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?

If you look at the average annual salary in this country, and compare it to other Northern European countries with a similar cost of living, I think you will find it is around £8000 per annum lower on average.

Theres your answer. This country is shite. Not only is it expensive to live in, but the salaries are crap.

YANBU Im a single mum work full time and Im really struggling. Ive got to phone Npower this lunchtime as my standing order hanst been paid this month. Feel like crying but where will it get me ; 0 (

It is all very worrying. I can't even imagine what it's like in Greece and Spain at present. I just hope things turn around because I think people are at breaking point and it can't go on like this. Especially because of the awful harvest this year (god, we're like medieval peasants all over again).

Someone on here once linked to this site cheap family recipes and I have to say it's saved me a lot of money. I can't say I'd make all the recipes (some of them really wouldn't keep growing children full after a long day) but most are excellent.

(god, we're like medieval peasants all over again).

The Tories would love to go back to feudal times! In fact, I think that is their modus operandi.

I agree with geegee888, the wages in this country are piss poor compared to the cost of living. I think in our families case, we will actually have to emigrate, even though obviously the recession has hit worldwide, my DP is nearly qualified in a highly skilled, stable profession and the renumeration here is just not equal to his skills. I don't want to leave the country but it would be ridiculous for us to struggle when we could have a better quality life elsewhere.

If you look at the average annual salary in this country, and compare it to other Northern European countries with a similar cost of living, I think you will find it is around £8000 per annum lower on average.

It would seem to not be so, in fact we're the highest in Europe.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

The average gross wage in the UK is not £44,000 per annum, nor net of £33,000! And in Germany I'm pretty sure the average gross annual salary is £42,000. Those are some strange figures!

Does anyone need any 0-12 month clothes for a baby boy? I've just bagged up DS old bits for charity but could just as easily send them to someone here who needed them. PM me. It's a huge bag which I can easily split if I get more than one reply.

Do check you are entitled to everything though OP housing benefit, council tax etc always worth a check. The Government says need £330 ish a week to live on (I think roughly) so could get some benefit. Think Martin Moneyman does a good link.

Do you think we could set up a mumsnet version of freecycle on here? I think it would work very well.

Are their any figures out yet relating to Universal credit? We are not (thank god) in a group that will loose their credit, but people on here seem to know a lot more about it than I do. Is there a calculator available to see how much my payments would change?

Thank you for the link to cheap family recipes, that looks fantastic. I have been worrying and wondering how to cut our food bills, I make most things from scratch and we're pretty much vegetarian but having this all planned out for me should help to cut them in half possibly. That will make a big difference to me as we're another lot with a credit card needing to be paid off.

I am lucky that we own our house (interest only mortgate though) and can still afford heating and hot water. Something that has changed (for the worse IMO) is that I now Ebay stuff which previously I would have given to charity. I'm trying to do half and half but it does mean a charity will miss out because I need the money myself. It's a selfish act but not a selfish motive.

I try to think that we are still lucky in this country, things are worse elsewhere but when I think of children going hungry or cold or with poorly fitting clothes I could cry. What have we come to?

Actually I've found this calculator

I have no idea if it's in any way reliable though? I don't really understand the breakdown though - it's talking about housing support and child support? I don't need child support I live with my children's father unless it's the new name for CTC?

Around here I just don't get it, it's kind of the opposite, I don't know about rents but the average income in Scotland is about 22K. There's people I know with jobs that are on less than this but their kids have designer clothes, they go abroad, have newish cars and I think how the hell can you afford it all? With the cost of petrol/food etc.

We have an ok-ish income and it's a struggle sometimes to get to the end of the month.

I agree somethings got to give soon

Phacelia thanks for linking - could come in real handy over next few months!

I have just tried the universal credit calculator based on my present earnings.

I will be £10 per month better off than working according to the website!!

IfNot, I don't mean to sound rude but if you have a payday loan you keep rolling over, you haven't sorted your debts. That is a problem that will spiral and spiral. The reason I mention this is because at the moment you can get legal aid for debt advice, but after next April it will no longer be covered. So it may be that by the time you want/need to access advice, it won't be available. I'd urge you to go and see someone soon.

Probably not much help, but for those of you who like an occasional splurge on meat and batch cooking, Morrisons have pork shoulder for 2 pounds a kilo this week. It's very cheap meat and someone is making a thumping loss on it (i suspect its not Morrisons though). Good for casseroles and roasting.

Probably not much help, but for those of you who like an occasional splurge on meat and batch cooking, Morrisons have pork shoulder for 2 pounds a kilo this week. It's very cheap meat and someone is making a thumping loss on it (i suspect its not Morrisons though). Good for casseroles and roasting.

AMAZIN My calculations made it look like I'd be £100 better off a month!

I don't know how reliable it is though, seems to good to be true so I don't think I'll be breaking out the Bollinger just yet

Yanbu, and it will only get worse!

People are having to work longer and harder for the same money due to a realistic fear of losing their job and not being able to find another one. Big business are rubbing their hands in glee.

I honestly believe that in a few years time workers fights will be stripped back to the bare minimum.

An example of this would be a company I worked for needing extra staff to cover child care ratios, those staff being expected to work for lieu time. Said lieu time has to be used in 6 months. There would be no time to take the lieu time as bare Minimum staff so lieu time would be lost.

Free workers for that company then.

The pork shoulder in morrisons is an excellent deal. We plan on buying 6kg of it this week when we get JSA. 2 kg will be chopped in half for 2 roasts, 2kg will be minced for meatballs and the last 2kg will be diced for casseroles and curries.

Also I'd recommend the Farmfoods meat I know a lot of people will turn their nose up at it but 12 chicken breasts for 8 pound, 18 gammon steaks 10 pound, 54 rashers of bacon for 6 pound 4.5kg of chicken thighs 8 pound 1.5kg of white/smoked fish for a fiver and 18 braising steaks for 10 pound will stock up our freezer pretty well for a while and if you join their mailing lists you get lots of 10% off vouchers too.

Like alistron I never used to budget, I bought whatever I want. Long haul holidays, sports equipment, whatever I fancied really. I found a payslip from 2003, I take home now less than 100 more a month.

To the poster that suggested other northern European countries are better off, you are having a laugh! Petrol and fuel are more here, food is way more, it's cheaper for me to get bode posted over than buy local clothes and for a very real example. 2 weeks ago I bought a tommy tippee beaker in Tesco for 2 quid, saw it yesterday for 7 euros.

I weep for my geriatric car which cost me 3k knowing what I could get in the UK for 3k.

We are all dying on our arses here.

Great thing about the UK is that if you get cut off that's it, 4 weeks late paying your water bill here and its 80 euros "fine".

Dolomites your 80 euros fine for late bills reminded of back home in NZ. Bank charges you to maintain your account, and if you have very little money, it can go into overdraft very very easily because of bank charges. And the bank debt spiral upwards quickly because you have to pay those expensive overdraft fee. I remember what a shock I got when I owed the bank over NZ$200! I was a student and wasn't earning much at all.

I laugh everytime I hear they say how us paying bank charges are going to make fairer banking. Trying struggling to keep your current account open so you can get your salary paid into it.

And the government's 'solution' is to weaken labour rights and shove more money into the banks.

It's a bad joke. Instead of using this country's considerable resources to shore up the population against the inevitable hard years to come, they are throwing the lot of us to the wolves int he name of 'competition'.

Chinese living standards are coming, and the Tories think this can only be a good thing.

We are not going to be a developed country any more in a couple of decades, I think. Expat is right to predict riots: decline at this catastrophic rate is particularly painful to accept.