{"id":12358,"date":"2025-04-12T01:31:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T01:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/12358\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T01:31:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T01:31:14","slug":"a-product-designer-on-40000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/12358\/","title":{"rendered":"A Product Designer On \u00a340,000"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Housing costs<\/strong>: Rent is \u00a3300 each. We live in a flat owned by my partner&#8217;s parents and pay heavily subsidised rent. I\u2019m grateful for this every day, they are very generous people.<br \/><strong>Loan payments:<\/strong> About \u00a32,000 on an interest-free credit card. I need to find out when the interest-free period ends and figure out whether to start making larger monthly payments (currently \u00a318.42 a month) or whether to pay it off in full from savings. <br \/><strong>Savings?<\/strong>: I have a fairly large amount in savings across two banks and three accounts due to inheritance. I also have \u00a33,400 in a separate account for when I go on maternity leave for the SMP\/unpaid portion. I\u2019m hoping to have around \u00a34,000-\u00a35,000 when I do go on leave. I also have \u00a3346 in a Monzo pot for cat food and vet bills, \u00a362.56 in a Monzo round up pot, \u00a3206.96 in a Plum account.<br \/><strong>\u200b\u200bPension?<\/strong> Yes, I have the standard salary sacrifice pension. I pay 10% (I will reduce this to the minimum when I go on mat leave) and my employer pays the minimum of 3%. Currently, there is \u00a318,000 in it, which does worry me a bit.\u00a0<br \/><strong>Utilities: <\/strong>My half of everything is \u00a350-\u00a375 gas\/electric, \u00a322.52 water, \u00a3100.50 council tax, \u00a310 internet, approx \u00a36 on washing &amp; dishwasher tablets, \u00a39 contents insurance.<br \/><strong>All other monthly payments<\/strong>: \u00a351.32 phone, \u00a3180 therapy, \u00a317.34 income protection, \u00a33 Cats protection donation and \u00a38 Shelter donation. Subscriptions: All these I pay for myself: \u00a317.99 Netflix, \u00a38.99 Prime, \u00a34.99 Medium, \u00a32.99 Apple storage, \u00a319.99 Ancestry.com.<br \/><strong><br \/>Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?<\/strong><br \/>Yes, I have an undergraduate degree in Fashion Design which helped me get my first job in and move to London. I did this in the country my family was living in at the time where university fees are completely free plus you get a small amount towards living costs from the government for studying (amazing, I know). It was quite a materials-heavy course, however, so I took out a small student loan of around \u00a38,000 which I have paid off in full. About four years ago I decided I wanted a career switch to UX Design\/Product Design and did a 10-month bootcamp to get my foot in the door and learn the basics. This cost around \u00a35,000 and I paid for this with a personal loan which I\u2019ve also paid off since.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Housing costs: Rent is \u00a3300 each. We live in a flat owned by my partner&#8217;s parents and pay&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3093],"tags":[51,474,8448,2499,16,15,8449],"class_list":{"0":"post-12358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-money-diaries","11":"tag-personal-finance","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-work-money"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114322412955447501","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}