Is £ 43,000 a year the key to happiness?
That’s what psychologists say — any more and you start keeping up with the Joneses. So is it true? Four families spill their secrets
ESSEX: £43,000 isn’t enough. It can cause a strain
JO LAYBOURN, 46, and husband Mark, 45, live in Chelmsford, Essex, with sons Ben, nine, and Joshua, seven. Mark is a personal trainer, massage therapist and Pilates instructor, earning £26,585 a year and Jo earns £17,231 as a carer. Jo says: I WORK 35 hours a week, but can only do so around school hours, and when Mark isn’t working, because we can’t afford childcare.
We have a three-bedroom terrace house, which Mark bought 22 years ago, before we met and property prices shot up, for £74,000.
However, we have borrowed so much against it over the years — to clear debts, do a loft conversion, build a conservatory and update the kitchen — that we now have a mortgage of £195,000, which costs £848 a month.
In January, we added £18,000 to the mortgage to clear credit cards, store cards and an overdraft — debts which were costing a crippling £364 a month.
Our mortgage repayments only increased by £155 a month and, since consolidating those debts, we’re sleeping a lot easier at night.
As house prices have gone up so much in the South, the house is now worth £315,000, so, thankfully, there was enough equity in it for us to do this.
We’ve seriously considered moving to Yorkshire, as property is so much cheaper there, but decided it’s just too daunting to make such a big move.
We each need a car to be able to do our jobs and pay £229 for Mark’s leased Kia Sportage and £149 for the hire purchase loan on my Seat Ibiza. It’s a lot of money, but works out cheaper than the old cars we used to have, which cost hundreds in repairs.
We spend up to £500 a month on groceries at Aldi and end up having a few ready meals because it’s hard finding the time to cook from scratch when we’re both working.
School lunches for our eldest cost £50 a month, while the youngest has free meals because he’s still in infants. The past couple of summers, a friend has let us rent her caravan in Cornwall for a knock-down price — but later in the year we’re taking the boys abroad for the first time, using £5,000 we borrowed on the mortgage, which we had planned to spend landscaping the garden.
It feels extravagant, but we’re desperate to have a memorable family holiday while the boys are still young.
Our phones are several years old, so thankfully I’m no longer tied to an expensive contract and Mark’s will end soon.
All our clothes are from Primark, though Mark and I rarely get anything new, but we feel it’s important to get the boys’ school shoes from Clarks, with a little financial help from the grandparents.
At Christmas and on birthdays we spend about £100 on each child, which is a stretch.
Mark and I only go out together once every three or four months, but, once a month, we go somewhere that the kids eat free.
What really puts a strain on finances are unexpected school expenses. My eldest, Ben, is going on a two-day trip, which costs £135 — a lot of money to us.
The secondary school Ben would like to go to would mean spending £80 a month on bus fares, which, sadly, we just don’t have spare.
I don’t think £43,000 a year is enough money. It’s a struggle, even since consolidating our debts, but we’re definitely better off than when the kids were little and I worked less. Then we had to take a mortgage payment holiday and go onto interest-only repayments.
We’re happier than we were then, too — being short of money can put a terrible strain on family life — but I wouldn’t say that we’re more content than friends on different incomes.
We rarely go out or have expensive treats and still rely on occasional help from parents, yet we don’t have savings, or any money left at the end of the month.
People tend to live up to their means — personally, I’d be happier with more money coming in.