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.

Oh God I hate the "move somewhere else" suggestions. Many people cannot move somewhere else as their support network is around them.

YANBU

Definitely weighted towards affluent people on here.

Private schooling
Posh holidays
Expensive weddings
Nannies/Au Pairs
Boden (who the fuck can afford to shop in Boden?)
£500 handbags
SAHMs with high earning husbands
Ipads
...plus a lovely thread today about a second home in Spain!

Oh bloody hell - that's not to even mention the 'on 70K and still feel skint' threads.

Different planet on here at times, but MC guilt will make posters very chompy indeed ;)

Grateful and moving away from your support network is truly horrible. We were forced to move house many years ago and have no support network here and no prospect of getting one - we had to move to look after an elderly parent so that they didn't move away from their support network of friends and the personal cost has been really high.

In fairness it is like most things I suppose - easy from the outside, but like most people I suspect I have no objection to the suggestions. What grates is when someone explains why a suggestion is not possible, practical or appealing and are subsequently reprimanded for not acting upon the pompously-described 'helpful advice.'

YANBU - like many posters have said, you have articulated our thoughts very well. And you are also representative of those of us who have worked hard, sometimes as a 'professional', sometimes not. Who may or may not hold degrees, who may have known both the comfortably off times and the really poor ones. And who recognize the 'blissfully ignorant' patronizing advice claptrap doled out to some posters just as you have described.

If a thread is started asking which place is better for a family 3 week all-inclusive - The Maldives or The Antilles? - I wouldn't post some advice because I have no experience of it. Quite why posters with no enduring experience of being truly 'skint' and unsupported feel the need to offer their advice is beyond me. Well, not beyond me as I can guess why they do it.

A lot of people have been there and are sharing what they did to help themselves. And then they get called smug fucks who don't know anything (by people who know even less).

You can't win. If you commiserate without advice, you're unhelpful. If you give advice, you're patronising. If you aren't currently practically homeless you "don't know anything about being poor".

Croc maybe normal was the wrong word. I do remember the chicken feeding a family of 5 for a week thread.

My personal favourite are those posts which suggest that everyone could afford private education for their DCs if only they scrimped and saved a little.

Although JackShit I don't think it is necessarily about the fact that people have those things (I will put my hand up to shopping in Boden, and my user name is a Farrow & Ball paint colour ), it's about having just an ounce of empathy and understanding that not everybody is in the same position, and it's not because they're bone idle/stupid/whatever else the anti-benefits rhetoric says...

YANBU

If I read the words "Just learn to drive", one more time I'm going to scream.

How thick are some people that they don't realise lessons, tests, cars, tax, insurance, MOTs, petrol all cost money, that the person just might not have.

Not to mention the fact that driving doesn't come naturally to everyone, and some people are so bad at it that they should definitely stay off the roads.

And don't start me on the 1 or 2 posters who actually thought all council housing was free, regardless of income

Thick fuckers

worra its actually not funny that people think council housing is free. Its unbelievable. thick fuckers indeed

The 'move somewhere else' advice when a poster is despairing of the unhealthy mould ridden flat they can barely afford always boils my piss. 'Go to the council' 'move to another flat' and the complete shitty 'you should have savings to afford a deposit' some people get. I briefly worked alongside the housing dept in my local council and they were sending women with months old babies to a homeless B&B in a neighbouring county the housing situation was so dire. You can be stuck in a crappy situation with no way out. There's a 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps, on your bike' attitude on a lot of these threads.

Yanbu

Worra - absolutely.

Grocklebox as I have said, like most people, the advice itself can be welcome. However, if someone says 'that's a good suggestion but it isn't practical due to finances', I find it baffling how people then start bosom-hoiking and making endless suggestions as to how to increase an income in order to take the advice.

The recent childcare thread was a case in point: it was your fault, your fault, your fault - that you don't earn enough to cover childcare. Go to college, get a decent paying job, but really How Very Dare You question the fact that having a baby puts fifty percent of women in a position where they can't afford to work. No, there's nothing wrong with the system. It's YOUR fault, for being poor.

This on the same site where 'Aibu to think benefits are too generous' would see the OP crucified!

It's mystifying!

Mind you I actually did start a childminding business after researching it in mumsnet. It cost about £300 to set up though so not cheap.

