It IS somewhat galling when you see that first year medics get around 28-30k plus free accommodation though. I also know someone who chose a PhD on the basis that it was better funded than his other choice - strnage method if you ask me.

12k - well, say about 300-350pm max for accommodation, is about 3500-4000 pa. Give 8k for food, bills, expenses, and nice stuff.

Still, I guess one of the good things about a PhD is that you have so little time to spend the money that you save a lot!

Why is it galling that medics get 28-30k for a job where they will have to work weekends and nights and after being at university for 5-6 years? To be honest, they don't get paid enough for the amount of work they have to do.

Well, I have a very good friend who's a medic (JHO) and he doesn't do as much as you claim. He rarely works evening and rarely works weekends. What I was meaning is more than it's galling about how little a post doc would get, as opposed to complaining that a medic gets too much.

I get £17,500 a year and I am pretty comfortable although not rolling in it! But then I am in London but apart from rent being a bit more expensive and having to pay for travel all other living costs are the same. I spend about £80 a week on food, socialising, hair cuts, clothes etc.

Off the top of my head I pay £300 a month on rent add to that ~£25 a month for bills (gas and electric), another £25 on my mobile bill, £30 a month bus fare etc into uni, £30 a month on gym membership and sport and £100 a month on food. That covers half of the money I get, and that's before you even consider clothes, trips to visit friends/parents, music or dvds, nights out etc. It's quite scarey now I think about it

i get 14 k and just about do ok money wise. i do live my partner and rent privatl rather than student rental which i guess makes a difference. if you live in shared accom. it would probably make things much easier. although most PhDs have debts to pay off from the student years which eat away at the salary!

I get 12,000 and feel pretty rich; mind you I don't drive at all or drink very much, and those two things seem to be the biggest expenses for other postgrads.

Mind you talking of medics wages, I'm tired of being expected to sympathise with nurses, who get 22,000 to eat chocolates and complain by all accounts.

Well there was an article on the front of our local paper yesterday about how, to get on the housing ladder in my area, in Lancashire (hardly upmarket), you need to earn around 30k per year. Who earns this, except medics, lawyers, or people doing non-jobs like 5-a-day coordinators?

I still dont see how anyone can live on 3000 or eve 3500 a year. even if you're only paying £40 a week rent (and there aren't many places you can do that) and £20 on food, that leaves like £5 a week for everything else - bills, transport, clothes, stuff you need for study. even if you are a complete hermit and never go out.

but 12k I reckon is enough. the people who are struggling are mostly the ones who are self funding or the one's whose depts are really stingy about research expenses.

i couldnt get a morgage on anything on my salary alone.. nor on a post doc one if i didnt buy with someone....!

shelleyanne,

That's something I've been thinking about when I come to finish, hopefully I'll have a postdoc job or something to go into, but I won't be able to afford a house, By the time I finish my Phd I calculated I'll have spent ~£20,000 on rent in the 7 years I'll have been at Uni!!!

similar for me.. its just crazy. i have heard some morgage lenders will give more to PhDs .. but im relying on the other half getting a wage hike and hence increasing the amount we can borrow!!

I'm hoping to get out of this country once I've got a PhD - I'll miss my family and football, but I'll spend my live paying housing rent and ridiculous amounts of tax otherwise.

Yes, our generation will never afford a house, a pension, or anything. Our parents and grandparents lived in a time when they could buy their own house, never knew unemployment; didn't have to live from short-term contract to contract and could make savings. And they now get pensions, winter fuel payments, discounts on transport.

I've beein thinking about this lately cos our local paper is campaigning for more winter fuel payments to all pensioners; which makes me think that all the public money is going to one privileged group of society that has never exactly been short of money anyway.

I know...I look at my grandparents houses and pensions and at my parents (to some extent) security. Obviously I am glad that my grandparents have material comfort and would never begrudge the financial rewards of any labour...but I still weep to think that I will never get to that stage...