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?

It is tough but people who want to get by have to work. Part time can become full time, local work can be replaced with city work which pays more. Qualifications can be gained.

Netguru it's all fine and dandy to tell people to retrain or moving to a city to get a better paid job when there are lots of jobs and opportunities. There just aren't the jobs at the moment though, or the opportunities to better yourself. Of course you should still try, but we are going through terrible economic times, it's not that easy.

post April 2013 btw- when the benefit cap etc comes in and all the new fun sanctions....state-sponsored starvation for the 'workshy' and their kids.

Another big big doozy which people have not woken up to is that workfare is going to expand massively and undercut wages even further. ALL jobless people under 25 (that's about 25% of the population of that age) will have no entitlement to jobseek without workfare.

so we are going to put the young people we have catastrophically let down, to work in poundland and care homes for the equivalent of £1.50 an hour.

If that doesn't start a few riots and choice bits of violence I don't know what will.

They are going to be making prisoners work American jail style domesticgodless.

Sorry you're stuck where you don't want to be. I hope a bolt of inspiration suddenly strikes from the blue.

exactly Phacella.... and the jobs are now all in London it seems, where even a basic standard of living is unaffordable for many.

To put this in perspective for you I rent a smallish 3 bed house in a pretty unglamorous SE london suburb for £1500 per month unfurnished. I would not be able to afford to live here on my own public sector salary with 2 kids. My ex husband has to subsidise me to a tune even he cannot afford any longer (or so he tells me ) and he is a commercial barrister earning silly money.

We are looking at both having to move out of London just to make the shared residence arrangement sustainable. Otherwise I move to a cheaper city nearer my work and hardly ever see my kids, or live in a 2 bed flat with them which even he doesn't think is fair, given that he kept the heavily mortgaged 4 bed house.

yes Funbag. And we have the likes of niceguy talking about how the economy has been ruined by ' too much free money' being handed out by Labour... a partial truth indeed. (The solution it seems being to take grim delight in the poorest and disabled now having to suffer for this the most).

But the Tories are going to depress wages by creating a pool of basically unpaid, slave labour. That does not strike me as a sensible way to get us out of austerity. It is, however a very sensible way to create a scared and desperate workforce to swell the profits of big businesses.

funbag I am definitely OUT OUT OUT when ds2 is of age to be independent or make his own choice where to go.

Unfortunately he is currently only 5 and a half :D

if the judge in my court case coming up decides there is not enough money to go round we may all have to move out of london anyway, but I think ex h would rather 'impoverish' (by his high standards) himself than do that. He's not a flexible man.

Good luck domesticgodless!

I'm in agreement about a slace labour workforce being created. I've been saying this to people for the last 2 to 3 years, but want basically told to piss off and take my tin foil hat with me. I don't get any satisfaction from getting it right.

If you can get off benefits including tax credits, start doing that now, if you can move to a cheaper part of the country do it now. If you're able to, sell off your house and buy one in a cheaper part of the country outright and take a low paying job - crazy as that sounds. Otherwise, don't give up and keep an eye on developments.

Good lord, I sound like a bit of a nutter, but I think those in charge are doing some economic cleansing at the moment - ie shafting poor people.

I meant to say a slave labour workforce btw.

The trouble is that nobody can do what needs to be done. House prices and rental prices need to crash by 40% plus.

If purchase prices/ overall house prices drop by that much, banks will be left with an awful lot of bad debt (which the tax payer is insuring) and then all credit will dry up while they panic.

Rental caps/ changes to rental rules - same thing on a smaller scale. So instead we get half assed policies about encouraging development and reducing planning requirements when actually there are huge swathes of the countryside with permission for residential development but housebuilders won't build because they can't make the profits they're looking for.

I think the Govt just can't work out what to do to break that impasse and are relying on blind trust that things will sort of work out. I rather expect that events will overtake them and force them to change tack - either environmental disaster or riots but something big and bad.

Sadly there WILL be civil u rest once more when these cuts really start biting. Sad but true...

