Claudia said:

When I started out on £13,000 a year, this kind of salary was beyond my wildest dreams – but it’s not what I thought it would be like. I watch my money a lot and often I think, “no, I’m not going to buy that” or “I’m not going to do that” because it’s too expensive. 

I buy whatever I like in the supermarket but that supermarket is Aldi. I buy my clothes second hand on Vinted. This year we are going to go to Spain to stay for free with friends who live there; I would have preferred to go to a villa in Greece, but we can’t afford the accommodation. We can just about afford flights and spending money. 

I feel guilty when I spend money. If I have an unplanned night out and spend £50 on drinks and £22 on an Uber, the next morning I’ll think: “I shouldn’t have done that”. 

My partner and I go to gigs, have weekends away in the UK and meals out, but we are probably only going out on average one or two nights a week. I don’t feel the financial insecurity I experienced at the beginning of my career, but I would have thought that someone on this salary would feel rich and that’s just not the case. I know there are people in far worse positions than me but I don’t feel like I have loads of disposable income. 

Half of my £3,800 a month take-home pay goes on bills. My mortgage on a two-bedroom home is £1,100 a month. I took a loan out for home improvements when I bought my home and I pay £300 a month for that. The electricity and gas has gone up to nearly £200 a month. My council tax has gone up to £1,350 a year. We spend between £400 and £500 a month on groceries. We run two cars because we both need to drive for our jobs. The car insurance has just doubled and my house insurance has gone up too. We don’t split everything half-and-half because I earn more and bought the house, so I pay most of the mortgage. But if James hadn’t moved in with me, I would have struggled to afford to run a household on my own. I only save £150 a month.

I always dip into my overdraft at the end of the month. As the bills have gone up, I’ve cut back. I used to have Aesop hand wash in the bathroom and I would spend money on luxury skincare; now I buy Carex handwash instead. I don’t buy designer clothes and I don’t go on luxury holidays. I really don’t think I live an extravagant lifestyle.

It feels like every year the bills go up and life becomes more expensive, and I’m becoming less financially secure. All my friends – even the ones who earn great salaries – are constantly broke. One friend makes a decent amount and her husband is a banker on six figures, but they have two children and she says they are skint. It doesn’t feel like anyone is carefree or wealthy right now. 

I was on the fence about having kids but James doesn’t want them. Even though it wasn’t my decision, I’m really glad we are not going to have them because I don’t know how we would afford them. My friends tell me about sky-high nursery fees. We’d need a bigger house with a bigger mortgage. I’m sure we could make do, I know people on lower salaries manage to have children, but we would have to make a lot of sacrifices to our lifestyle and I don’t want to do that. 

I worry about the future because the industry I work in is quite precarious. If I lost my job, my outgoings are about £2,000 a month. I had savings before but I put them all into buying my house and now I have just a few hundred pounds. I have lost sleep over the fear that I could lose my job. The stakes are much higher now. I’d lose everything if I lost my job.