Ellie Monajemi is 27, she has a good job and earns more than £30,000 a year but is struggling to make ends meet.
The increase in her energy and grocery bills means she doesn’t know if she and her partner can afford to stay in the one-bedroom apartment they rent.
Ellie hopes Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will announce more financial aid in his spring budget on Wednesday, along with a plan to help first-time buyers.
And she’s not alone, other young people told the BBC they hoped the budget would include help with childcare, energy bills and pensions.
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Ellie works in public health in Somerset, where she rents a one-bedroom flat with her partner.
They find it difficult to pay all the bills and want to be able to save up for a home deposit.
“It’s been really difficult to increase energy bills and groceries are really expensive,” she says.
“We can’t afford to live here anymore – it feels like you’re being pushed into a corner.”
Ellie was the sole breadwinner until recently. With a monthly rent of £675 plus energy, fuel, food and other bills, they are struggling to balance the books.
Ellie said getting a good education and a good job “feels a little bit pointless in a way,” adding, “It feels like we’re a cog in a machine that’s failing.”
She said the government can help more people up the property ladder by making it easier to save for a deposit and by introducing another stamp duty holiday.
She also spends around £150 a month on fuel and says the government could help people with the cost of running their car by cutting fuel taxes.
Fuel taxes could be frozen for a year, according to reports, after a 5p cut in March last year.
Emily, 30, works as a psychiatrist in Buckinghamshire and has been on maternity leave to look after her eight-month-old son Michael.
But she quit her job because childcare costs are so high that she effectively should have paid to go to work, she says.
She found that locally it would cost £400 a month for two days of childcare, even with child tax credits.
Working two days a week wouldn’t have covered that bill, let alone anything else.
“You shouldn’t have to fight so much just to have a baby,” she says.
Mr Hunt has said he will try to help beneficiaries with childcare costs.
Emily’s lease on her two-bedroom rental expires at the end of the month and she worries the family will be homeless.
Her partner is struggling to find work and everything she has seen for rent in the area is overpriced.
She says Octopus Energy was very helpful in agreeing a payment plan, but any further government help with energy bills would make a difference.
“I have a feeling that everyone will owe their energy company like we do,” she says.
At the moment the government is capping a typical household’s energy bill at £2,500 per year. This is set to rise to £3,000 on April 1st.
However, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to keep the energy price guarantee at current levels for another three months from April.
Keiran White, 25, from Northamptonshire, says the level of support for energy bills is not enough.
Keiran, who identifies as non-binary, says they face the same pressures as many people, despite a recent pay rise.
The people they work with are “struggling financially” and even with government help, energy bills are “astronomically high”.
They would like to see more help with energy bills and describe the level of support as “embarrassing” internationally.
Keiran wants to know what the government plans for the state pension, as the “prospect by the time I’m close to retirement working well into my 70s” is “a bit scary”.
Keiran, who works for a mental health charity and is also a trustee of the British Youth Council, says: “It feels like we’re working until we’re dead.”
Mr Hunt told the BBC it was important “to be accountable [the] public finances’ and although ministers ‘want to help everyone’, he added, ‘you can’t always do everything at once’.
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