‘As a student, £800 a month is quite tight’

On Wednesday the chancellor will give an update on her plans for the economy.

The government has promised to boost growth, which should mean higher pay and more jobs, but so far the economy has been sluggish.

Rachel Reeves will share the latest official forecasts and explain how she intends to tackle the big challenges facing her when she delivers her Spring Statement.

Those challenges are also being felt on the ground, in people’s everyday lives.

People have contacted the BBC through our Your Voice, Your BBC News to tell us how they are feeling about the months ahead and what plans they have to tackle the hurdles they face.

Radhika Gupta thinks whatever Rachel Reeves does on Wednesday she shouldn’t cut spending on health or education.

The student from Derry in Northern Ireland is in the third year of a five-year medical degree at Queen’s University in Belfast.

“One thing that worries me is how many doctors want to leave,” she says.

“The consensus is it is not worth practising medicine in the UK because of how little you are paid. And you are left with a lot of student debt.

“I don’t think the government really understands the challenges.”

Despite what she sees as underfunded services and staff burnout she wants to work in England after she graduates.

But more needs to be done to fund and improve medical training, she says.

The other thing she would like to see more money spent on is transport, which is one of her biggest expenses at around £75 a month, partly because unreliable public transport sometimes means she takes a cab to the hospital.

Her parents and maintenance loan give her about £800 a month, which she supplements with tutoring and casual work in hospitality. Her rent is £600. There are extra costs like her scrubs – she needs several sets – at £35 a set.

“Things are quite tight,” she says.

“I’m working paycheque to paycheque,” says Dylan Caulkin. “If I have a tyre that pops, I rely on credit.”

The teaching assistant, who lives with his parents near Truro, Cornwall, is about to start a new job as a support worker for people with learning difficulties.

At £12.24 an hour, his pay will be only just above the level the minimum wage is rising to in April. But it is more than he is getting in his current role.

“I’m very excited,” he says. The opportunity for doing overtime, too, means the change will have a “massive impact” on his finances.

He pays his parents £160 a month rent and contributes to food costs, which are higher for him as he is on a gluten-free diet. His car – a necessity, he says – costs about £500 a month to run. And he has a small amount of credit card debt he is currently trying to clear.

He sometimes has £100 left over at the end of the month for spending on himself.

“I’m very lucky to have family around me,” he says. “I wouldn’t be able to survive without them.”

He would like to see the government provide more help for young people like him.

“In the near-future I’m looking to move in with my partner but it is just so expensive.”

What happens next with interest rates is what matters most to Ellie Richardson and Billy Taylor.

They found their dream home for £350,000 last year, but the sale has been delayed and now won’t be completed before stamp duty rises at the end of this month, costing them an extra £2,500.

“You have to roll with the punches,” says Ellie, who works in sports PR. But they hope mortgage rates aren’t also about to go up.

She and Billy, a builder, have been shuttling between his parents’ and her parents’ houses in Essex for the past three years.

“We’ve worked really hard to save as much as we can for this house,” she says. “We’re pretty set on it.”

They have a joint income of around £80,000 and they have a mortgage offer that would see them pay around £1,200 a month.

But if the house purchase is delayed too long, they may end up having to apply for a new mortgage.

“The silver lining is, if we do complete later in the year, then hopefully mortgage rates could be lower,” she says.

The student from Worcester has a combination of health conditions including PoTS, which causes her heart rate to increase very quickly when she stands up and can lead to loss of balance and consciousness.

“I faint multiple times a day, I’m in immense pain constantly. I dislocate my fingers, elbows, shoulders and knees a lot.

“Most students work part-time,” she says. “I’ve been deemed unfit to work.”

Elspeth receives a total of about £1,200 a month through a student maintenance loan and incapacity and disability benefits.

She is dropping out of her current course – nursing – because she can’t manage the hospital shifts. She wants to start a new course, in astrophysics, in the autumn.

But she says her parents can’t support her financially, so if her benefits are cut, she will have to abandon that ambition.

“I’ve got more outgoings than the average student,” she says.

Currently, she has nothing left at the end of the month, after spending around £800 on rent and another good chunk on her cardiac support dog, Podge.

His food costs £90 a month, there are vet’s bills, and recently he needed a new harness that helps him to communicate to her, including when she is about to faint. It cost £1,200.

“Currently all my money goes on him,” she says.

Businessman Lincoln Smith reckons consumer confidence is the lowest it has been for 15 years.

He owns and runs Custom Heat, a plumbing firm based in Rugby. The rising cost of living has meant his customers have cut back on annual boiler services and other things. On top of that, taxes for businesses go up in April.

“That makes you shrink your ambitions, makes you think, ‘Let’s not replace people who are leaving.'”

The company is not taking on apprentices this year, and has even got rid of the office cleaner.

Lincoln himself is taking a 20% pay cut to help balance the books for the forthcoming financial year.

He’ll be earning £125,000, while his wife, who also works for the business, earns £45,000.

“It sounds like a lot,” he admits, but the cut will still mean lifestyle changes. “When you are earning any salary, you set your outgoings based on it.”

With a mortgage of £3,000 a month they are already at “breakeven point”, he says.

“We haven’t booked a holiday this year. We are definitely not going away,” he says.

But if that is not enough he will look at moving house to reduce the mortgage.

It’s a bit upsetting, he says, because it’s the only house his sons, aged seven and four, have known.

“I know it’s ‘first world problems’,” he says. “You’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything good on the horizon,” says Malcolm Hindley, a retired window cleaner from Liverpool.

A widower, he lives with his daughter, who “does everything round the house” and cares for him and her disabled daughter.

He owns his own house, but finds it hard to get by on his £200-a-week state pension, plus attendance allowance of around £80 a week.

He needs a car to get to the shops and medical appointments, and has just been in a car accident that has left him with a neck brace, on top of existing mobility issues.

He will be listening out on Wednesday for further details around cuts to benefits for the long-term sick and disabled.

Losing the winter fuel payment was hard, he says, because he feels the cold more as he gets older. Now he is worried what else might go.

“The way this government’s working, it just seems to be hitting the poorer more. What else are they going to take off us?”

He doesn’t have much left at the end of the month, but what he does have goes on ice creams and sweets for the grandchildren.

“When you see their faces it’s brilliant,” he says.

Additional reporting by Kris Bramwell & Emma Pengelly.