I can't afford the trappings of a working class lifestyle

[defeatedslug]

I can't afford xboxes or nintendos for the kids. We don't have a plasma telly of any size. We don't have cable or satellite TV. The kids don't have bikes. We don't have whizzy mobile phones. We don't go on overseas holidays, not even a week on a package holiday, and can barely do youth hostels in the UK. The kids don't have the latest, greatest, trendiest clothes. Their stash under the Christmas tree is pretty conservative. The kids wear hand-me-down clothes including stuff from NCT sales and freecycle. We don't eat out more than a handful of times a year, and maybe have a takeaway every 4 months. We have two very run down and battered cars. We don't smoke. DH drinks maybe 3 or 4 beers a week.

I dress the kids neatly, get them proper fitted shoes, smart school uniform, take them to the library and museums, feed them properly, make sure they're healthy. We both work, and pay a mortgage, and nursery fees. I'm not trying to start a daily-mail-a-thon benefits bashing thread, and I know there will be people that immediately start criticising, but it seems something isn't right that you can be hard-working and be materially less well off than people who don't work - there's not going to be much of an incentive to come off the benefits, is there?

I have namechanged but am regular btw (cod, rivers of sweetcorn, nice ham etc)

maybe you could swap your two (!) cars for some bikes?

Op are you saying that you are surrounded by people on benefits that have all those things?

I live in an area of high unemployment and have lived on benefits and my neighbours or myself have never had or have what you have listed. My neighbours (including those that work who are on low wages) that do give their children a good Christmas, then have to live in debt and without a decently decorated home.

I live in a rubbish area in a HA house that needs plastering and other repairs that i cannot afford and are not essential so the HA will not do them. I would hand wash at my sink and live on home grown veg to be able to have a mortgage and what i would call 'my own home'. It is often underestimated how where a person lives diminishes the quality of their life, so they make up for it in other ways. They spend their money and get into debt because all the saving in the world would not get them to a better place.

YANBU - I think I've heard your lifestyle described as "working poor".

What people (with children and therefore entitled to more) on benefits don't seem to understand is that every pound they get in their pocket, or free school meals, or free swimming, or council tax benefit or whatever it is, is tax-free - and that if they had to earn x amount in their pocket, they'd actually need to earn X + NI + tax. :(

I'm sorry you've had to change your name to raise a valid concern because you're scared that you'll be attacked.

I grew up in a working class household and I had about 1 doll to my name. We only had a black anf white tv but we didn't care. We had loving parents and good home cooked food on the table. Both my parents worked and we didn't rely on benefits. However, now I do have family mmbers who rely on on benefits and I can assure yo that they do not have plasma tv's etc. Living on benefits is no picnic.

Expat, your children don't have bikes because you have chosen not to buy them, right ?
Op has chosen not to buy bikes. Her choice.

Also what some people are describing is criminal behaviour (selling stolen goods etc) not working class or benefit claimants.

We're working poor. No mortgage. And you know, I just can't get it up to get arse out of kilter over people on benefits when Vodafone gets out of paying £6bn worth of tax, executive bankers continue to get huge bonuses after a taxpayer bailout, wankers like Clegg and Landelsy are making it harder just to live and people living in subsidised palaces blow £30m on a fucking wedding.

We have all the stuff you mentioned and not on high wages.

It is not what you earn it is what you spend it on.

3/4 BEERS A WEEK would go in my house.........we only have one car.

Never buy second hand clothes............takeaway four times a month.

We have a low mortgage though.

as you have namechanged would you care to say

what you jointly earn and what your mortgage is?

Is this serious? Really, you want to come round where I live and see real families on benefits, not the ones you see in the daily mail. And clearly, that is what youve been reading.

Most families, who are not scroungers and are not playing the system, are living in extreme poverty waiting for the next knock from the bailiffs or court appearance for non payment of TV licence.

And actually, in my experience, these "suffering middle class" types that you describe in your post, usual end up a bit short because they INSIST on buying a big showy house to keep up with the jones's, or of course in a catchment area to cheat the school system, and are then crippled by the mortgage which they couldnt really afford.

I have no sympathy if you signed up for a mortgage which is two thirds of your bloody income, which seems to be quite common.

BUt you have a pc/laptop and regular internet?

You poor thing how do you get out of bed in the mornings?

God I hate these threads. "Woe is me. Life is so bloody hard for people like me. All them feckless scroungers and their flat screen tellies in every room in their mansions paid for by the taxpayer, blah, blah, blah!"

Op take a drive to the 'posh areas' of your town, perhaps then you will question the way that wages are structured. The 'working poor' exsisted well before the benefit system because of wage levels.

I don't blame you for name changing, this is the one of the most ignorant snobbish thread I have ever read on here

Did you get out of bed on the especially smug side this morning, OP? Because, quite frankly, your post reads as a stream of inversely snobbish toss.

Alpinepony- there are very few benefit claiments that have never worked, so they do understand. There are job losses being announced daily, the workers of today will be the benefit claiments of tomorrow. 'Benefit claiments' are not some separate species.

Is this going to be yet another thread, where OP says something iffy to make it all kick off, then sits back and doesnt comment, watching it all go ape???

But you said working class?
Are you suggesting that the working classes dont work?

Are the middle classes the only ones that do?

I will remember that next time I am up and 4am in the morning and see all those people standing at the bus stop waiting to go to their shitty jobs cleaning up after the real hardworking population. Those who sit on their arses all day moving paper from one desk to another or attending meetings about meetings.

What ARE you saying? I dont understand. Are you talking about the working classes?
Those who have lost their jobs but have been paying taxes for fucking years before their post got 'deleted' with a weeks notice?
Or the very small minority who have never worked and never will purely because they cant be arsed?

Please be clearer so I can work out if you are being unreasonable or not.

And also please give details of how you know any or all of the above have all the things you are so sure they do.

Perhaps this thread is just to showcase how unmaterialistic you are and how you have your priorities spot on. WIth your well fitted shoes and smart school uniforms, library visits etc.

Cos we wouldnt do that would we? Us working classes are far to busy on the weed in front of the x box.

I dont blame you for changing your name.

Am literally LOLing at the thought that benefits are enough to buy all that crap! Do you have any idea how much most people on actual benefits get, as opposed to the figures the Daily Hate Mail would have you believe? If out of work people have that stuff then they are in a lot of debt.

How sad that you deny your children bikes yet you can afford to have the means to access MN, I hear computers and internet connections are rather pricey.

Also, when you talk about benefit claimants I assume you are talking about the long term unemployed, those who have never worked and have no plans to? As many middle class people, previously on good salaries, have found themselves unemployed and unable to keep up with their mortgages and may soon find themselves in the queue at the jobcentre.

of course you can afford all those things - they only cost a couple of quid each from brighthouse

ha ha at mercibucket Couple of quid from brighthouse......

Yeah with 2,89765 % APR

bargainous!!!

If you dropped ONE of your nights out a year you could buy a couple of second hand bikes.

But only if you thought they were really important.

Those beers cost a fair bit too. Your OH could have given them up for lent and you can have used the money he saved to buy those bikes.

When you say smart school uniform what do you mean? I buy mine from the supermarket and they are smart and very cheap. Perhaps you could consider doing this if it didnt offend your sensibliites too much? Do it now before the price of cotton makes them too expensive for even all those working class oiks to afford.

yeah, and for life and quite possibly beyond (not that it is actually funny )