To think many mumsnetters have little or no understanding of life on a low income

[crocodilesarevicious]

It's going to be hard to know how to phrase this as I don't want to cause offence.

I've been hanging around for a while. One thing I've noticed is that benefit threads become angry very quickly because so many are quite loud and fixed in their view that the UK is full of starving children reliant on value baked beans from food banks to fill their hungry tummies.

However, if someone who is on benefits or a low income is searching specific advice! they are often given quite short shrift. I've noticed this a few times - they are told, often brusquely, to retrain as something at university - usually a teacher or a nurse. These are graduate professions yet they are chucked out as something anyone can do. Not everyone can go to college or university due to financial restraints but also, some people don't have the academic ability. This is dismissed and shrugged off - if people aren't on much money then they need to find a way to make more money, even if this isn't possible.

Childminding, or starting a business is also suggested. People who rent may not be able to do this. Again, this takes a certain amount of financial and business savvy not to mention starting up costs.

Cooking is another area people seem to have little understanding of. It's so easy to cook healthy, cheap nutritious meals if your kitchen is large and a pleasure to cook in and you can whiz in the car to sainsburys or Tesco. If you have a small, grubby, dark kitchen and the local Spar or premier shop it's a bit different.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that when talking about people in general terms, Mumsnet likes to be left wing and PC. Yet when it's someone specific, irrelevant and often patronising advice is given to them and then they are flamed when they can't act on it.

My own position, while I'm a graduate and employed in a professional capacity, is perhaps between the two. I've never been reliant in benefits but was homeless for a time in my 20s and am able to see how things that look simple often aren't.

YY Will

Garlic

You are a top campaigner and educator Garlic

I think the difficulty in delaying gratification if you're poor comes down to an issue of trust - The Stanford Marshmallow experiment found trust to be important in delaying gratification.

For example, if some people come into a little bit of money, they save it for later as they are financially literate and trust that they may be able to use it for something nice later on, or as a buffer against stress and so on.

Whereas some people feel that if they don't spend it on something nice now, they won't be able to later either as something else (a bill or whatnot) will probably come up that requires the money, or it might not be enough for the bill anyway, so they might as well get something nice now. They also figure that they'll feel stressed and poor about money regardless of saving the money or not, so there is no point. People i know who are always skint seem to think like this anyway.

In a way it makes sense when they genuinely are poor, but those habits are hard to unlearn, which is why you see people who have been very poor and are now wealthy but still have no savings.

Oh, goodness I wasn't fishing, but thank you! The internet's a wonderful thing, isn't it :)

I hadn't seen that connection between delayed gratification & trust, Mmm, but it makes perfect sense.

There's also the issue that we have already delayed an absolute mountain of gratification. Two years ago, I took a lump sum from my pension - having been serially embezzled, it's tiny, but the few grand I could get felt like a fortune in my circs. I bought stacks of things I had been 'not buying' for almost ten years, from decent shoes and a winter coat to house paint and gardening stuff. My choices weren't extravagant but all the money was gone in a few months.

The CAB advisor told me about clients of hers who, having been dirt poor for years, won on the lottery. The benefits agencies wanted to penalise them for spending several thousand. They'd bought the same kind of things I did, some toys for their children and an inexpensive holiday - the first they'd ever been able to give their DC. It went to court, and the judge agreed their expenditure had been reasonable. But the story shows how quick 'the authorities' are to punish the poor for having any comforts and to call us irresponsible when, in truth, we've been delaying gratification for half a lifetime.

I was earning £12,000 a year in 2001/2002. Highest wage ive ever earned. It was enough at the time. It would be impossible now.

You probably could - if I had that, I'd be able to pay for everything and have something left over - currently trained to exist on three hundred and fifty a month with children paying the mortgage. There wouldn't be any treats/cushion though.

My wage has stagnated for over decade with the same employer. I earn less than 15k.

Half of single people are on less than £17,600.
~Half of single parents with one child are on less than £24,700.
~Half of couples without are on less than £27,200.
~Half of couples with one child are on less than £35,600.
~Half of couples with 2+ children are on less than £44,200.
These are data for gross income, with benefits.

I've just totted up what I expect my income to be this year - I'm self employed, so I'm guessing to some extent. I make it £24,000ish including tax credits, maintenance and child benefit, so pretty much on a par with the table above.

I'm a single parent with two DCs. Mortgage is £500pcm.

I don't consider myself to be particularly poor though. I have a holiday abroad every few years, and can buy nice stuff now and again, and treat the DCs. On the other and, I have extended periods of being skint because of having to replace windows in house etc, but I can't say I feel poor. I appreciate that it depends where you are in the country though, and whether there are other things added into the equation like special needs DC, abusive partners or ex-partners etc.

Not trying to be disparaging about the thread at all- like I say I see that for many people that would be 'poor', but not everyone by any means.