Good earner now though,

My comments on au pairs still stand though. Can't see that as the height of luxury as would hate another youngster living in my house. Got enough sulky teens.

The thing is op people constantly post on all sorts of things and generally I think they are trying to help.

And honestly mumsnet is far more diverse than it used to be thank fuck.

I think that while in the past few years many people have become poor and therefore they HAD to go the frugal route, there is another group of people who just see it as a trend, and after reading some forums they decided to challenge themselves and 'save' money! Those are the people with the patronising comments like someone who once said to a poster who had a tenner to feed a family and an empty gas meter 'well i drove to the market and bought a butternut squash and then iroasted it in the oven and then i coojed it on the hob with some yummy spices.....etc etc and you could do that too, i actually enjoy being frugal'.
It might be fun to be 'frugal' in your nice house with your Aga but they dont get how tiring and how emotionally draining it is when you do the real thing. It is not a hobby. Also how many difficulties you find on the way to saving money when you actually dont have any money. Just like the example of the washing machine that OP wrote.

An au pair absolutely isn't the height of luxury, neither is a car in my book, or home ownership, or washing machine ownership.

But, they are out of reach to many. And not just those on benefits either.

That said I agree there are standard responses that are trotted out but just sometimes these can be very tedious. It's a bit like the 'have you thought about adopting' to gay women because we shouldn't be allowed to procreate!

Laquitar.. yes, exactly that! Chickpea curry wears very bloody thin very quickly when you don't have any other options.

When people who say they struggle score highly on scales like the one further down this page, how do they think everyone below them is managing?

YANBU.

I've seen people advised to get rid of the internet, on one thread this was advised so that they could then afford to buy free range eggs. Never mind that the internet is practically essential if you are on JSA, can be a lifeline to those who are lone parents or carers, needed for children's homework and you may only have a dongle anyway and just top up when you can afford it. But apparently it is a luxury and you can't complain you are hard up if you have it.

OP - I do understand what you are saying, and it must be annoying, however there's a lot to be said for getting suggestions and ideas for solving problems from people who are outside your normal lifestyle.

EG. If no one in your family, friends and aquantences has been to Uni, you might not consider it to be an option. Esp if you've not come across people remote part time studying - like the OU or remote courses from other unis, it might not occur to you that you could get a degree without moving to a university town and giving up work for 3 years.

If you don't know any childminders, or know people who use them, you might not think of it as a career option that actually pays very well, espcially compared to other higher paid jobs but using full time childcare for your DCs. (Yes not all landlords will allow you to work as a childminder in your property but some will) There's a view amongst many people that it's a low paid job, but round here 1 full time place is just under £1k a month. 2 full time mindees and you are better off than someone earning £40k but paying for 1 DC in full time childcare while they work.

If you don't know anyone who cooks from scratch and have never been taught, and as most food shows do seem to be targetted at a middle class audience, that it's easy and cheaper to do, might not be obvious.

there are a lot of reasons why some poor people will have thought about these and they still arent an option, but many people who've had different life experiences will be able to offer some suggestions that might help. Surely that's the point of coming on here for advice, if you can get good advice of ways to improve your situation from your friends and family, then you wouldn't need to ask, people on here will have different ideas, not all will work for everyone, but some might. (until I read the PP upthread saying they had an au pair in a 2 bed place by sharing with their DD, I wouldnt have thought it was an option for anyone without a spare room, but it is a good solution for a single parent doing shift work needing childcare. It still has been dismissed as not an option unless you have a guest room and live in a posh area).

Yanbu. A lot of goid intentions I think but not a real grasp of the issues and reality. Bug its okay because they'll drop a tin of beans into the food bank collection. Heinz, natch.

Mumsnet, where 'book yourself in for a spa day' is the answer to all your problems!

Laquitar your post reminds me of the lyrics to Common People

I said pretend you've got no money, she just laughed and said oh you're so funny.
I said yeah? Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here.

That is the overall impression I get from those posting, I must admit. Maybe low income MNers are all lurkers?

I was a bit gobsmacked by the poster who said that she reckoned that most people who send their children to private school don't even notice the cost of it - she apparently lived in a world where spending £50k a year on sending your children to school was just a drop in the ocean.
There are a lot of people on here who have more money than they know what to do with, so just don't get it.