The cost of being single

It’s a relief, albeit a frustrating one, to finally see some documentary proof of something I’ve been saying for years: being single is expensive.

Figures released from Hargreaves Lansdown reveal that single people pay, on average, £850 a month more than people who are half of a couple. That’s a staggering £10,000 more per year. All this time I’ve been beating myself up for being so bad with money because my work colleagues, who earn broadly the same as me, manage so much better. Now I know the answer: they’re effectively earring a second income just by being half of a couple.

Despite this glaring inequality, political rhetoric continues to blather on about ‘hard working families’, Single people are invisible. We shoulder the rent/mortgage and all the household bills out of just one income and yet we’re not even part of the conversation.

Singleness as a choice, not a phase

Let me be clear: I’m not single by default, waiting for a mythical ‘someone’ to complete my life. I am single because this is how I chose to live my life. However this seems to be a step too far for many people, who make ever-so-helpful reassurances that ‘oh you’ll meet someone one day’, as though finding a partner is the ultimate measure of success, or my life’s ambition.

I spent years chasing this socially sanctioned ideal. I went on countless dates with people I didn’t like much because everyone told me my problem was I was too ‘picky’. I clung to dead relationships because I’d internalised the warning that ‘;you don’t want to end up forty and single’.

Society has entrenched coupledom as the default, the benchmark of a successful life. Everything, from the way holidays are priced to the relentless stream of 2-for-1 offers, sends a clear message: single people don’t fit. Even when we actively choose this life, we’re encouraged to see it as some kind of failure.

Embracing the single life

I’ve reached a point in my life now where I feel I’ve earned the right to live the way i want; I want to enjoy a calmer life with my own bit of space and my own things around me. I no longer want to share any part of my living quarters with another human.

I rather feel that I paid my dues; I spent years living in bad flat shares, navigating petty arguments about dirty dishes and who’s turn it is to buy toilet paper. I also spent too many years in a bad relationship, cooking and cleaning up from a dinner I didn’t need or want while enduring somebody else’s TV marathons.

I don’t want to share my space anymore and I shouldn’t have to justify that choice.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the nuclear family as the only way to live. Now that around 30% of households in the UK contain just one person maybe it’s time the politicians – and society more generally – stopped prioritising families and started talking about households or, even better, just people.

Single individuals contribute to society just as much as couples and families do, yet we’re financially penalised and culturally sidelined for not fitting into the traditional form.

It’s time to broaden the narrative and make space for people to live all kinds of lives.