to not understand how peiple afford to live?

[pregnantpause]

I'm so fed up ATM. Me and dh work, me part time, as young dc, we live in a very cheap area if the country (and I suppose our wages reflect that), jointly we bring home under 26 thousand pa). We get 40 a month tax credits, which doesn't seem much, and I've just got a letter to say they've over paid us by 200 in the last year. HOW? Forty quid a month, and that's overpaid? How do people survive? Paying that back will take us into overdraft ans furture payments will now be around twenty quid less? Are we the scroungers everyone talks about? Am I the lazy feclkless parent that won't get a full time .job and sponges off the state? I can't go full time, my employer has no hours to give. Dh can't get a better paid job- there are none. With energy bills going up and food costing the earth how do people live. I seriously worry that people with even a little bit less than me will be pushed over the edge, old people, disabled people, how can people afford to survive now? Aibu to think that it won't be long (or already happening) before people are made homeless, just because the cost I'd living is so far apart from what we earn?

OneLittle yes how true, it must drive you mad when people say 'just move' -- how do people not realise how costly it is???

Dolomites that is exactly my feeling, I am terrified to go back to the UK and then find ourselves temporarily out of work or underempoyed... the difference is so great!

For instance, here, my DH's latest contract has just run out, he is looking for work. Unemployment benefit is significantly more, and there is no workfare. There is free retraining, for example my SIL was able to retrain in IT support and get a good job. If you find a job elsewhere in France they will help pay for relocation. Also we don't lose our childcare subsidy while DH is out of work, which is crucial.

There is also more social protection, for instance you cannot evict families during winter months.

Just to point out -- all of this existed under the right-wing government as well. So it's not like conservatives have to automatically be so ruthless, I feel like there is something special about the Tories (like the Republicans in the US) that makes them so shamelessly pro-business and heartless.

We moved to Australia with £15,000 in total but somebody I work with got her flights paid for, 4 weeks accommodation paid for plus she is earning more than she could dream of in the UK. If you can scrape the cash together and find the right company I would say get the hell out of there.

dreaming We live in a "poor" area, but it's not the social equivalent of Easterhouse. We are both terrified of coming back with say 10k and burning through it in a mater of weeks and finding ourselves totally and utterly fucked with the children in shit schools and us in a damp flat we're paying through the nose for.

There is something odd about the UK though. I have family in the The Netherlands and was back for a long visit recently. They live near the German border so am also familiar with that part of Germany. Its so noticeable driving about the countryside/small towns that there are so many more small businesses, most of them in engineering/manufacturing/architecture. Everything seems more affluent/people are out working during the day. Not all the good jobs are in big cities where its expensive to live.

I can't believe how low the wages are in the UK. I have friends who graduated at the same time as me in law who have given up working or do casual/part time work because they weren't clearing 30k pa for long working hours and a shit lifestyle. Yet there are far less clever people working in one of the many middle management jobs in an under-achieving public sector who are rewarded far, far more.

And everything is so expensive, partly due to Government policies. For instance, I have 2 rental properties in Scotland, which are "HMOs". My tenants are young professionals who are moving to the city for their first or second jobs. Yet due to the ridiculously strict HMO rules, I spend around £4000 a year on each flat just changing things to keep pace with the HMO licensing regime. Last year it was new locks and sprinkler systems, next year its all floors have to be carpetted. Add to that gas, electrical and energy efficiency checks, the HMO license fee (£680 pa), new fire extinguishers and smoke blankets, and constant repair of the industrial standard smoke alarm system, and I don't actually break even, despite owning them for years. Most of it is far higher standard than in hotels, factories or homes you might find children living in.

While I can subsidise that cost to a certain extent, because its a long term investment, those costs are passed onto tenants by most landlords. It also means bigger deposits, more landlord imposed restrictions on what you can and cannot do, and so on. Local authorities are not providing enough subsidised housing to young families and are looking at the private landlord to do so, but are socially engineering the system to carry out their own policies.

My friends in Holland cannot believe how people in the UK in shared flats are not trused to close their own doors after them.

We could move to Australia but our fields pay would be similar but cost of living -housing, food, clothes, books etc would be so much more!!

geegee, I think it's a bit of a low blow to criticise people who work in the public sector. You may think we're less clever than you and your law graduate friends but that's your opinion not fact. Setting groups of people against each other (workers v those on benefits; public v private sector) is a particular ploy of the current government, divide and rule and all that. By making the comments you have about how undeserving and under-performing public servants are, you're just falling into that trap.

Actually, I'd say it's a "ploy of the shadow opposition" to start bleating about "divide and conquer". Claiming that some public sector workers are on a gravy-train does not indicate any particular political persuasion. Please let's not make this political!

I thought we were all just having a whine and a gripe. My slow-cooker is on - the beef that I got in the cheapskate aisle yesterday.

Of course it's political, how could it possibly not be

Belgium and the Netherlands have a strong, wealthy merchant middle class which doesn't exist here due to snobbery.

Its completely acceptable to be a middle class plumber over there, and to be fair many plumbers earn well over the natinal average in this country, but we have a wierd snobbery about it so don't protect the rights of the merchant classes.

bogwobbit Oh please don't turn it in to a sixth form common room debate complete with photocopied pages from the Socialist Worker.

ethelb Oh there is most definitely snobbery here believe me, from the French-speaking Flems living in Gent (Gand in french ) who believe that by speaking french they put themselves above the locals... through to the fur coats, gems and nouveau riche in the former farming communities of the "ECU-founding" Maastricht.

