It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

ladyholly

Just to add my two pennorth the amount you earn is irrelevant to a degree. Its how much you have left for discretionary spending.

cuddlymarm

Also I think one problem is that the cost of living is rising quickly. A penny here and there you can gradually get used to but if costs are rising a few pounds a week this is not easily found and will be felt more.
If you are tied into contracts eg phone, sky etc you can’t just dump them, you have to wait and manage until you can move to a better deal or not renew.

Onebrokelady

EssexHebridean said:

Onebrokelady said:

London_1 said:

Bluegreen143 said:

Onebrokelady said:

I went looking for videos on being frugal just now and came across someone living on a low income showing people how to live on not much money but she was earning over £1,300 a month 🙀 that's £400 more a month than I earn,I would feel me I had won the lottery if I earned that much money 

Depends on what their fixed expenses, family size, where in the country they live and other circumstances are though (especially if they have tons of debt), just looking at income doesn’t tell you if someone is better off. 

Do share if you find any useful vloggers, I’d be interested 🙂

Indeed I was listening to LBC this afternoon and one chap said he was struggling on £40 k a year, and was finding it hard to make ends meet also a young woman who earns around £33 K a year as a researcher in Oxford and says her parents help her out with the tax and insurance on her car. I guess it depends what you class as priorites
Mine is a roof over my head and food on the table and being warm anything on top of that is a bonus  

Wow I can't imagine what it must be like to have £40,000 to live on 

But if you are on that money, you don’t “have that to live on” - there is the usual tax and NI deductions for a start, then most folk on that sort of money will be paying into a pension as well, so more gone there even before it hits your bank. Then of course rent or mortgage - in many cases another £1000 gone. Other bills - the priority stuff. Someone in that position may well be managing a team with an expectation of a smart work appearance so suits and smart shoes - those lead to needing to budget for dry cleaning and cobblers costs, neither are cheap these days. There may also be an expectation that once a month or so a team are taken out for drinks or another form of socialising, and often a person in a management role will be expected to put their hands in their pockets for some of that expenditure, too. It’s easy to see a headline figure and somehow see it as “disposable income of 3k+ per month, but that’s rarely going to be the case. 🤷🏻‍♀️

That's true,I didn't think of all that 😀

bupster

Yep, a couple of years ago I was looking at moving house in Cambridge and it was hard to get a one-bedroomed flat for less than £1,200 a month. Half my job was in the city, the other half was in Essex and required me to drive as public transport could take over four hours a day. So I needed to have a car, I needed to be able to pay for petrol for a 1hr 15 minute commute each way, three days a week; I had debts to pay (£600 a month minimum), and was living alone so carrying all the bills. Had I stayed there I would have been shelling out £2,500 a month before I so much as bought a loaf of bread. Salary alone tells you absolutely nothing about whether someone is managing to make ends meet. 

Onebrokelady

After working full time for quite a few years I have had to steadily cut my hours because of ill health so now work 22.5 hours a week for this I get paid £907 a month unless I manage to get a weekend shift in which case I earn a bit more. I have debt that is being paid off via Stepchange at £90 a month but even without that I still wouldn't be able to afford all my bills. I would currently be about £140 a month short on my bills if my daughter wasn't living with me and paying keep. She is going to move out in a year or so so I'm hoping I can apply for some help then.

I have cut back on everything and have learned how to budget now so don't waste money anymore but I do need to learn how to make my money stretch especially with my £25 a week food budget. I'm getting lots of tips from this thread though so thanks for all your ideas 

I don't have a car so rely on a terrible public transport system which costs  me £52 a month, this is done through work so is taken from my pay before I get paid then I pay slightly less tax 

I'm getting very worried about the next year or two and how I'm going to manage if prices and electric and gas keep going up so this isn't a woe  is me I'm worse off than everyone else posts it's just just a statement about where I am right now

I do have pets at the moment so that is an added expense but I won't be having anymore and I used to go riding once a fortnight but don't do that either. I don't go on holiday and haven't been on holiday since 2003, I've had the odd weekend away in the last few years but won't be going anywhere now for the foreseeable 

I do like to read, go for walks and garden so those can be free. I also like cross stitching but I'm now not doing so many because they are not useful and I don't want the clutter. Knitting is good because at least I can then use the things I knit 

I do have a mortgage but also pay rent because my house is shared ownership, the rent is low but increases in line  with inflation every year so I will have to pay that even after I retire, I'm hoping I can get some help with this once I am on my own. I do have a three bedroom house that I won't need so would love to downsize but the smaller places I've looked at are currently actually out of my reach so I'm stuck here. I'm also considering renting out a room when my daughter moves out but would like to not have to do that if tat all possible 

EssexHebridean

We’ve done the commute question on this thread previously I think - I know it prompted me to look at our costs - MrEH’s commute would be £505 a month if switched to public transport - it currently costs him under £300 even on the most expensive months. Mine is currently free as we car share into London - if I were to use public transport it would cost me at least £200 a month I’m guessing  - and probably more. My journey time would increase from roughly an hour and 10 minutes to at least 2 hours - I’d need to leave an extra 30 minutes on top for the occasions when my bus didn’t arrive too - not uncommon on our routes. MrEH would have a 2 mile walk to/from the station which he’d have to do in all weathers, we have no buses from home to the station and the multi bus journey would add an impractical timescale and cost anyway. Absolutely, we could manage without a car, but quality of life would diminish massively, and it would cost us well over double. 🤷🏻‍♀️ In fact we can afford to - and choose to - run two cars - but for well under the cost of just our commuting expenses if we managed without…  I should point out we live in a mid-sized town too, not somewhere out in the sticks. Last time I looked our bus far into the town centre from here was just under £3 - I can walk in in 25 minutes and cycle in 10. For me - fantastic, I have that choice - I’m fit and healthy, don’t have small children and can carry bags if needed. For someone else not in that position though it is ludicrously expensive and is without question still far cheaper to drive. Not having a car is very definitely not always the cheaper option! 

