To think a lot of people make poor spending choices and then blame everything else?

@Badbadbunny Martin Lewis is useless at investing though isn't he.

Not sure what carol was doing but many people over complicate things and use big terms or make people think it's a maths thing.

Grandpas guide to money book would do !!

I think big corporations spend a lot of money on marketing, product placement etc to get people to spend, I also think people have different control thresholds, in addition, the amount of financial products that are available can add to poor decision making. Combine this with insecure employment opportunities, spiralling and unpredictable pricing of everything, life becomes more stressful. I have also seen people who are fortunate to come from money, so there buffer gives them a financial freedom. So - yes, I think you are being unreasonable because you are assuming a level playing field for everyone… and it’s not.

That is true. It would be a very boring headline!

Let's hope it actually happens. MSE Martin did the same as did Carol Vorderman, and here was another famous person who tried. All got all the right "noises" from the government of the time, but nothing actually happened in schools, and the initiatives quietly got forgotten.

Some do, many don’t. I would say 50% of my friends are irresponsible with money to the point of being reckless. Like I said - they’re mid to late 30s; no pension, no savings, switching jobs every year. Yet always spending on clothes, beauty treatments and evenings out.

The problem is I don’t think people will care. Young people think pensions are hundreds of years away, and ultimately the welfare state means nobody is truly 100% financially responsible for themselves any more - there’s always a safety net.

The times have launched a campaign to get proper financial education into schools.

I think most people do find that "balance". All we hear about on SM are those polarised at either end of the scale. Basically, there's no interest nor newsworthiness of normal people saving and buying normal things.

@MissyGirlie

After my adolescent experiences, I was far too paranoid.

Same with both me and DH. Both of us had very austere childhoods, as neither sets of parents/family ever had any spare cash, working long hours, etc. My mother worked full time as a teacher and then did 4 evenings per week teaching night school at the local adult education college and father worked six days a week as a shop manager, with 7am starts every day, only got Sunday off. That was just to afford a pretty simple life, crap old car that kept breaking down, no foreign holidays, just the odd day trip to the seaside (unless the crap car broke down on the way which happened a lot!), I wore hand me down clothes from my elder sibling. DH's upbringing was very similar. That's probably why it "worked" when we got together as we shared similar values re saving and spending, which we still do today even though we've both had good well paid careers, lots of savings/investments, but we still don't "waste" money, still shop around and wait for deals/discounts, still take a flask on day trips so we don't have to buy expensive coffees etc. Childhood habits are hard to break once they become engrained into behaviour. We "spend" money, but literally every penny is given careful thought, i.e. do we really "need" it, will we derive pleasure from it, could we live without it, and we've always jointly discussed anything significant/major before buying, not just big ticket items, but also anything that's unusual. We still spend money after consideration and if we are happy it will bring us joy, like a brand new car we recently splashed the cash on, but it was bought outright from savings, as were all our previous cars over the past 40 years, as we're not "wasting" money on interest!

Both extremes are not sensible to me. Spend money as you get it on luxuries, and save nothing. But I think saving everything and not having any fun or treats is just as bad.
There should be a balance.

There are obviously people who genuinely struggle - I know what it's like, because my family did when I was a teenager. And it was stressful and unpleasant.

But there are also people who spend money on unnecessary things or spend much more on something than they can really afford: rather than a week in Dorset with camping kit that will be used every other year, they fly to Orlando.

I always find it a bit surprising when people post on here that they've lost their job and have no savings, but are tied to a phone or car contract and are busy cutting out luxuries that they and their family have got used to - their weekly takeaway, going away every half term for three or four days in an AirBnB, feeding their dogs on a raw diet, taking the DC on an outing (cinema, zoo, soft play) of some kind every other weekend (with lunch or a milkshake), buying lunch out whenever they go into town, whatever. In other words, they could have have put away £100-200 a week, but had made choices that meant that they had nothing in reserve.

After my adolescent experiences, I was far too paranoid.

