To think that 60k is a lot of money to earn a year?!

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I think it is a lot of money to earn per year but it seems a lot of people on mumsnet don't think so, am I in the piss poor minority here or what?!

So if 95% of households on or below 60k cannot afford to rent or buy a decent family sized house.......who are all the people living in all the semis and 3+ bedroomed houses you can see all over the UK? In the expensive South East, what wages or circumstances do these people tend to have?
These family sized houses seem to be everywhere, a lot less rare than the 5% on 60k + surely

If you bought before 2003ish or got help from parents, you are able to do it. After that... Tricky. I had 'only' a 10 % deposit so only four places would lend to me. My mortgage on a two bed terrace is £1,295 pm. It is insane and unsustainable.

Sugar - people get help from parents who are still alive, or get big lumps of inheritance when someone dies and leaves property that is owned outright.

A lot of those family houses are lived in by pensioners, some on their own. My grandma and DH's grandma both live in lovely family houses which are now worth an awful lot of money, there is no way that they would have been able to afford to buy them if the wage/houseprice ratio had been as it is now when they purchased 50 years ago.

I would be interested still if someone could break down the figures as to how they do survive in inner London on less than £60k. I just could not see how to do it. Even if I had moved into a bedsit with my daughter, child care and travel costs would have remained high.

I could have got rid of my cat and stopped making charity direct debits and got rid of the tv and Internet as I appreciate these are not 'necessary' but my other outgoings all involved contracts with others, such as gas and electricity bills so I had to keep paying them.

Seriously HOW do people afford a half decent flat and child care in the South East on a lower wage?

Spero You've answered your own question in your choice of words - they "survive", but no more than that. They receive top up benefits in the form of tax credits, CB, HB, DLA. It's not much but it helps them "survive".

If they are housed by housing association, live with or near to parents (thereby getting cheaper childcare) or were fortunate enough to have exercised right to buy before the big increase in London prices, then their circumstances are eased considerably. Which is why they are envied by an awful lot of Londoners pulling in six figures and still struggling on rents.

And then of course there is the Great Grey Market. An awful lot of London service work is carried out cash in hand, sometimes on top of benefits and almost always without the knowledge of the tax and VAT man.

I don't earn £60,000 a year and we are seriously quite hard up. We have no car, do have our own property (but in a not very nice part of Town) and we watch most pennies.

1605

DLA is not a top up benefit, it is not means tested and you dont get it for being skint.

including it in that list of your was ignorant

Sock It wasn't my intention to offend you, I was including it just because it's another form of benefit, and is one of the means by which those entitled to it are able to live in London if they're not earning high amounts. DLA recipients are also more likely - quite rightly in my view - to be housed by a housing association and not have to pay inflated private rents.

By the same logic I've included CB though of course that's not a top up or means tested benefit either. It "tops up" salary, if you will.

Benefits are obviously paid net of tax so even something like CB equates to £250 gross salary per month.

DLA is soley intended to help with the additional costs incured due to a disability not to pay inflated housing costs.those costs are incured on top of housing costs and are nothing to do with housing.

it is not a salary top up and hopefully never will be, lumping it in a such perpetuates the 'scrounger' label that people are seamingly happy to chuck about especially with regard to disabled people.take a look at disability related hate crimes figures if you want to have a look at the result of saying crap like that.

even david cameron claimed it for his son.

and as you should be aware rules relating to cb have been changed and will shortly start to be enforced so that it is a means tested benefit.

Brilliant catgirl

Just so people know........................ rent "up North" isn't tuppence ha'penny a month. Even with an indoor loo

This suggestion that we can live like kings on £20 a week because we get free dripping and people will look after our children for nowt but a barmcake and a whippet pup really nobs me off.

Exactly, you'd think people had never heard of Jesmond or Beverley or Alderley Edge. Maybe they haven't. Perhaps people actually, y'know, need to visit the North ... and not just pass through the countryside on the train.

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