Job market is awful

Housing benefit and higher rate disability benefits would have to remain in place. There may also be a need to keep UC payments for children

If you are keeping housing benefits, disability benefits and family related benefits under UBI then you are keeping nearly all of the benefits structure and associated staff, AND have the cost of paying UBI to those who currently do not get it as their savings are too high (and you only need a few K in savings to start having benefits reduced) or their partner's income is too high.

It sounds like an expensive policy!!

It's actually really hard to become a barber as once you have qualified you need a barber to take you on and they tend to be family run businesses that don't employ outsiders. I know someone whose son (white british) trained as a barber but only had one interview and the guy said it was a good cut but he chose someone with more experience. He just gave up trying after so many knock backs and took a job as a security guard.

Earth is hard isn't it.

I grew up in poverty of money, and total poverty of love, which I think is the real poverty. No one cared about me

However I think I can't really complain as at least I didn't grow up in a war torn country. So many people have it so hard.

I do sometimes wonder: is the child in a really poor but loving family in Africa, more unhappy than a child in a family that is less poor in Europe but who's parents don't love them. We all go through so much. Just being alive is hard

That will just become the norm then. Since poverty is relative, when everyone is poor, noone will be poor.

Really? What planet do you live on?
There are teens at my school who have never been on holiday, have second hand phones and have a pretty low standard of living.
Open your eyes a little….

Thank you, Yes I was happier in Spain.

But money is a worry for us all and I am in a job in England. It's so hard to know what the right thing is to do sometimes.

Should I leave my regular job in the UK - for a chance at happiness. Do I have enough money to fall back on if it goes wrong. I think Im going to spend some time thinking about it. I'll write out a list of pros and cons.

Interestingly a woman that works in the next building to me, is in her forties and just left her job in England to work in real estate in Spain. Its not too late but I think you really have to think it through later in life

People in the YooKay are just going to have to accept a lower standard of living. Not everyone will be able to have a car or go on foreign holidays or change their mobile phone every year or have macciedees delivered every day.

True, I'm slightly older than you and the whole pension thing focusses the mind.
But honestly, if you're that miserable in England and you know from past expeience how much happier you were in Spain, I'd go for it - you only get the one life after all. Having an EU passport is a tremendous advantage, and I presume you're bilingual?
And yes salaries are lower but so is housing, local taxes, utilities etc.

People are more hostile and insular when their country becomes more diverse culturally etc. You'll find in Ireland and some other friendly countries you're thinking of most people look, dress, speak and behave much more similarly.

What do IT people do? Well, for the next few months I am designing a high performance compute cluster for a customer. This involves talking to dozens of stakeholders, all of whom will have conflicting views on what the cluster should do and how it will do it. My job is to come up with a cohesive architecture for the cluster that satisfies all of the hundreds of (often conflicting) use cases that the stakeholders have flung at me, while meeting budget constraints, and being in the realms of what is actually possible with the available tech. Then I need to start selecting software stacks that we can actually use to implement those use cases - this is tricky in itself as they often conflict, or have conflicting dependencies. Then I need to create a backlog of work to actually build the cluster physically (compute, network, storage), software deployment and configuration, disaster recovery and business continuity, acceptance testing, and "day 2 operations": monitoring dashboards, logging, scale out, user on/off boarding, quota allocation etc. Then I need to be available for a few months of "high dependency" once the solution is launched in case anything goes wrong.

I have never met anyone else involved in the project in person - in fact none of them even live in the same country as me, and the customer itself is in a country I have never visited.

That's not how UBI works.

I don't need a Digital nomad visa. I have an E.U passport.

I wrote that I worked in 'Teaching english as a second language' before in spain. I don't work in it at the moment in England.

I would like to move back to Spain as I was happier in Spain, but I'm scared as people tell me that the TEFL industry is not always reliable, slightly lower salary, and they prefer to hire younger people

I would love to live in spain again, but now I am in my forties I feel so much more scared about making the wrong decision job wise. you have to really think it through when you are in your forties.

