Disposable income - rich house, poor house

Some people dont even have 800 a month before all bills paid let alone after 😳

Our disposable income is only about 6/700 per month at a guess so we are actually piss poor!!! You really aren’t. You’re on a budget, but you are a million miles away from being piss poor.

Are you talking about families who have a tight budget? Or families who are, to use the above expression, piss poor? Because if it’s the latter:
a broken washing machine You hand wash in the sink and/or borrow someone else’s until you can get £20 together to buy a knackered one from somewhere else, or the Tally man can get hold of one or someone you know runs a catalogue and lets you pay a fiver a week for a new one.
Christmas You save all year or you go into debt or you shop in charity shops/eBay or you go without.
school uniforms Hand me downs from neighbours with older kids & charity shops.

insurance No insurance. Household insurance is a luxury.
car repairs No car. Or, if you’ve got one and it dies and nobody you know is handy enough to get the parts from a scrap yard & do a bodge job, then you no longer have a car.
prescriptions If you’re in receipt of benefits, they’ll be free. If you’re not, then you either tick the box to say you’re entitled to free prescriptions and hope you don’t get caught, or you go without.
travel to medical appointments If you can’t afford the bus and you can’t get a lift, you walk.
the odd couple of quid here and there for X, Y, Z days at school There is no odd couple of quid. No school trips. No fundraising events, no dressing up for World Book Day, no school trips, no after school clubs, no swimming lessons. No parties or birthday meals.

I like the concept of the programme but it is too staged. I think it would be better to run it as a series with say 4 lots of families and each week see how they are coping. Also to have practical advice for living on tight budgets etc.
Interesting how none of them ever smoke or have a dog that needs walking. It is very formulaic.

@lollipoplola I agree. Some of the poor ones are poor because as the last lady said she has champagne taste on a lemonade budget. £20k of debt buying stuff and with the disposable income she bought a bigger TV. Her priorities are warped but she can't afford to work either as she has a 4 year old. I was really glad the rich family gave her the free training, it could really make a difference to her but i fear she will be the type to always be in debt.

There was another family who couldn't afford to eat as they were in debt paying for an aquarium and other non essential things.

@Justontherightsideofnormal there's a website that can roughly place you. DH did it for us after I moaned about the show.

I often joke that we are in the bottom 10% , DH is like I don’t recon we are ?! ...,, we are the richest poor people I know. Nice family 4 bed detached with annex (for really irritating DS 18) got on the housing market before we hit puberty slight exaggeration when money bought good houses. Our disposable income is only about 6/700 per month at a guess so we are actually piss poor!!!

This show is my guilty pleasure. I'll start by saying that we are firmly in the top 10% so have no idea what it's like to be in bottom 10%. But what I have noticed is there seems to be a huge difference in the quality of life between the different poor families. For example one family were eating cereal for their dinner vs others who seem to quite a healthy £200 left over. I do think the rich families activities are put on though unless me and DH are very boring. We definitely don't do date night every week and I'm shopping in Waitrose or Tescos vs the farm shop. Some families seem to get a lot more support from the rich families than others, I get the impression some of the rich families are on their to show off what they have (which in some cases isn't a lot).

the youngest one was hardly seen in the programme at all,

It did say at one point that he had been ill in bed.

The activities are very obviously set up in the show. It used to be that the whole (poor) family went out on a day trip but increasingly now it is just the parents who seem to always want to go to a seafood restaurant and not actually be that keen on trying it The last one I watched where there was a massive age gap between the two children the youngest one was hardly seen in the programme at all, the mum and daughter were out shopping a lot and no sign of him, he can't have got much out of the experience at all.

The show will take the poor family to the farm shop. It happens every week so obviously set by them.
If you have never tried fancier food before, why wouldn't you? They can't take the money home. And the poor family may actually be told they have to buy things things in the farm shop.
It is not real you know?

@thecatsthecats

That's how I work. I h e my budget and what's left is 'fun' money. Covers takeaways, eating out tickets, even the bits like robux for kids. I started properly budgeting in October and it's made such a difference. Has definitely helped me cut down on food costs. I have brought that down about £50 a month from what I allowed at the start and that spare gets added into savings pot.

I also set the budget for 'annual' expenditures but also include clothes and shoes in that to help me keep track. Usually but stuff monthly but at least it keeps a track of it when I take it from that pot.

