Can You Survive on Minimum Wage?
Budget a month on real UK low pay from 1980 to 2026. Cover the bills, handle whatever comes next and try to reach payday.
UK Minimum Wage Budget Simulator
Set a monthly budget and see if you can make it 30 days without running out of money.
How to play
- Pick a year: 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 or 2026. Each uses that year's real pay, rent, bills and tax.
- Choose where you live, then set what you spend on food, transport and your phone. Fixed bills come out no matter what.
- Start the month. Rent and bills go out on day 1, food and transport each week, and a few surprise costs (and the odd windfall) land along the way.
- One day you'll face a decision. Pick an option and see what it does to your balance.
- Reach payday on day 30 without hitting zero, or see the day your money ran out.
Questions
Can I play with different years?
Yes. Choose 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, or 2026 before starting — each uses that year's real wages, rent, bills, and tax rules rather than today's prices scaled up or down.
Was there a minimum wage in 1980 or 1990?
No. The UK's National Minimum Wage did not exist until April 1999. For 1980 and 1990 the game instead uses average full-time earnings for manual women, the lowest-paid major full-time group recorded at the time, as a low-pay benchmark.
Where do the historical figures come from?
Wages, rent, and local tax figures are drawn from published sources including the UK Housing Review, ONS earnings and rent statistics, gov.uk council tax statistics, and Hansard parliamentary records. Minor day-to-day costs are scaled using the ONS Retail Prices Index. Full citations for every year are listed in the FAQ below the game.
FAQ: Where the numbers for each year come from
Every wage, rent, and bill figure below is based on a real historical record rather than a guess. Where an exact published figure exists we've used it directly; where it doesn't (there's no official survey of 1985 phone bills), we've estimated it by scaling today's typical cost using the Office for National Statistics' long-run Retail Prices Index. Day-to-day event amounts (a broken washing machine, a bus fare rise) are scaled the same way rather than individually sourced.
1980 — why is there no "minimum wage"?
The UK had no national minimum wage until 1999. Some low-paid sectors had "wages councils" setting industry minimums, but there was no single figure for the country. Instead, the game uses the average full-time earnings of manual women workers — the lowest-paid major full-time group tracked at the time — which were £68/week in 1980.
- Wages: £68/week, full-time manual women — UK Housing Review, Table 2 (sourced to ONS Regional Trends / New Earnings Survey)
- Rent: £48/month average — UK Housing Review, Table 72 ("fair rent", the regulated tenancy system that applied to most private renters before the Housing Act 1988)
- Domestic rates (the property tax before Council Tax): roughly £12/month, based on a December 1980 Hansard written answer giving average English rates, projected forward using regional growth recorded in a separate 1980 Commons debate on rates
- Income tax: personal allowance £1,375, basic rate 30% — Personal Allowance history / History of UK taxation
- National Insurance: 6.75% — HMRC, main features of National Insurance contributions 1975 to 1985
1990 — the poll tax era
Still no national minimum wage in 1990 — again, average full-time manual women's earnings are used as the low-pay benchmark: £148/week, almost unchanged in real terms from a decade earlier, which is part of why a legal minimum was eventually introduced.
- Wages: £148/week — UK Housing Review, Table 2
- Rent: £236/month — UK Housing Review, Table 72 (private "market rent", the new deregulated tenancy type introduced by the 1988 Housing Act)
- Community Charge ("poll tax"): ~£360/year, the widely reported English average for its first year — Poll tax (Great Britain)
- Income tax: personal allowance £3,005, basic rate 25% — Personal Allowance history
- National Insurance: 9% (plus a small 2% entry band) — National Insurance history
2000 — the first National Minimum Wage years
- Wage: National Minimum Wage, £3.60/hr from April 1999, raised to £3.70/hr (age 22+) from October 2000 — National Minimum Wage Act 1998
- Rent: £465/month, estimated from actual 1990 and 2009 rent levels using the ONS's own rent price index
- Council tax: average Band D bill of £847/year (single-occupant discount applied) — gov.uk, Average Band D Council Tax bills 1993–2013
- Income tax: personal allowance £4,385, basic rate cut to 22% from April 2000 — Personal Allowance history
- National Insurance: 10% — National Insurance history
2010 — post-financial-crisis Britain
- Wage: National Minimum Wage, £5.93/hr (age 21+) from October 2010 — National Minimum Wage Act 1998
- Rent: £672/month, from average English private rent figures around 2009–10, adjusted using the ONS rent index — ONS private rental market statistics
- Council tax: average Band D bill of £1,439/year (single-occupant discount applied) — gov.uk, Average Band D Council Tax bills 1993–2013
- Income tax: personal allowance £6,475, basic rate 20% — Personal Allowance history
- National Insurance: 11% — National Insurance history
2026 — today
Figures checked 17 October 2026.
- Wage: National Living Wage, £12.71/hr (age 21+) from 1 April 2026, on a 37.5-hour week — gov.uk National Minimum Wage rates
- Income tax and National Insurance: £12,570 personal allowance, 20% basic rate, 8% employee National Insurance — gov.uk Income Tax rates
- Rent: £1,400/month, the average UK private rent across all homes in August 2026 — ONS, Private rent and house prices, UK: September 2026
- Council tax: average Band D bill in England of £2,392/year for 2026/27 (single-occupant discount applied) — gov.uk, Council Tax levels 2026 to 2027
- Water: average water and sewerage bill in England and Wales of £639/year for 2026/27 — Water UK
- Pay rise: about 2.4 million workers benefit from the April 2026 National Living Wage increase — gov.uk
What about energy, water, and food costs?
These aren't individually documented for every year in the way wages, rent, and local tax are, so they're estimated by scaling today's typical bill using the ONS's official long-run Retail Prices Index — RPI All Items, 1987=100 (with pre-1987 values from the Royal London historic RPI table). Transport is scaled using the ONS's dedicated bus and coach fares index, cross-checked against real outer-London single fares recorded by the Greater London Authority (16p in 1980, 45p in 1990, 70p in 2000, £1.20 in 2010). This is a modelling simplification, not a precise historical record — it's disclosed here rather than presented as exact.