“Why do we work as hard as we do and yet there’s just nothing left?”
This was a common sentiment from my partner, David, after a busy week. Both working full time — him as a chartered accountant, me as a journalist — we brought home what we thought were decent salaries. Above average, probably: my net pay was just over £2,500 a month and David’s was higher.
As tends to be the way, we did not discuss salaries with friends or family, so we had little to compare with.
Despite our comfortable-sounding income, every month on payday our bills would be paid, followed by minimum payments for multiple credit cards and, just like that, we’d be in the red again. It felt suffocating.
In 2024, we were both in our thirties, living in a semi-detached three-bed home in the English Midlands with two very young sons. To the outside world we looked like we had an ideal life.
