We no longer check to see whether Telegraph. To see our content at its best we recommend upgrading if you wish to continue using IE or using another browser such as Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome. Natalie Britton, midwife 25, lives with her husband, Glyn Martin, 30, an IT manager, and their son, Oscar, two, in Redditch, Worcestershire. I've wanted to be a midwife since I was a little girl. It started as a fascination with pregnancy but as I grew older it was about making a difference.

Having a baby is one of the most profound moments in most people's lives, so it's really special to be part of that. Since school I've worked towards a career as a midwife. I did A-levels in health and social care as well as English literature, a two-year BTech in health studies and then a three-year midwifery degree at Worcester University.

I work 30 hours a week, but it's not nine to five. A typical shift is 1. I quite like doing nights, which is 9. Midwives are classed in the NHS salary bands five to seven, based on experience, and I've just qualified.

But you don't become a midwife for the money, you do it because you love the work. I get 27 days of annual leave, which will go up to 29 days after five years. At the moment, I'm on the post—natal ward helping mums with the care of their newborns — bathing, breastfeeding, making up feeds.

I've only just started so I haven't delivered any babies as a qualified midwife yet. Even at my level, you have a lot of responsibility. You have to make sure women are getting the right drugs and enough pain relief. And we decide when the mother and baby are fit and well enough to go home.

Meet Britain's queen of 'extreme couponing'. Average salary falls 3pc in face of high inflation. Families face 'lost decade' as spending power dives, says IFS. I discovered how important midwives are as a student. I was working on an antenatal ward and noticed a woman crying.

I went up and asked her if she was OK, and she said, 'Oh, I'm just feeling a bit tearful' — which sometimes happens in pregnancy, but I could tell something was not right. So I got her a cup of tea and it was clear she was suffering from antenatal depression. She was worried about bonding with the baby and said things like, 'I just want it out of me.

And she had a very professional job so was very worried about what people would think. I got her help from doctors and mental health specialists and I went on to deliver her baby and look after her afterwards. She had a little boy and sent me a card to say she couldn't have done it without me. It meant a lot. We're certainly not living the most comfortable life.

We can't afford full-time childcare. Glyn's parents also look after Oscar, but they live in Birmingham, which is an hour-and-a-half's drive before work. So that's a struggle. The shifts don't really fit around family life. We really want to get on the property ladder, but it's not realistic because we haven't any savings for a deposit. What we earn, we're spending. My husband thinks we both work really hard and don't have a lot to show for it.

How Much on Average Does a Full-Time Firefighter Make? | cyzopuk.web.fc2.com

I think I'm fairly rewarded because of the satisfaction I get from the job. I love going to work, and not a lot of people can say that. Dean Hunt, firefighter 32, lives with his wife, Emily, 39, a phlebotomist someone trained to take clinical blood samples , her children, Connor, 18, and Harry, 13, and their daughter, Jessie, 20 months, in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire.

I'm not saying we're worth millions, but when you think about what we have to put ourselves through mentally and physically, it is a bit of a downer.

The reason we are there is because it's too dangerous for other people to go in. It's always about life and death. If you turn up and you've saved someone and they're fine, then that's a good day. If you turn up and find you're too late, that's a bad day.

After leaving school at 16, I worked as a window cleaner, and then went travelling. In , when I was 21, I trained as a retained firefighter, which is where you're only on call for emergencies. It's just something I wanted to do because it is totally different — most people go to work and sit in an office, I go to work and don't know what I might do. So I did that for about nine years, while also working as a part-time gardener and a part-time bus driver. I applied about five or six times to become a fulltime firefighter, but it's quite hard to get accepted.

You don't need any formal qualifications, but you have to sit a written test, and have key skills in maths and English if you haven't got the GCSEs. Then you do a physical test, which includes climbing a After that I did an week training course. I joined the Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service two years ago. I work 42 hours a week, which includes nights so it's unsociable hours for example, 9pm to 9am , and that can make you tired and a bit miserable, but your body adjusts.

We get about five weeks' holiday. Most people think we just put out fires.

But one minute you can be doing some maintenance on the fire engines, giving a talk at a school or fixing a fire alarm, and the next cutting someone out of a car after a traffic accident. And there are a lot of training days.

I earn about the same as I did when I was a bus driver and gardener. But it's a lot more frontline. I've been in buildings that suddenly become unsafe and you have to get out quickly. And I've been on the bonnet of a car after a crash, doing CPR with a paramedic, and the person we were doing it on died in front of us.

I'd say we struggle financially and that has been made worse by the recession — not so we're worried about feeding the kids — but we normally only just break even by the end of the month.

We've cut back on eating meals out and shop around for better deals on clothes.

But I really enjoy the work. Especially when you rescue someone and they're taken off to hospital, and then six months later they're knocking on the door saying thank you very much. You don't get that if you crunch numbers in an office. Karen Prior, science teacher 50, lives with her husband, Bob, a school caretaker, 54, and their daughters, Hannah, 19, and Eleanor, 16, in Norwich.

I've only been teaching for seven weeks, but it took me 10 years to become a teacher. After leaving school at 16, I worked as a junior underwriter for Royal Insurance [now Royal Sun Alliance]. University wasn't something anyone in our family did. My aim was to leave school and earn money. In fact, my original plan was to be a laboratory assistant in the pathology department of a local hospital because I liked science.