I'll retrain Netguru. I'll retrain my legs to work on their own, I'll retrain my back to stop hurting and I'll retrain my pelvis to stop falling apart. Next I'll retrain the rest of my joints to stop swelling and I'll retrain my body to sleep and stop getting migraines on average 15 times a month!

Will that amount of retraining

Can anyone explain to me what universal credit is, please?

Who can afford to "retrain" really?
People with capital, that's who.
I don't see many people with capital on this thread.

exactly Ifnow.

And overwhelmingly those with capital are over 50, born to rich parents, or work in financial and commercial services/IT already so don't need to retrain.

Yes, some years ago my mean XH told me one week that I could have what was left out of the housekeeping money (I was a SAHM at the time). How much was there? 4½d - currently 1½p. It is possible to live within your means but it really does mean changes in lifestyle - no trips, no school outings, no fancy clothes, no joints of meat, no lamb whatsoever, basic vegetables like potatoes, onions and carrots, no courgettes or aubergines, no fruit like melons or blueberries. It means more bread or rice. We can do it.

'I'm in agreement about a slace labour workforce being created. I've been saying this to people for the last 2 to 3 years, but want basically told to piss off and take my tin foil hat with me. I don't get any satisfaction from getting it right'

oh yes funbag this exactly.

I am in the lucky position of having a bit of savings (snaffled from ex h's 'unaffordable' maintenance) so am going to buy soon.

The one thing i am afraid of however is that once the sh*t really hits the fan the bottom is also going to fall out of the housing market.

Guess the goverment will just encourage a feudal system where by 30% of people own ALL the property and let it out at extortion-rates to the poor and 'feckless'.

I don't want to be any part of that at the top or the bottom :(

'The safety net of benefit is designed to be exactly that. Not a lifestyle choice. It is to help when you are in a tight spot. If you are in that tight spot, map your way out. '

This thread is mostly full of people who work FT or have two people working FT.

Exactly expat, yet right wingers still want to bang on about 'irresponsibility'. If you work FT in a rich country (and this country is still rich, otherwise how do we afford to subsidise tax evasion on the scale we do, bale out India and buy lots more lovely nukes?) you should not be sneered at and called 'irresponsible' for choosing to live in the capital (or indeed the entire SE) and/or have children.

Common sense has actually been demolished by the Daily Mail/personal responsibility pimps.

When you have people who could make a go of it if they could afford retraining but govt policy means they lose what little they get by way of help if they choose to retrain, then you can predict disaster of the sort Expat has outlined with certainty.

Netguru, retraining/relocating etc all require money. A family who are struggling to feed their family at the moment are going to be unable to do that.

I'm guessing you retrained/relocated a few years ago - over the past 2 years things have got very tough. We're entering a whole new landscape. And re going 'fulltime' - there are no fulltime jobs anymore, recent employment figures support that.

We are in a situation now in this country where working families are resorting to using food banks. Makes you proud to be british doesn't it?

absolutely.

And as time goes on more and more people will be unable to afford the basics. Cue the tent cities and 'affordable' housing eg favelas and shanty towns.

We will then be left with whoever is still up at the top lecturing us all on our failures of morality and planning, and the evils of feckless poverty.

This is because being poor or even on a 'middle' income is being redefined as a moral failing. A great big massive smokescreen for the creation of a scared and indigent 'competitive' population.

Victorian values are not a slogan of the Right any more it seems, but they sure sum it up.

Oh, and netguru - many people on this thread are people who have never, and probably will never, be able to get on the property ladder - let alone have the 'worry' of renting out a property they have left behind.

wait for niceguy to come back saying it isn't fair for the taxpayer to have to fund FOOD banks for the greedy feckless poor....can't they live on mud? After all they are poor as a result of their own BAD CHOICES. (Unless they are indeed children, but let's forget about that.)

This notion of 'retraining' really pisses me off. Why should people have to 'retrain' in order to have a living wage? Why shouldn't a full time shop worker (for example) be able to afford a roof over their heads and to feed themselves?

And if we all retrain who will keep our shops open, buses running, hospitals clean... unless all those roles are outsourced to workfare of course.