I make 50% of minimum wage in my professional full time job as a PHP web developer in the UK, so at this moment in time, "only just minimum wage" looks pretty darn good.
My family all live in another country so I live on my own, after taking housing benefits in to account, I have £12 per month to myself (that's for food too, I eat a lot of noodles) - unfortunately, this is just a tradeoff I had to make in order to get myself working in this industry, everyone has to start somewhere.
I've been looking for a better paying job for the last couple of weeks and have some interviews, but to be honest, I figured most companies would jump at the chance of getting a 3 year PHP freelancer with a years experience with CodeIgniter, Joomla (1.5 and 2.5) integration and his own Google certified individual in Analytics and Adwords certificates.
Also, if you know anyone who is hiring in the north of England, please send me their email or url, might as well use HN to find jobs too as the "who's hiring" topic very rarely features PHP jobs in England.