I had an interview and the offer of a job, but the pay was so poor. The insurance company was offering three times as much. Over the next 20 years I worked up to junior manager, but although the money was good, working in insurance wasn't very fulfilling. In I took voluntary redundancy and my husband and I used that money to buy a pub. We ran that for a couple of years, but it was such hard work and long hours. We weren't really spending quality time with the girls either, so I started thinking about teaching.

I'd enjoyed training adults at the insurance company, and science is considered quite a difficult subject. I'd always thought, 'Well, that depends on the teaching. We used to own a house, but we sold it to buy the pub, then money from the sale of the pub partfunded my studying. In I did a three—year foundation course at the Open University; then a three—year degree in biomedicine at the University of East Anglia; then three years studying for a PhD — I was excited by the fact that my brain hadn't completely packed up and wanted to see how far I could go with it.

I'm still writing my thesis. Then I did a one-year PGCE. I'm in school by 8am and lessons finish at 3pm. But there are things we need to do after work, like 'twilight training' for newly qualified teachers, staff training and extra—curricular clubs. I try to stay in school for as long as I can because I can get more done. I get home at about 6pm and then I cook dinner. From about 8pm to 10pm every day, I do whatever work I didn't get done earlier.

Teaching is very full-on, and that's partly my inexperience — it's taking me longer to plan lessons — but we also have a high number of pupils with special educational needs and they have to be catered for.

It's a bit early for me to be claiming my teaching is changing lives, but I've already had moments when a child has been struggling with a concept and suddenly you see a light switch on and you think, 'Yes, I've scored. The downside is the admin — I spend a lot of time just trying to find my way round the systems. And the hours have made things quite difficult at home.

I'm also working weekends, and holidays as well. We have 13 weeks' holiday. But during last week's half—term, for example, I spent three days planning lessons. Aldi is a godsend and I don't do convenience food. I buy ingredients and cook, which is cheaper. We don't go out very much. I went to the cinema last week — the first time I've been out anywhere since September. But what I want to do is teach and just teach as well as I possibly can, and that doesn't necessarily mean climbing the career ladder.

I don't think teachers are paid fairly. It's long hours, and a big responsibility and it's taken me a long time to get to where I am. You can just about live off the salary, but the little extras that so many of us expect from our modern lives are very diffi— cult to do.

They are expecting a second baby. That's the good thing about the police. There are so many directions you can take. Hopefully for the next 30 years I won't get bored. I used to be an actor. I went to Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and acted in pantomimes and on television.

My dad has a business running a garage and when I wasn't doing auditions I worked for him as a sales manager. The police had always been in the back of my mind since primary school.

It just appealed to me — the idea of helping people and catching the bad people. I joined Sussex Police last April, and spent about eight months training on the beat and studying at the University of Brighton. In December I became qualified as a police officer and was transferred to Eastbourne Police Station. We're supposed to do 40 hours a week, but sometimes it's nearer 60, because one shift is working seven days on, three days off.

Nights and weekends are part of the job, and that does affect your family and your social life, especially as the day after a night shift is classed as a day off, but you spend most of it asleep. We get 24 days' holiday. I deal with burglaries, domestic assaults, fights. I also get a lot of calls to suicidal people at Beachy Head. I haven't had anyone jump, but I've had to retrieve the body after someone has jumped and that is hard to deal with. My career change with its cut in income came at the same time as Lucy gave up her job to be with Gracie, so that was a strain.

We're overdrawn by the end of every month, but hopefully that will change as my salary increases. I've accepted the money as part of the job, but I sometimes think we deserve more.

People don't see what you have to do and how it affects you. We put ourselves in a lot of danger. We have stabproof vests, but they're not bulletproof. Dealing with the dead bodies and the aggression and abuse, you do come home and think, why do I do it? But then you get other days when you feel really pleased you've helped a victim, caught a suspect, found some property or helped an old person who was lost.

But it's a constant joke with my dad — he must say it at least once a week: The best way to transfer money overseas. Howard Marks, an Oxford University graduate turned drug smuggler, made millions. Now he eagerly awaits royalty cheques. Paul Daniels wasted too much on Ferraris but has made a fortune on his home - despite the flood. Following George Osborne's announcement of the Budget, The Telegraph looks at the numbers on the UK's economy and financial health. George Osborne should simply abandon changes that will reduce incentives to save and create yet more uncertainty.

A light-hearted quiz about the gaping maw of financial misery that perpetually threatens to devour us all. The Chancellor needs to capture China's Tiger Mother values in his Budget to continue Britain's roaring success.

Accessibility links Skip to article Skip to navigation. Thursday 15 June Richard Evans Bank security: Katie Morley This is why the outlook for younger generations' pensions is bleak. Richard Dyson The chart that tells you how much income you can safely draw from your investments. Andrew Oxlade Time to panic? No, follow the investment rulebook.

Can you live on the average salary? For most of us, however, it is a lot less. What is life like in the squeezed middle for average earners, and do they feel valued for the work they do? I'm now a science teacher at the Open Academy secondary school in Norwich. If I were to take on extra responsibilities I could get my salary increased. When you knock on a door, you never know what you're going to get. The kitchen coup — how cash shifted the balance of power over household chores.

The inspector calls — and house prices jump. How the Ofsted effect could add thousands to the value of your house or send it sliding. George Osborne's speech in charts.

Just stop tampering with pensions, Chancellor. How much should you be panicking about your finances?

More people in their 70s in higher tax bracket than those in their thirties. Sign up for weekly hints and tips on making investing simple. George Osborne must unleash Britain's Tiger Mother economy. Can George Osborne resist cutting pensions to save his Budget? Answer to the pension tax relief question? City watchdogs investigate financial age discrimination.

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