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

A quick google will tell you that about 16 to 18 percent of pensioners live in poverty with single pensioners being the hardest hit.
Yes a lot of pensioners do go on a few holidays a year but these tend to be the younger ones who are still in reasonable health.

Inflation has been a lot higher than this, in fairly recent years.

It’s irrelevant if your spending power keeps decreasing

Yes, thatcher decreased the power of the uniions but also demonised them. By doing so many turned their backs on them and by doing so have decreased there wages.

teachers have bucked the trend and it’s made a big difference

Spot on. Everyone I know who claims poverty enjoys take aways and holidays. Actual poverty is a very different thing.

We all confuse want with need these days.

Define tight. If you have a holiday each year and are able to buy food you enjoy eating, that isn’t ‘tight’

It’s all about perspective. If 120k isn’t working for you then I’d suggest what you’re prioritising your spending on may need to change.

I see the ‘ooh it’s just that people’s expectations are higher now’ crowd are out. ‘Ooh back in the 70s we were happy with a sandwich on a park bench in the rain, kicking away the roaming packs of dogs after our sausages. People’s expectations are just too high now. Ooooh’

Honestly, just go away! It’s not unreasonable for a family with two full time working adults to want to be able to take the kids for cake at a cafe on the weekend. It’s not unreasonable to want to be able to but the kids a lunch of soup or a sandwich at a cafe on a day out instead of carrying around a heavy bag of a days worth of food or drink. It’s good that people have these expectations. Also, kids don’t go out and play in groups on the streets anymore. It is more expensive to take them out now ( in money and time). Things change. Just like no one in the 70s had the cosy of a mobile phone contract.

Also, it’s not just expectations. Housing just is much more expensive. my first property in the late 90s was 47k. I bought as prices were starting to really rise in the late 90s and it felt stupidly expensive for a small property. I sold a few years later for 110k. Fuck knows what it would cost now.

And it’s good that people expect some reward of treats for working full time time, like coffee and cake in a cafe. It’s not a sign of a good economy if families work full time for subsistence only.

Just like its good thise bloody free roaming dogs are gone ( history note for young people People used to shove their dogs out the house to wander the streets all day.)

Although a substantial portion of pensioners do own their house outright, 18% of pensioners are in rental properties, so certainly have housing costs. Additionally not all mortgages are paid off by retirement. Pensioners do have all the other costs associated with housing though: council tax, heating bills and maintainence. A large number of the poorly maintained properties that come on the market were owned by an older person.One reason for this is that paying maintenance e.g roof repairs, gutters, painting, window repairs etc etc is unaffordable if living on a modest pension.The average income for a single pensioner is £333 a week, so many will have much less than that.Just as there are rich and poor people of working age, there are rich and poor pensioners.

@MyFairLady27 I call absolute bullshit that a couple with children can live on £20k and it cover everything comfortably. I was earning £23k as a single 22 year old in 2000 and while I had enough to cover my expenses, go out and have a modest holiday, I was hardly flush and there wasn't much left at the end of the month, if anything. Yes I lived in London but in a flatshare in a grotty area that cost me £320 pm

Of course you can have some treats but people want ALL the treats 😆. Greed and keeping up with the Joneses. Car on finance, eyelashes, nails, latest phone, take aways. Lets play I’m poor i promise bingo ?

Disagree. If you are getting into debt over things other than essentials, you need to cut back but people don’t seem to like that.

Agree. There is a certain entitlement in western countries for sure.

You are completely missing the point about the decrease in spending due to suppressed wages. If for 4 decades you suppress wages, people will obtain more debt regardless of what they spend it on

people should object to the amount of billionaires spring up on the back of low wages - rather than keep trying to cut back, then cut back and cut back further

It’s easy to live on nothing when you have everything.

When I was starting out in life and complaining about being skint, my mother would say, ‘look, I’ve made this whole lamb curry from a reduced lamb joint and an onion, I’m so happy and content. I don’t understand why you can’t do the same’.

She had a bookcase full of recipe books, a cupboard full of spices and tinned tomatoes, etc. a suite of Le Cresuet, a beautiful equipped kitchen and no worries about energy bills. She was probably planning a holiday somewhere nice.

I was sat in a draughty, damp flat with cheap clothes, an expensive bus pass, nothing to look forward to and £3.50 to last five days.

I’m now at a much more comfortable stage of life and I don’t ’need’ anything. I have nice clothes and footwear that will last years, my house is up together and is a nice place to exist, full of activities I enjoy doing. My car will last another decade if maintained. I have all the equipment I need for my hobbies. Its quite easy to be content to stay in and make do with a cheap cut of meat and a single onion now too.

I worked in a factory in the late 80s /early 90s and the women there asked me what I did and I said I was a student they said ‘ good for you. You get an education and get out of jobs like this. We are earning the same as we did ten years ago’.

My first job in mid 80s I was paid 1.44 per hour. Which was fuck all even then. No minimum wage then.

Goatinthegarden

Absolutely agree, I have the freezer space, the oven, slow cooker, spices, nice kitchen to cook and bake in

where as someone in temporary accommodation has a kettle and a fridge, maybe a microwave

Yes, indeed as Thatcher has worked her magic by the late 80s

although I was earning more in a bar job in the West Midlands, than you in 1989 at £5 per hour, so you were certainly earning a very meager wage

Of course he does! 😆 🤣 😂

We have more money coming in now than we ever had but we’ve also never felt so poor.

I had more free money when I was a student and that was only 7 years ago!

I was only 16/17 so it was probably especially low. I worked in Thornton and made up for my low wage in all the bits of toffee I chomped on!

I work 35 hours per week, £26K before tax. My husband works 37.5 hours and earns £29K before tax. so £55K total income before tax, student loan (don’t get me started on the masters loan threshold…), and pension. So after tax a total of approx £3600

our mortgage is £1,100, which is quite high for our area (midlands). We have two children and another on the way. Our children each have sports and music tuition. Im not especially frugal with groceries - I do make nearly everything from scratch, but I buy lots of organic and local produce. We also pay £500 a month for a bank loan which purchased our two cars, which is a massive luxury and not a sensible financial choice. I’d hardly say we are struggling - far from it!! We have a holiday a year and I’m sensible with things like clothes, which are nearly always second hand. DH and I have very active social lives, but we just choose to do things that are free or cost very little. Our calendars are usually jam packed so we’re not suffering for it.

I agree that people seem to expect that they should be able to spend loads of money on holidays, clothes, and going out in a way that would have seemed absurd to previous generations. We live very well and happily on our salaries, and always have money to put away at the end of each month.

Sounds like a lot of people don't have a clue about how much wages really are/were.

Factory workers didn't earn £12k in 1980 I know this because when I started work in a factory in 1992, so over a decade later, I earned £6.5k, also when DP and I bought a house in the mid 1990s, we both earned about £8k.

The poster who claims her DH earns under £13k as a tradesman with a total household income of £20k for a decent lifestyle sounds equally clueless. You only need to look at a few bills and prices to know that's clearly bollocks. He's either under declaring his income big time, significantly underpricing, or owns his own limited company and pays himself significant dividends on top.

But many students do have more disposable income than families with DC.

They only have themselves to feed, clothe and entertain, cheaper, smaller housing, student loans, wages from work and parental subsidy, can add up to a decent amount of spending money.

@intrepidpanda self employed declared income then. No-one works for £50 day. You're absolutely not living on £20k. We won't talk about tax and NI....

That's high. My council tax is just under £1500. £739 for electric/ gas, water is £264 phone is £120.

So total £2623