I'm 28 and work as a horticulture manager here in the UK. I work 45+ hours per week, up to about 50 hours most weeks and only earn £1,600 per month. I am paid for 39 hours per week but will literally never do that. The work days here are 9 hours but as a manager, it's usually more like 10. I don't get paid for that extra 10 or so hours I do.
On a daily basis I'm put into a position where I have to breathe down the necks of people who are clearly having a bad day, people who have confided in me that they are severely depressed or stressed yet the higher up management just force me to get people to work faster and more efficiently. I'd suspected it for a while but it turns out that the general manager is autistic and he really does lack empathy, he just doesn't get sensitivity around people's emotions at all. He's all about work.
I live alone and can't find anywhere cheaper than £650 for rent other than tiny, rundown, mould ridden boxes for maybe about £550. I viewed one flat for £550 per month that had just enough room for a double bed and about a meter of kitchen work surface. No oven/hob, just a hot plate and a microwave. No space for a washing machine or even a wardrobe. Literally just a bed, tiny bathroom and barely a kitchen right next to the bed.
So my rent is £650, Council tax is £100, energy is about £100 despite barely using it. Internet is £35, Sim only phone bill is £15, food is usually about £200 these days unless I'm really poor due to some unexpected expenditure, in which case I'll try and live on mostly rice and pasta. But if I don't fork out the money for healthy food I really start to feel depressed and lethargic.
After all of my necessities are paid for I'm left with a couple of hundred which I usually have to spend on some sort of social obligation like a family meal or someone's birthday or something. I turn down social outings all the time because I can't afford them but if I didn't attend some I'd just go insane. My life would literally be work, home, worry, work, home, worry.
I'm single and trying to spare the money to go on dates is a nightmare too.
Also, my phone is about to die, the whole top half of the screen is destroyed and there's a lot of things I can't do on it because of this, its only a matter of time until it's dead and I have to fork out hundreds for a new one. Little things like that just financially ruin me for months. I even had to quit my driving lessons because it was just way too much money to be spending.
I really don't know what else I can do to penny pinch other than move back home with my parents at 28. It sucks to live in a society where you can spend basically all of your time at work, have no dependents and have literally nothing to show for it other than stress.