If I am reading this right, about 43% of families had either no money or less than £100 spare cash at the end of each month

[cakeorwine]

Nationwide Reaffirms Cost-Of-Living Support As Poll Shows Cumulative Impact Of Rising Bills On Typical British Family (nationwidemediacentre.co.uk)

I can't find the data tables to get the definitions - but families with children living at home were questioned.

The research found that more than one in five (22%) families had no more than £100 spare a month by the end of last year – almost double the percentage in 2021 (13%).

The percentage of families with no money left at all by the end of each month also increased nearly twofold, from 11 per cent in 2022 to 21 per cent in 2023.

Continued high costs have led to more than two thirds (69%) of family households feeling more worried about their finances in 2024 compared to a year ago, the poll shows. The average amount of discretionary money available to families each month has dropped from £328 in 2021 to £295 in 2022 and £237 at the end of 2023.

Almost 16 per cent say they will have to work more hours to earn more money, 16 per cent say they will need to use their credit card and 15 per cent will need to borrow money from family and friends to cover their bills. Almost half (46%) are reducing other outgoings to help cover energy bills this winter.

It would be better with the data tables and definitions - but 43% of families with £100 or less, of which many have £0 is not a good picture. It also ties in with other measures from Asda and their disposable income tracker.

Benefits are lumped together with in work benefits too so your comment is a moot point.

I work full time but also get a UC top up.

those not working are either disabled or have to prove they are job searching/getting support towards work.

If there were no benefits the country would be in a much worse state that it is now!

benefits are meant to cover the basics to make sure people have a roof over their head, food and some heating, water, lighting basic clothes and cleaning stuff plus being able to connect to the internet as all jobs applications are online.

Telling someone to live within their means when household income is 25-30K is different to saying you should be able to live within your means on double that which is 60K and put you in top 10% salary wise ( over 59K)
also it depends on circumstances it is perfectly possible to live OK even nicely on 25k as a retired couple in a small well insulated and maintained house with no mortgage, the same 25k does not work if you are in a poorly insulated house with £1000 a month rent

@Danikm151 this is how much of a disgrace salaries v cost of living is. Why should anyone working full time need benefits?
You should be earning enough to cover all your expenses and have some to put aside.
This isn't acceptable.

@foghead it isn’t but companies will pay the bare minimum they can to protect profits and rely on the government to top up incomes to a barely liveable standard.

My impression of the current job market is that there are far fewer jobs. My son works in a warehouse full time and even there they have got rid of many agency staff. Profits are down. This is a sector that commonly is really short of staff! So the assumption that people can readily get jobs and off benefits does not reflect Job market reality.

Isn't the big issue that benefits (ie all taxpayers) are effectively supporting the (too) low waged? There are too many companies paying too little to their employees which maximises profit and benefits their shareholders, secure in the knowledge that they'll still be able to get and retain staff because these low paid workers will have their wages topped up by working tax credit etc.There are also scam type apprenticeship schemes for the young where the large employers get free labour with all costs being met by the government and no real job prospects afterwards

It's not just employers in the private sector, a lot of councils are now axing paid roles for qualified staff, and instead taking graduates or people who've had a career break on as apprentices or unpaid volunteers to roles that used to be paid a decent wage. This will undoubtedly affect the quality of services and causes stress to existing trained staff who have to pick up tasks beyond their training or expertise level. The lack of funding from central government is causing councils to make frankly immoral choices in their staffing.

@Absolutely45
I agree that the mismanagement of a country is what leads to its downturn. I appreciate that the UK in general will be feeling low at the moment, and that's completely reasonable, especially when you compare it to the positivity of say 20 years ago.

My point is this though. Whether the country is classed as the 5th wealthiest in the world has no real meaning if its citizens feel poor. The comparison of the UK to a slightly poorer EU country was to show that it's not about how much you have, but how it's used and the mental capacity of all involved, from the people in charge to individual citizens. Psychologically speaking you probably feel worse when down on your luck , than someone apparently and possibly objectively worse off than you, who hasn't experienced better times and is used to weathering the storm.

Yes, the UK has lots of resources, but has also evidently implemented changes to society that has caused the people to live in a way that makes a great part of them feel poor or hard done by. This happens in all countries, but if it is almost half the population living like this, it is surprising to be honest.
This is a bit off topic but when I read that around 40% of Japanese aged 18-40 are virgins I was surprised. It goes to show how important social norms are within a country . I don't know what the reasons are but to be on a population level there must have been large scale changes that caused this shift .

I'm not saying on an individual level , but I believe that on a societal level changes have been made in the way whole sways of society in the Uk regard finances. It will have been manipulated that way by those who benefit, but probably the population as a whole was vulnerable to it.
Maybe it started when they introduced high fees for further education and normalised getting into debt, which may have been a good investment but started to become less so as time went on? Or possibly the way the benefit system is run which reduces the responsibility of the extended family and passes it to the state?