Flugelhorn

how much you have to live on is so dependent on circumstances - at one point I was earning a goodly amount, but only one tax allowance, pension contributions, big house with high fuel bills, significant work expenses (probably 6-7K a year), travel to work in 4x4 as rural etc etc 

I retired, took pension, OH took deferred pension, bought house that is easier to  heat , sold the 4X4, no more pension contributions

I now have tiny  work expenses, we have 2 lots of tax allowance, fuel bills are 1/3 of before, cheaper to run cars.

Despite annual income being about 75% of what it was, I feel like we have much more disposable cash - working was seriously expensive

KxMx

EssexHebridean said:

We’ve done the commute question on this thread previously I think - I know it prompted me to look at our costs - MrEH’s commute would be £505 a month if switched to public transport - it currently costs him under £300 even on the most expensive months. Mine is currently free as we car share into London - if I were to use public transport it would cost me at least £200 a month I’m guessing  - and probably more. My journey time would increase from roughly an hour and 10 minutes to at least 2 hours - I’d need to leave an extra 30 minutes on top for the occasions when my bus didn’t arrive too - not uncommon on our routes. MrEH would have a 2 mile walk to/from the station which he’d have to do in all weathers, we have no buses from home to the station and the multi bus journey would add an impractical timescale and cost anyway. Absolutely, we could manage without a car, but quality of life would diminish massively, and it would cost us well over double. 🤷🏻‍♀️ In fact we can afford to - and choose to - run two cars - but for well under the cost of just our commuting expenses if we managed without…  I should point out we live in a mid-sized town too, not somewhere out in the sticks. Last time I looked our bus far into the town centre from here was just under £3 - I can walk in in 25 minutes and cycle in 10. For me - fantastic, I have that choice - I’m fit and healthy, don’t have small children and can carry bags if needed. For someone else not in that position though it is ludicrously expensive and is without question still far cheaper to drive. Not having a car is very definitely not always the cheaper option! 

As I said the position is easier for me never having had a car, than someone who has to deconstruct their life. For a start i've located my home close to bus routes through necessity. I'd love to live in the country again, but must settle for being a townie (albeit with lots of green around). I am also close to the train station- too far for me to manage walking, but the bus routes I can access pass by on their way into town.

When you don't have a car, you look for work locally and with a good availability of public transport. Commuting by train would be dependent on location as in easily being able to reach the station by foot or by bus. With those buses fitting into work hours.
Many do work full time without a car and that is how that is managed.
Cars enable limitless choice, not having one means you have options, but they are much narrower. Still quite do-able!

I volunteer two mornings a week and get two buses each way. Once I exit my street I can go left to access one bus route very close, or if I turn right and walk a very short distance, there is another, they both go the same way into the town centre. I then get another bus at the bus station.
My destination is even closer to where that bus drops. I basically only have to cross the road and walk past 4 houses!
It is very tiring but I manage because the job is so rewarding. I did have to wait a year for an accessible vacancy (as most of the locations are rural) but it's certainly been worth the wait.

Bluegreen143

If I didn’t have a car it would be very difficult and it would not work out cheaper. Ditching the car doesn’t save money for everyone as Essex Hebridean has pointed out. 

Thankfully I only have to go into the office once or twice a week (I work four days) but it’s a 20 min drive away and I have to be at the school bus stop at 8.30am and 3.20pm meaning on office days I can only be there 9-2.30 as it is (I’m meant to work 8.30-3pm so make up the extra hour at home later). But with public transport the journey takes over an hour so I would only get to the office at 10am and need to leave before 2. Obviously not really feasible as work would start to ask questions! 

Yes I could use after school care and extra nursery hours to work later but that would cost. Having a car allows me to avoid paying any childcare (we only use the free nursery hours) and that must save much more than the cost of the car without even taking account of the high price of train fares. If I stuck to a job I could walk to I’d have to work in a cafe or shop and that would be a massive pay cut so wouldn’t make sense. Or if I lived close to work I would have to pay more for my house! 

Of course if my company would allow me to be fully home based it would save any commuting costs 😏 being honest I would still keep the car for the school run and other errands though so I can’t blame my work for it.

We are fortunate that my DH drives a company-provided van for work which means we don’t need a second car as most of my friends have. 

It is always a useful exercise to challenge your thinking though and do the sums, as I do agree you get stuck in a trap of thinking you “have” to have certain things. But I would say for some people high travel costs to work are just a reality.

[Deleted User]

I maintain a budget of £3,800 per annum for absolutely everything, excluding mortgage and council tax. 

If I could fit a car into the budget I would, as it would really improve things for us in many ways, but I can’t so we don’t have one.

I went to Lidl today (lift from a friend who was gong there anyway, in exchange for a HM cake), and spent £45. This will see us through for around 3 weeks, and included some treats (huge watermelon 🍉for £3.50, and a bottle of wine at £3.39).

Our life is very moderate on many levels, but we’re happy. Rural life, I think, gives more room for a different currency too. My eggs are traded for HM sourdough and we were given half a pig, already jointed, for our help in lambing time xx