Me and my partner have two kids, we both work. Earn approx £3500 before tax pm ($4,225.93 in dollars). Yet have nothing left come the end of the month due to the cost of living. Don't have that many expenses either. Fuel and energy prices is crippling us. Fuel went from £1 pl to £2pl. Meaning we are spending approx £300-£400pm on fuel just for work travel and school runs. Energy costs have tripled and are due to go up again in a few months by 150%… Work is giving us more and more responsibilitys but the wage has stayed the same regardless to the massive increase in cost of living. We are wanting to move closer to work but can't due to being priced out. The average rent in the area we want to live is £700 per month for a small terraced house as there's no social housing available as they have no houses available. Bank will give us a mortgage however the cost of houses are £160k-200k now which has priced us out. Our mortgage limit is £140k.. so can't even buy a house. Even if we tried the right to buy on our current house we can't as the government won't allow the sale of rural social housing.
Basically screwed in every direction, work is piling on the responsibilities but where's the wage increase? I've asked and asked for an increase and all I get is we can't then when I say well I won't do any extra work till you pay me extra for the said extra responsibilities. They respond by cutting my hours back to contracted hours which is 10 hours short of what I need. It's crap. The system is keeping people down. A good wage just doesn't cut it anymore.