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.

CFSkate that's exactly what it's like.

Well there's lots of normal posters here on this thread so that's good.

jackshit who would want to shop in boden even if they could afford it . Frump-tastic.

basgetti if you get rid of the internet you have to book a slot at the library when you want to go on-line (although I'm sure some posters would think this was acceptable). I did this when XP took the old laptop, never-a-fucking-gain.

so YANBU.

FarFromTheTree - to be fair, I live in an area with several outstanding or good primary schools, and some very good private schools. In my experience, the only people I know who use the private schools are people who don't even notice it. People like DH and I - who could use private schools with a massive drop in our standard of living don't see the point of the sacrifices when the state alternative is just so good. (If we lived in an area with crap state schools I might not feel the same.)

YANBU at all

I don't believe half of what I read on the internet anyway

Exactly meglet, and that assumes there is still a library open near you and you have the means to get there.

I have always worked hard. When I was at Cambridge my DoS called me the most assiduous student he had ever met. It all came to nothing when I got the sack in a horrible disability discrimination case which I won. I lost the payout though because after losing my job I got serious depression and during this time my mum persuaded me to sign over all my life savings (a six figure sum) to her so she could "help me with budgeting". She even persuaded me to sell my house and move in with her so she could care for me. Bullshit! As soon as she got the cash she left the country and I was homeless and on the streets. Prior to that I had been a bit judgemental about folks on benefits, but when I ended up on incapacity (thankfully I got sectioned so the mental health team sorted me out a rented house) I realised it could happen to anyone.
I think starting a business is a good idea. I saved up my benefits for 5 months to get started. There are plenty of businesses which can be started up easily with low capital outlay and do not require much business acumen. I have a lady who does 9 hours a week cleaning a factory and she wanted to earn some extra cash doing private homes. I showed her how to do a simple leaflet for cleaning private houses and what rates she should be charging and she is now doing well as a s/e domestic cleaner in addition to her work for me. My business has helped build me up from having no self-confidence and has helped my mental health a lot.

YANBU. When I rented privately, the fridgrs freezers were always tiny and unreliable and therefore batch cooking and freezing was never an option, we could not save money that way.

Now we can bulk buy reduced or on offer washing powder, coffee, tinned goods etc, when we had no money it was just not an option.

When you have money, space and resources it is much easier to make economies.

And wjeb people can't think outside their bubble longer enough to think that actually yes, a chippy tea from round the corner is more appealing than a 3 mile round trip to the supermarket or spending £4 on bus fares. With 3 kids in tow.

I think starting a business is a good idea. I saved up my benefits for 5 months to get started.

That's great, but most people on benefits have to use them for food, clothes, utilities and general living costs. Not sure that saving them up is an option.

Ask a question and (as in real life) you'll get some great, useful advice - and some pointless, irrelevant or annoying advice. As another poster said, it's less to do with income, more to do with being well-informed and being able to empathise. I'm in the middle, financially speaking. I've had my eyes opened about how people with less and more money than me live and the problems they encounter on here. Being able to afford a cab ride might make it easier in some senses to leave an abusive relationship - but there are some things that trap women regardless of class or income. Class prejudice is prejudice - as pointless and damaging as any other.

I think you make some very good points OP, but I disagree about the kitchens. When I was 17 and living in a tiny bedsit with my boyfriend I had the most basic kitchen you could imagine. (I did have an oven and a hob but no microwave, one small cupboard, one frying pan, one saucepan, one knife, no work surface to speak of, just a sink drainer, and for six months I had no fridge) and I managed to home cook almost every day with a degree of enthusiasm and inventiveness. I fondly remember making homemade chicken kievs and leeks wrapped in ham with cheese sauce, among other things.

And having travelled in parts of Asia and seen the most rudimentary 'kitchens' (usually just a calor gas burner and a big pan or wok, and a steel bucket adapted as a barbecue) being the norm for whole families who home cooked absolutely everything from scratch, I think we need to stop whinging about how tough it is to cook nutritious cheap food, and just get on with it.

Jesus Ralth did you involve the police? How terrible that your own mum did that to you.

How do you 'save up benefits'. That's going without food, heat or housing for most people.

"And I have eaten healthy food on a very tight budget and a tiny kitchen."

But you do need someone to get you started if you've never seen it done, or it's overwhelming.

I discovered, via DD, that her friend (pregnant emancipated minor in a council flat) was existing on ready meals, tinned sausages and beans etc. because she had no idea how to cook anything else.

When DD went to visit her, she took some veg - not fancy expensive stuff, a couple of carrots, some greens, and I think some beans - things you chop up and boil for a few minutes. Friend can (and does) now cook veg. Apparently she was astonished by how easy it was.

Sky you're right and here's something people forget...a stock cupboard of herbs and spices...the things which make plain, cheap food palatable are expensive and if you have nothing then what? Boiled lentils and carrots?

My neighbour hasn't a clue. She's 27 and has only ever eaten processed food. I wouldn;t be so patronising as to offer her cooking lessons but she's asked having smelt curries I've made...and yes, I've had her round to eat...I showed her my spices etc and she's been buying one pot a week.

It's all about lack of knowledge....plus a lack of basics.

Some days round here you'd think cleaners come free with two pints of milk

On a recent thread about my mental health I was made to feel bad about staying on the very long NHS waiting list for therapy rather than somehow finding the money to go private (for an indeterminate period, perhaps indefinitely).

I was laughing at the very idea - well-meaning it might well have been, but it assumed a level of disposable income one or two orders of magnitude greater than I have.

At this point I should say that we are not exactly on the breadline - household income something like double the national average - but the wealth on MN staggers me. Good on them, obviously, but savings aren't normal nowadays.

A lot of the "frugal" tips are things like "get your brioche from Aldi instead of Waitrose" - I think those on the bones of their arse probably don't need telling.

I agree that many people have no idea of how to cook from scratch on a budget but that cannot be directly attributed to being poor, surely? It's a skill that has fallen out of habit/favour, call it what you will, and now we have a whole generation (or two) of people who have no clue how to slow braise cheap cuts of meat or cook pulses and soups etc.

That is a failing that has little to do with income.

Let them eat lentils.

Could be the MN catch phrase

Well

I suppose being on a low income often comes with lots of other challenges which take up time and energy.

Admin for example, endless appointments, feeling unwell. A can stop you thinking about rustling up a chicken kiev.

What is sad is how so quickly good banks have become the norm. I don't think they will ever disappear.

Good banks? Definitely not the norm!

Food banks

No, I don't think people realise how expensive it is to be poor.

Well no HelloitsmeFell, but being able to cook from scratch assumes you had a parent or other adult with the time and inclination to teach you, or if not, the wherewithal (Internet, library access, recipe books) to learn. You also need a certain amount of equipment, and the ability to experiment I.e. If what you make is inedible, you have something else to eat. You need access to shops which stock fresh food (not always a given in "food deserts"). So while its not solely a question of poverty, there are more barriers if you are poor.