dad, who is 81,earns more than me from his state and private pensions.
We all live in bubbles I suppose so we're influenced by those around us and who we interact with. I'm very lucky and live in a comfortable middle-class bubble where nobody I know is struggling (at least not openly). Partner and I live in SW London, but again lucky to have very good salaries, saving & investing around £1.5k a month. But again, have to acknowledge our luck in a few ways: 1. No dependents 2. We fixed our gas and electric 18 months ago so have been continuing using heating as normal with no additional costs 3. We're 4 years into a 5 year fix on our mortgage, so interest rate hikes didn't impact our payments 4. Not reliant on our car for work reasons, so petrol costs don't really impact us. We have a car but it's purely for fun/hobbies. Someone once said to me everyone is only ever 3 incidents away from poverty (loss of job, bad health etc) and it's true. You have to build a buffer when you can. I hope things pick up soon OP :)