Well, you shouldn't feel poor, Bares! You're bang in the middle of the income distribution for your type of household. What's your question?

What the table tells you is that one-tenth of single parent households have an average gross income of £10,700 including benefits.
The next tenth are on an average £14,500.
And so on.

Oh sorry, I thought that the table was an illustration of poverty in the UK, and being bang in the middle as you say, I was pointing out that I didn't feel poor. Thanks for clarifying!

:)

I think the song Common People by Pulp is very relevant here.

I spent a good decade of my life living well below the poverty line. There was mould on the walls and although I had a room of my own food and heating were not always things I could afford. In spite of that, I didn't feel poor. I had friends and health and, critically, parents who could bail me out if I needed it.

So I had an entirely different viewpoint, I knew that life wasn't always like this and that I could access a different life (for some of thus time I was working for a charity and living on less than benefits level by choice). I also had weekends when I could go to stay with family and get fed a load and have laundry done and be given a coat or shoes for Christmas. None of those things would even have been in my mindset if I had grown up in that life.

I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like trying to raise kids in a situation like that. I hope that I will always have the sympathy and thoughtfulness not to just to give out some trite advice, but to really try to see what life is like for other people and give them help from their perspective.

Sometimes people who are suffering (poverty or abuse or illness or whatever) just cannot be expected to put a couple of simple plans onto action and turn things around, they really can't.

I think one problem with perceptions of wealth is that if you do have a reasonable take home income, so much of it goes towards boring things like pension contributions, trips to the dentist, a better maintained car, actually dealing with the damp problem etc. etc. All these things are quite boring and don't particularly add to your feeling of well being or wealth - People don't generally think "Woohoo! another day of fully comp car insurance!!!"

Therefore there is a focus on people on low incomes having wide screen TV's (which are comparatively not that expensive), not on all the other things they don't have, which it is sometimes vaguely assumed are taken care of by the state.

That's a good point Merry. Because it's things like car insurance that not having can really get you into trouble and make the cycle of poverty worse.

And you're right, garlic about delaying gratification as well. Your post reminded me of when I finished uni, after being in control of my money as a poor student for 5 years (not very poor, rain soaked limb poor, just unable to buy too many nice things poor so to be fair not real poverty in the context of this thread) I didn't understand why, when I started earning a wage that was essentially 3x what I'd had, I never had any money left at the end of the month and actually ended up in 4k of credit card debt after a year of work. It was as if a switch went on in my head and I was sick of not having nice things, good shoes, nice clothes after not having had them for 5 years and thought my wage went further than it actually did. I used to think "but I'm working now!" as I put things on the credit card. I shudder to think about it now

Can you honestly be 'caught up in the cycle of poverty' if you have a car?

Of course you can. Without the car, you can't get to work, and then you're really fucked.

I think the phrase 'living on a low income' means different things to different people.

Isabeau you are really very well off then, 38k is an absolutely fortune to earn.

If you are working and can afford to run a car you are categorically not in poverty. Are you mental?

My husband earns £17,380 for a 45-hour week. We get a little HB (£94 per month) and £62 per week child tax credits. We get £20 (per year!) to help with council tax. We can't afford a car; we can never, ever go on holiday; we can't afford a meal out; I have to buy cheap cuts of meat; we had to get rid of the cats; all the baby's clothes are from charity shops (DH & I simply wear the same outfits week in - week out); we can't afford for the two of us to get on a train to go to the cinema for an evening. Thankfully we are both teetotal. My husband smokes rollies but I gave up as I couldn't justify the cost.

Are we in poverty? Absolutely not. We eat three meals a day, we sleep in a bed with a roof over our heads and we can afford (just) to heat our home. That's all we need. It's all anyone needs.

Excellent thread.

Deserves a bump.

I saw this news story a day or two ago

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2903734/Lavish-Lords-restaurants-serving-cut-price-lobster-caviar-guinea-fowl-lose-2million-year-pick-bill.html

and it made me think of Baroness Jenkin and her 4p porridge breakfast.

So if you are a Lord or Lady you can have 4p porridge for breakfast and then eat all that taxpayer subsidised food for cheap prices?

I had my son at 16 and lived in a hostel I was disowned by my family so I am well aware of living on a low income

However I also don't feel as others don't follow the guardian narrative my child has never NEVER been Hungary and never been to school with out breakfast I also do no all the things people are entitled to and do know the excuses people make in order not to go back to work

Just because people don't believe the. Bull shit hook line and sinker dosent mean they don't know what it's like

Add message | Report | Message poster fivepounds Sun 14-Dec-14 19:09:42

Tottaly agree with you we have allowed the left to totally skew what is povery I remember during the riots a left wing presenter talking about the abject povery of these people leading to riots

The guy she was talking to had a black berry in his and and I could see a I iPhone sticking out of his pocket and he was also wearing a jacket ds tells me costs £200

That's the kind of shit were dealing with people will always try and justify why they should get things for free