What work to do you? Can you move to Spain on the digital nomad visa?

I've recently been offered 2 jobs after looking, applying and interviewing for a year without luck.

The 2 things that helped me were firstly, only applying for jobs with companies/organisations who did not or were not likely to be using huge AI trawls through CVs or applications. I stopped applying for all of those and that definitely helped my hit rate.

The other thing that 'helped' was that my DH lost his job and I had to just be determined that I was putting across that I was the best candidate for the next 2 interviews I had...those were the ones I was offered and I start in a couple of weeks at one of them.

I wanted to live in England as I thought it would be nice, but I have been unhappy in my life since Ive moved here.

The main thing: is the people. I start to feel like I'm living in a weird zombieland

In other countries, people are so friendly, kind chatty. They help each other along.

In England, many people I've met have been cold, unempathetic and seem completely unable to have a chat.

I went to Ireland last week. I went to a shop.I had never met the person working there. She heard me cough. She said 'ah do you have a cold you poor pet, I had one last week'. Then she started chatting about something else. Just a minor chatty interaaction with a stranger. i went into a cafe then, and the woman also chatted away.

Ive lived in the same town in England for two years. The people have always been unfriendly. I've gone to the same local shop for years. If I mention the weather or anything to get a small bit of chat going, they glare at me. So now I don't say anything.

A woman that I work with has an Italian student staying with her for the summer.

She said the student turned to her and said 'why are the people so weird here in England'

It's the unfriendliness that needs to be changed.

There are people in my department that should have retired years ago but can’t

It’s the worst I’ve ever known it and I’m late 40s. I’m in a ‘safe’ industry but after decades of renting I’m buying a (small) house next year and feeling terrified because if I lose my job and can’t find another I’m fucked.

I can’t see things improving. AI and automation are here to stay because when given a choice employers will always prefer not to spend on NI, pension contributions, annual leave etc. Within the next five years I expect there’s going to be a huge downturn in people’s mental health, much worse than what we saw during Covid. If you take away purpose and income then that will hit people really hard.

I’m also glad I have one dc who I will hopefully be able to help if needed. She’s also doing two languages, has a EU passport and hopes to live in Spain for a time when she’s older.

How to know which way to go in life, which direction to take. I remember my friend saying to me once 'I wish someone would just tell me what to do with my life'

Watch the IT crowd. That explains what they do

Unemployment is low in spain for the specific job market that I am looking at. They always want English teachers (teaching english as a second language) in Spain.

The only thing is that Salary can be low and I'm nervous to move again.

However, the last time I was in Spain on a lower Salary than I am in England, I was so so so much happier in myself. Ive been utterly miserable in England. and I think that is what life is about - finding where you are happy.

I feel I made a wrong move, moving to England, I'm surviving on the money Im on, but Im unhappy all the time.

Im scared to make a move in case I make another wrong decision

I'm scared to make a move. But I wish I was braver sometimes. I see people making huge moves in life, not worrying and just seeing what happens.

And yet, young Spanish people are leaving the country in large numbers. Unemployment is high and wages are low. Sure, the lifestyle can be great, but not if you can barely afford to get by.

i do think i wasted my life living in the UK and ireland. I wish id gone to live in Spain. Too late now. I'm in my 40s and I cant see businesses in spain hiring me over 20 year olds

yeah that's what they are meant to be doing.

I know a lot of I.T guys.

I.T. seems to be a very popular area to get into.

The I.T guys that I know all tell me that they don't do much. They also tell me that they don't know how to do most things. that if they are asked to do something, they look up on an internal system how to do it and then the system kind of does it itself

There has been decades or rewarding 'knowledge' at a level way above it's actual worth and devaluing societal needs like elderly and child care or social work. We have for years thought that someone who can draft a legal contract is much more valuable than someone who can protect our children from a dysfunctional upbringing. Someone who ensures our children are safe and stimulated and informed whilst we work are only valued at a 10th of the value of someone who travels into 'the city' to do what they do. About time the 'knowledge' economy became accountable to what it actually contributes for the rewards it gets.