I thought by now I would be earning thirty to forty thousand working in London as a software developer. That's what I was training to be when the condition hit me. I thought I'd have a nice big house by now, possibly even have taken a slight break from work to have kids. And I've got none of those things, because I can't work full-time. I don't have the energy, I didn't even finish the degree. We're living on one income.
I'm lucky that I bought my flat before I got ill, before I went to university for that matter, because I worked for seven or eight years before I went to university. If I hadn't bought then I'd, dunno, I think we'd still be living with our parents, because there's just no way.
I mean my husband had to take a break from his degree as well, so he hasn't been earning decent money very long. You know, he finished his degree four years later than he should've done. So, you know, we haven't got any savings. We haven't had any foreign holidays. As I say, we haven't had any holidays, apart from visiting family, since our honeymoon five years ago.
So, financially, yes, it's affected us big time. Because of the kind of benefits that I'm on as well, because I do get incapacity benefit, I don't, I'm not entitled to help with prescription payments and I take rather a lot of drugs, about four to five prescriptions a month. So it's £6.20 a time, so that's nice, especially when you can only work twelve hours a week.
The incapacity benefit helps, it nearly covers the mortgage, not quite. It doesn't obviously cover anything else. Yeah, financially I expected things to be a lot different by now. You know, especially having got married to somebody who's also a professional, that would be by now he is just, but as I say, he's only just finished his degree, because of taking a gap because we couldn't afford to pay the mortgage because I was ill. So yeah, financially we're just completely different to what we thought we'd be. |