I do agree in some part that the British ideal of a 3 bed semi detached, a car, two children and a garden is something that the average salary can't support without external help due to many years of wage stagnation.

I am a lucky person, we have 120k household income in London and have no kids yet but TTC. We go on many lovely weekend breaks and we eat out very regularly and get coffees/takeaways. We own our (small) 2 bed flat. However, we do things that help us to be able to afford our lifestyles- including not running a car (and DH cycling to work), living in zone 3 (and thus living in a flat) to cut down on commuting costs, buying a flat near family (who we used to live with before buying our flat to save our deposit) to reduce future childcare costs. Not everyone has the same options but what we have done is try to make sure the majority of our basic costs are as low as possible in order to facilitate the biggest basic cost of all- housing.

I think it would have been incredibly easy for us to feel that we deserved what many British people have- a car, a semi detached house and moved further out to facilitate that. However the reality is that our jobs are in London and in person; so we would have to spend 10k per annum commuting for both of us. If you add higher council tax, increased heating costs, childcare fees on top and the costs of running a car, i doubt we would have much spare money left. Perhaps not as bad as no money at all at the end of the month but not far from that. This is why in a sense, i don't regard us as middle class because in a sense our lifestyles are not just facilitated by our salaries but also by our lucky circumstances which surely properly middle class people would not require!

I am not saying people shouldn't have a semi detached house, two children and a car, i think that it is self defeating in a way to advocate people should have less because honestly we deserve to progress and people who work hard deserve to achieve their dreams or at least what their parents have. I am just saying however that if wages are stagnating, suburban life and all its associated costs may just be too high a price for the average person (no matter how much 'cheaper' it may seem when buying or renting that house).

I don't think i am uncommon at all, even very wealthy people who were gifted flats by their parents seem to live in the same way as i do (raising children in a small 2 bed flat). I was reminded of this when looking at this flat advert- https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/144209438#/?channel=RES_BUY The seller seems to have lived in this 2 bed flat since she was a uni student (implying her parents bought it for her) and now is raising two children with her husband in the same flat. Previous occupants included her two friends and her sister. If even rich people from families who can afford to buy them apartments in central london live like that (she is also a professional), this illustrates how serious the housing crisis is and how are people from significantly poorer backgrounds supposed to cope?! Yes they can choose not to live in central london but if everyone moves further out, at a certain point, prices also rise. Which is why the average room outside london now rents for in excess of £600

@itchyjumper Yes i get what you re saying.
Debt though has always been a thing in the UK, Never Never as my Gran called it with those catalogue's from the 60s and 70s.

But the reality is, for many people, poor health services, going into debt just to pay rent and food and children in poor quality education.

Or as a friend of mine told me recently "i'm working 40 plus hours a week just to stay poor"

Its a lot easier to feel happier when you can afford the basics, if not the luxuries, we now have 10s of millions who cannot afford to house and feed themselves.

Meanwhile we have a PM whose family wealth is some £740m and he pays 22% tax on his earnings.

@Absolutely45 yes, I totally agree. It's sickening to see how out of touch some people are☹️

UK GDP doesn't mean much if it's expensive to live in that country and if the wealth is unfairly distributed.

People say we are the 5th richest country in the world - but what does that mean and what does it look like to live there?

Earning more money than someone in another country doesn't mean much if things are expensive in that country. It helps if you travel to a country with a cheaper cost of living but is rubbish if you move somewhere with a higher cost of living.

Can I ask if you have nothing leftover and then put a holiday on credit card then how do you pay that back? I had a ex partner who used credit cards and the interest quickly spirals out of control

£5k after all bills food and fuel.

I am constantly pulling different levers to get the books to balance. So if there’s a month for example where there’s a break on council tax I’ll pay more off the credit card etc.. a holiday on the credit card will not significantly increase the monthly costs, but obviously it creeps up over time if not fully paid off

That's nice dear.

Yes it is actually thank you very much. Am I meant to feel guilty for it?

How about not rubbing people’s faces in it on a thread like this?

The thing about the internet is that it can attract idiots. An advanced search of this poster reinforces that view.

Yes. I’ve seen some other posts by them tonight. Always boasting about their wealth.
Money can’t buy class, as they say.

We are living in an increasingly polarised world of the have's & the have not's. Life is getting more & more difficult to afford for everyday things & the have's frankly couldn't give a shite as it doesn't affect them. However add into the mix the images of 'perfection ' we are constantly bombarded with through social media etc, we are increasingly discontent with our lot, inclined to buy into a lifestyle many can't afford 🤷‍♀️

A friend told me that in four years her bills have increased by £600 month. That’s gas, mortgage etc. the fixed costs. Water is going up 6% next month.

I'm not surprised people have nothing left. The govt love it - keeps us little people in our place ie working in low paid jobs, topped up by benefits and impossible to get out of this. Number of graduate jobs has reduced by 40%. Public sector is shrinking because of lack of proper funding. This country is fuxxxd .