Ok, I was a full time worker. Had children, lost job thanks to post financial crash job cuts. Husband turned out to be trash and I was left with two young kids on my own. Needed to claim benefits. I inherited a small amount (few thousand). With that inherited cash I was able to pay for driving lessons and buy a cheap car. As a result, I got back into full time employment, which I would not have been able to do had benefits been stopped as a result of receiving a small amount of capital.
I am now a higher rate tax payer with children who are raised with work ethic etc. The alternative would have been a lifetime of state support. Regardless of what judgements you pass about people’s life choices, the math speaks for itself

Agree with this 100%.
Also the bleating about 'struggling to save for a deposit' constantly trotted out to expectations of huge sympathy. I would haver some sympathy is 'struggling' meant something other than carry on spending as usual, put a few scraps away if there's anything left and then wonder why it's taking so long. I've said this before, but there was a family on TV when the Iran war first kicked off complaining because they had had to dip into their deposit savings 'they had been saving for years' to fly home from their holiday in Dubai!

I am a natural spender with a fairly relaxed attitude to risk in general but I think a lot of problems arise simply from not knowing what’s coming in and going out, It’s so easy to spend here and there and get a shock when you see the effect on your balance. That’s why I go through everything in detail every month. Because otherwise I’d always spend more.

To my mind UC is income like any other, and if someone can save, all power to them, as budgeting over time is much better than month to month or week to week.

What annoys me is people who complain they can’t afford things that are completely inessential, as though because some people have them, everyone should. Or people who think everything they buy must be brand new. Or people who don’t pay into their workplace pension (with employer contributions) because they can’t afford it, but have expensive habits like vaping and going to the pub every night.

It's complicated, of course. Budgeting and normal life finances aren't taught at schools so many people end up in bad situations or making silly decisions through ignorance. People are constantly advertised to, companies use underhand methods to get money (eg sneaky subscription price raises) and of course things like payday loans target the vulnerable.

I'm generally not in favour of blaming individual responsibility when there are clear systemic issues at play. However, there are always exceptions, and both are at play in different situations.

I have a friend who is always saying how skint she is, to the point we are in our 30s and she doesn't want to get lunch, even coffee is too much often and we just go for a walk. But she regularly goes on holidays, weekend getaways, lots of gigs and trips to London. It's like she doesn't understand that the reason she has no money all month is because she spends it all on expensive things as soon as payday hits! She makes more money than I do!

Nobody is saying you can't save them at all. You are allowed £6k of savings without being penalised at all. The point is that benefit claimants should be using their own funds first before relying on the state, so allowing more savings is basically encouraging the opposite. You can maintain your own savings that may exceed the national average and yet claim to the state (I.e. taxpayers with less savings than you) that you need their help to survive. It doesn't make sense

Yes. But it’s nothing new. Some people just can’t prioritise. 🤷‍♀️. And then they moan and look to someone to help them out. 🙄

I agree completely OP. I have friends in their late 30s who have no pension and rent in fairly precarious situations, but prioritise clothes, beauty treatments and (very regular) nights out/trips away. They have no savings and no prospects of better employment as they hop from job to job and aren’t qualified to do anything specifically. It’s terrifying

some of my work colleagues, have always pleaded poverty, with parents etc having to step in and help out financially. Yet they’ll continuously go to the theatre and gigs plus multiple holidays.
I have never pled poverty but rarely do these things, having once had financial difficulties (through no fault of ours, I want to save and not be wasteful, I strive to save.

Well no not really because they can resist if they try hard enough.

But if they're going to blame everything/everyone else, nothing's ever going to change.

It's called being an adult and outside of any mental health issues or other additional needs, responsibility for our spending choices is all part of it.

to say you shouldn’t save benefits doesn’t recognise that costs/spending is different over the year - Christmas, heating, school holidays, things breaking, school uniform costs.

It is like a lot of things in life, some people will be able to resist certain things, whereas others will not. It is not as simple as saying stop doing xyz.

Oh make no mistake, everyone is looking at them. Why on earth wouldn't they? Do you think Labour wouldn't have taxed them to the hilt if they could have sensibly done this? It's literally the vast majority of Labour members dream and has huge public endorsement. Sadly the reality is that no country has successfully cracked this tax nut. Even if they did, there is still a worklessness crisis in this country and an over reliance on welfare. It's not good for anyone and needs to be sorted even if we could miraculously tax Amazon and Starbucks properly.

While we all focus on how much each other have - no one is looking at the multi-billion pound tax evading corporations...

Unfortunately, the way things are set up now, we need the tax from people "wasting" money on vapes and manicures and slug eyebrows to pay for climate change, wars, etc. I think there's an assumption within government that a lot of the benefits paid out does in fact come back in via tax from spending so the "net" cost is a lot smaller and it keeps the economy moving. Utterly bonkers of course, but it's where we are at the moment.