To think it’s crazy that National Minimum wage is £27k

Some of that early increase of NMW went hand in hand with a reduction of tax credits and benefits.
It hasn't simply doubled in real terms.

This seems a bit pointless unless you're posting some facts about relative average wage inflation, cost of living inflation.

Presumably minimum wage is propped up by decent benefits if you have kids.

No one in this country appears to be wearing rags or malnourished.

That sounds quite low for a family of 5 and definitely in my town (just outside Manchester)- I assume you live in a 3 or 4 bedroom property - I feel most families would struggle on that if they weren’t in receipt of any other money, based on how much rent and council tax here is.

Do you get any benefits aside from child benefit?

And could you please give us a rough breakdown of your monthly costs
and if you rent or own?

Although I’ve just noticed your two oldest work so I guess they are adults with their own income on top of your 30K so that may explain some of it as you won’t be buying much for them.

Side note this is one reason why council tax is so unfair, a house with 3 or maybe 4 working adults isn’t paying much more in council tax than someone living alone - bonkers.

I think a big issue is the lack of differentiation too.

NMW can be paid to unskilled workers with no qualifications in entry level jobs - teens starting out for eg. It is also offered to workers with skills, experience, responsibility etc such a teaching assistants . Not much more is offered to workers with external qualifications such as lifeguards and Health Care Assistants. For only a pound or 2 more an hour you can be a qualified nurse with years of experience!

Bringing the NMW up is clearly necessary, because it is still not enough for a good standard of living but other wages need to go up commensurate with skills, experience and qualifications - and they don't!

Most new cars costs more than £20k!??? £20k is below min wage. Figures don’t add up here

I am aware of that. The poster I’m referring to has children though.

Deleting because I'm very late to the party!

Yes. If they have dependent children. Children grow up, some people do not have children. Yet they still earn minimum wage and do not get benefits

We get by on £30k. We don't go on holiday, although that's not related to money and we only have one car which we brought second hand but it's perfectly doable. There's 5 of us.
Admittedly my oldest two do pay a small amount of rent (£100 a month) but if they couldn't because they lost their jobs or whatever it wouldn't make a difference. We used to be far worse off when they were little literally living paycheck to paycheck.
Obviously prices have gone up but I think people expect too much sometimes, they want everything new and everything now, it's why a lot of people could live on less but choose not to.

Plus a family with one full time worker and one part time worker do not have an income of £20k, simply because, as is the point of the thread, NMW is 12.71 x 52 x 35 hours per week as a minimum for full time = £23k, or £26.4k for 40 hours.

If a full time and part time worker work 50 hours between them, that's £33k pa, but it would be a poor tradesman who's only earning NMW.

A family with 2 kids and earning 20k a year will be entitled to benefits though. A couple over 25 with 2 children and no housing costs would be able to earn 36k a year before universal credit was zeroed out. More if they have housing costs.

Me and DH earn around 75k between us but he does work at least 55 hours a week and I work unsociable hours for that and I would say we still need to keep an eye on our money. We do have a toddler in nursery though and DH pays around £500 in child maintenance a month as well as pocket money, extra curriculars and his child’s phone bill.

My first flat 20 years ago cost me £475 a month for a 3 bed upper cottage flat, that same flat is now £1100 to rent today. Our mortgage is £900 a month for a 3 bed semi. I don’t know how people are surviving with rent prices these days.

Exactly what I was going to say! That amount is basically all you have to claim as “paying yourself”

Plenty of people on minimum wage do not revive benefits

It’s simply not true. 1 full time wage is more than 20k even on minimum wage and they’ll be receiving a significant benefits top up.

Its called living with your means as best you can. I've been a single parent on £35/week because universal credit decided they'd paid me in advance for 2 years, to a household with £8k monthly income and everything in between. When I was getting basic unemployed single parent (was about £110/week and rent back then) i could pay my basics but there was no fancy clothes, holidays, food, anything. I paid my gas, electric, food, CT, phone and everything was second hand. I didnt smoke and rarely drank. This lasted 6 months as I do like nice things and working a ft job always gave me enough money to have a few nice things. But certainly couldn't have afforded foreign holidays/nice car/copious nights out when I was a working parent nearer the nmw rate which is what I see now in my circles.

No. Somebody already asked me this and I replied. We don't get any benefits except for Child Benefit.

They probably do because it's always been paid at NMW typically, which has doubled in that time period

NMW 2012 was £6.19 ph, now it's £12.71, ie more than double.

Well, if you actually RTFT….

Doesn't match up at all. TA's for example do not get paid double what they did 14 years ago.

For the billionth time, this reply was NOT from the poster who said they were living on £20k combined. It was a joke by another poster!

So what you mean is hes self employed and on paper earns £12.5k, not even going to ask about benefits.

I couldn’t afford to be a sahm. The most I could afford was job share.

Well apparently it was a joke that we should all have got instantly but I still can't see the reference.

To me it looks like someone who is clueless with a DH who's income is 'tax efficient'.

Clearly they're not living comfortably on £20k pa even if they're mortgage free so either the rest of his income is going through a limited company, as could a lot of their personal expenses eg 'company' cars, it could also be the case that poster is employed by the business to do the admin work that backs up his trade.

Or its out and out tax evasion which she'll be colliding with by paying for things like groceries, petrol etc in cash.