But , what there is (imo) is more of a flattening of wages, i.e., a shop worker won't earn a tenth of what a solicitor does - so there's a much broader middle-class as you suggest in terms of finances at least. Of course there are always the rich rich, and there are always the poor poor - but there does to my eyes seem to be a far smaller proportion of these.

Thanks for the clarification Dolomites, I just thought that the education system wasn't as divisive as it is here. That's the impression I get from my DPs Flemish family. ie my MIL has a degree in customer services, so in Belgium she earned a sensible wage for what would be considered a menial job, and she was generally treated like the graduate professional she was iyswim. Then she came to work over here....

bogwobbit I agree with you- the current government are making merry with divide and conquer tactics. As long as everyone resents anyone who has a little bit more or a little bit less, private bemoans public, those not claiming benefits bemoan those who are, then they can happily keep cutting our services and shovelling funds into the hands of a few- that's not 'socialist worker sixth form common room' thinking- it's obvious. All the talk of gold plated pensions, scroungers etc is so unhelpful and I think it also adds to the current gloom by making us that little bit more resentful, bitter etc.

As for me, been teaching 16 years or so, work four days per week, have TLR, recently separated, two dcs, (one in nursery for another two blimmin years) work four days a week and have less than £90 per week now for all food, petrol (40 mile daily commute), clothing, outings, car tax, contingencies, blah blah. So I don't know how people afford to live either! Whatever sector they work in.

Food was £65 this week- will have to last the fortnight, and EVERYTHING in my trolley that could be was 'everyday value/basics' type stuff. Couldn't afford fresh veg so bought a couple of bags of frozen so at least the kids can have veg.

BAH!

Has anyone considered radical living arrangements to cut costs? Other than nursery / childcare fees, mortgage or rent is the other big cost it seems. If you own your own house have you tried having a lodger? If you rent, have you considered renting with friends so you get a bigger house together? Or maybe living with parents instead?

Just wondering what we would do if either me or DH lost our jobs, and I think the first thing would be to move all the family into our one huge bedroom and rent out a room to someone - ideally someone who is a friend of a friend / well vetted of course, but as DH works from home that is less of an issue.

It costs less than double to rent a house double the size, so is one solution shared housing? If so who would you be prepared to share with?

I think it's more common for single parents to do house shares now.

I agree that we will see a rise in crime and riots.

I also think that we will see a rise in mental illness. Not only many people will face homelessness and poverty but on top of that they 'll also have isolation and blame and hostility. Terrible combination.

And on top of that you must shut up and be grateful to the Goverment because at least he provides us running water, eh? (with that we can wash our sins i.e. the 'wrong' degree we got, or going clubbing in feb 1989 or daring to have children)

ethelb Belgium and the Netherlands have a strong, wealthy merchant middle class which doesn't exist here due to snobbery

Comment from my Dutch friend - "Most people are middle class in Holland". In the UK, this would be considered a snobbish thing to say.

There are so many class hang ups in the UK. Yet it doesn't seem reflected in salary or standard of living. For instance, I have horses. To your average urban based Brit, I am a "toff" or a snob, rich and far removed from "everyday people's lives". Yet almost every second person has horses in Belgium or Holland, or has a relative that does - its just a nice sport for people to do.

And yet so many people here have to have a detached house, they cannot live in a more practical, space saving terraced house (I bought a new build one recently and the number of comments I've had recently from perfectly ordinary people about hos it is, how other people wouldn't like to live there as they'd want a bigger garden, etc, etc). And they have to have a car, commuting by bike is considered something you only do if very eccentric or very poor.

Private schools - why? Why is the education system not good enough to provide an education for all and why should perfectly normal people feel it necessary to scrimp and save to pay £10000 plus a year in fees to send their children to another school? How can this situation exist as being so normal??

And bogwobbits yes I do think solicitors should earn more than 30k 5 years after graduation. I'm not a lawyer, but my friends got some of the highest marks at school to get into their degrees, so I'm not sure why they should be so undervalued. Likewise I have a friend who is resigning from the police, because he doesn't make enough money to pay the bills at the end of the month, despite living in a rented room in a shared flat and having no dependents. These are the sort of people that form the backbone of a healthy society, and if they are not making a living wage ie one that provides a reasonably comfortable standard of living, then how will young people be motivated to work hard?

We live in local HA housing...don't think we will ever be able to save to buy our own home :(

Too early for

This thread has veered off a bit since I started reading it at the start..........anyway, I'm buggered if I can find where to post this but there's a couple of pairs of shoes on my profile free to anyone who wants them. PM me!

Well, never having read Socialist Workers or been in a sixth form common room, DolomitesDonkey, I'll have to bow to your superior knowledge on that one.
geegee I'm not saying that lawyers shouldn't earn more than 30k, what I did object to was your generalisation that 'middle managers' in the public sector don't deserve to earn more than that. Where is your justification for that? And how do you judge that the entire public sector is under-achieving?
I think it's tragic that people in all sectors are having to struggle so hard to make ends meet but I do genuinely believe that the current government try to 'divide and rule.' At the moment, civil service terms and conditions are being 'reviewed' with the basic premise being that they are worse in other organisations so we can make them worse for civil servants too. It's a race to the bottom.

Bogwobbit I based it on the fact that I have friends who are solicitors in the public sector, who are paid less than middle managers who are not qualified in the relevant field, who do not have degrees at all in fact, and are reputedly incompetent at their jobs in an under-performing council. Said middle managers are paid around 46k or more based on salary grading. Friends also said they feel there are too many middle managers with too little to micro-manage and not enough valued professionals like them at the coal face producing output. The council itself is definatley under-achieving in that is is functionally bankrupt and if a company, would be in administration.