We had £300 as our 'Fun' money until now - going to try and cut down to £250 and see how that goes.

@MulberryPeony I have similar spreadsheets for modelling alternative scenarios. People think I’m mad but I find it comforting

@thecatsthecats that’s exactly how I’d do it with pots for everything but DH is a little more laid back!

We do have a number of scenarios on our spreadsheets in case of wages cuts and job losses to see what would need to be trimmed and at what point. A luxury I know those with a tight budget just wouldn’t have any room to manoeuvre in those situations and then have to start the cycle of loans (with huge APRs) that they then can’t escape from.

@MulberryPeony it really is. We eat a lot of cheap veg stews but it is what it is. We can’t up the budget at the moment.

Agreed, and to be honest, I went further. I had a default £25 quid in the budget for buying gifts per month, and then after THAT income was disposable.

(I quite enjoy buying gifts so going shopping for presents is a bit of a leisure activity)

I basically try and treat as much as possible as a bill, which I then split in order of how you'd cut them back:

Essentials
Savings - long term and short term rainy day
Frequent and predictable (clothes, gifts, leisure, subscriptions)
Treat savings (eg savings that you plan to spend in due course)

THEN what's left is disposable.

food obviously not good...

It’s tricky though because at a basic level good and fuel is an expense but there is a discretionary part. The savings question is what I was trying to get at - that’s why a discussion of where the ‘Disposable’ money typically goes for each family would be revealing.

I can only assume the poor families aren’t allowed to stick to their normal budget and take the rest home with them as nobody’s done that - i’d love to see that happen.

@Connie222 that sounds like a very tight budget for four.

@thecatsthecats I’ve always included food as a bill. We have strictly £60 per week for the four of us (inc toiletries and cleaning stuff).

Crosspost @thecatsthecats - agreed. Food and transport are essential bills at least?

I haven’t watched this particular show, but I find it very odd that anyone would say ‘disposable income’ and then say ‘but this includes paying for food, transport and a number of other things’. That’s not disposable income, food and getting to work are essential not nice-to-haves. Surely disposable is what you’ve got left after everything you need to live, and even things you don’t necessarily need but are committed to paying (TV licence/internet maybe?) Disposable in this house is what we actually have left after everything - for socialising, clothes, presents for others? And then saving.

I've watched this from the beginning and I was just going to say that this series 'feels' very different and makes me uncomfortable.

This taps into a pet hate of mine for including food, fuel and other essentials in disposable income.

We have always put an allowance for ALL essentials into our bills account and paid for them from there. My planning spreadsheet from when I was on a very low wage had default amounts for food shops, travel etc as assumptions.

Our disposable income is just that - the money that has no calls upon it whatsoever.

Can't for the life of me see why people don't treat food as a bill (yes, it changes a bit but it's easy enough to average it).

Sometimes the rich family would do something nice for the poor family but it was by no means expected and it felt more genuine.

Yes there was an episode well back where they left the Mum a scooter (possibly the sofa/tip people) it was acknowledged that it was "against the rules" but it was such a lovely gesture. In a flash back episode it had made such a difference to the family.

For drama the poor family usually shop in the local spar with its inflated prices, rather than taking advantage of cheaper supermarket food.

A recent one was local to me, the 'poor' family went shopping at Spar, there isn't even a Spar in the town, they would have to have been driven to it. There is a perfectly good Tesco and Aldi in the town as well as a cheap freezer shop. There is even a little Sainsbury's over the way from where they were - still not the cheapest, but cheaper than Spar and a better range.

I don't think having 80-200 a week spare is my definition of poor after everything else has been paid for

Everything else hasn't been paid for. It's after housing and bills like electricity but before food and travel. What I don't know is if annual and irregular expenses have been accounted for before we get to the 'disposable income' and that's a biggy.

Which pot does a broken washing machine, Christmas, school uniforms, insurance, car repairs, prescriptions, travel to medical appointments, the odd couple of quid here and there for X, Y, Z days at school etc etc etc come out of?

If it's to come out of the 'disposable' income then a lot of that isn't really optional and that's where a tight budget causes many people to struggle. It might look like they have £200 pw for food and a few other bits, but over time, the 'few other bits' cost quite a lot, leaving not quite enough left for food and nothing at all left for anything nice.