3.2 million households in problem debt

[DollyBarton]

And an increase of 200k children in poverty than last year. How is this happening! From my own experience I can see companies squeezing workers for the benefit of shareholders especially since 2007. AIBU to think the lack of fair wages is the biggest reason for most households debt? On a micro level I'm sure some people lack money management skills and splurge where they really shouldn't but workers are given so little to live on.

""Are we counting poverty as living in a household with an income below £284 a week or c£15k a year?""

No, there are lots of 'markers' used.

It's mainly the benefit changes and zero hours contracts, combined with rising living costs.

Taken from the Child Poverty UK website.

There were 3.9 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2014-15. That’s 28 per cent of children, or 9 in a classroom of 30.1
London is the area with the highest rates of child poverty in the country.2 You can see child poverty rates by local area by visiting End Child Poverty.
Child poverty reduced dramatically between 1998/9-2011/12 when 800,000 children were lifted out of poverty. Since 2010, child poverty figures have flat-lined. The number of children in absolute poverty has increased by 0.5 million since 2010.3
As a direct result of tax and benefit decisions made since 2010, the Institute for Fiscal Studies project that the number of children in relative poverty will have risen from 2.3 to 3.6 million by 2020 (poverty figures before housing costs).

Work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty in the UK.
Two-thirds (66 per cent) of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one member works.

Families experience poverty for many reasons, but its fundamental cause is not having enough money to cope with the circumstances in which they are living. A family might move into poverty because of a rise in living costs, a drop in earnings through job loss or benefit changes.

Child poverty imposes costs on broader society – estimated to be at least £29 billion a year.

Governments forgo prospective revenues as well as commit themselves to providing services in the future if they fail to address child poverty in the here and now.

Childcare and housing are two of the costs that take the biggest toll on families’ budgets. When you account for childcare costs, an extra 130,000 children are pushed into poverty.

The Child Poverty crisis that we are facing (especially now we don't have to follow EU directives, isn't because families are getting into debt to have holidays abroad, ffs.

Did anyone see the hardest worker in Britain program last night? I think that might be what started me thinking about this and resulted in this post. My friends and family have all done well in life, have own homes and stable finances overall but I can see my cousins who are all in their early 20's now, floundering and desperately trying to make working work, but in almost all cases have had to rely on their parents to live despite working, and especially the couple who have struggled to find work. A trained pilot, accountant, business student, masters in finance....none could get work easily and only managed because of their parents support. The work the people did in that TV program was difficult and boring, and so so badly paid. It wouldnt be so bad if it lead to affording a comfortable life but with such low pay, high living expenses and shitty labour practices (zero hours etc) its all wrong. I left college in 2003 and supported myself from that moment, albeit in another country as I decided to try my luck somewhere else. And I had some lean years but was always always able to afford my rent and my food. What kind of a world is this.

4.5 million people receive "Tax Credits". These are tax-payer handouts to workers whose employers pay shit wages. So long as we live in a society where earnings are a race to the bottom, and multi-billionaire companies are subsidies by everyone else, it will continue.
But lets not let a few facts get in the way of a good old beratement of the feckless poor, its what the daily fail, sun, express and all the other nasty rightwing press churn out day after day.

there's currently a thread in which someone has 15k worth of credit card bills and now is debating more debt for a holiday

And anyone who has read that thread completely will have picked up that the OP has self-confessed MH issues and the existing debt is as a result of uncontrolled spending during a manic episode. Hardly representative of the type of poverty and struggling to make ends meet under discussion.

Dolly, young people still manage by themselves on benefits.

Birdsgotafly

There were 3.9 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2014-15. That’s 28 per cent of children, or 9 in a classroom of 30.1 Classed as children living in a household with an after housing cost income of £386 a week/£20k a year - calculated as 60% of median income in the year.

Child poverty reduced dramatically between 1998/9-2011/12 when 800,000 children were lifted out of poverty. Since 2010, child poverty figures have flat-lined. The number of children in absolute poverty has increased by 0.5 million since 2010.3 Absolute poverty is calculated as less than 60% of median income in 2011 adjusted for inflation, so broadly the same income as above.
As a direct result of tax and benefit decisions made since 2010, the Institute for Fiscal Studies project that the number of children in relative poverty will have risen from 2.3 to 3.6 million by 2020 (poverty figures before housing costs). From the IFS report: However, we now project significantly lower levels of poverty among children and working-age adults compared with our previous briefing note. Increasing the tax allowance, increasing childcare subsidies and increasing the tax free childcare scheme are also increasing poverty, because it helps the median earners more than the poorer people, not because it makes people poorer.

And don't just think that it's private companies that pay Crap wages. I work for local government and rely on my tax credits. I'm desperate to get off them and apply for anything I think I can do......no luck so far.

As a food bank volunteer I think witsenders post needs a quick repeat:

1. Official Statistic: Most people are referred for benefit sanctions. Anecdotally many of them for reasons utterly beyond their control, including 'computer says no' type reasons.

1. Official Statistic:Second highest referral cause is low income. Anecdotally work is hard to find, low paid, seasonal, 0 hours and sometimes there simply is not enough coming in to house and feed the family - not many have more than 2 kids, some have 1 f/t and 1 p/t working parent (if couple) and cannot make their money stretch.

Both of the above come in as and when they need to. Some banks cap visits to 3 per year, 3 days wort of food each time, some don't. We are a joint church/community bank and accept referrals 3 times a year... but our referral partners often make a case for more sustained support. So we become part of a wider, longer support system.

We can't do that for most people and our referring partners are very careful... but 0 hours contracts seem to be a causal factor in the growth of those more sustained referrals.

MrsTerryPratchett, i can see that but my DH left school at 16, saved every penny he could instead of drinking and going to magaluf, mortgaged himself up to the eyeballs to buy his first house with a crappy old car and borrowed deckchairs to sit on. His DN is late 20s, works very part time, spends everything she earns on make up and holidays then says she is Entitled to a subsidised property because she can't afford to buy. Boils him up a little.

Bare necessities aside it's about priorities. A few years of not-iPhone and not going abroad gives the savings for a SO property deposit. Depends what a person actually wants in life.

Le sigh.

So we'll leave aside for the moment whether shared ownership is a good idea, and how many people are actually spending enough on Iphones rather than basic models and travelling abroad to save up a deposit in a few years (clue- you'd have to have a lot of Iphones to be spending that level of money in many areas of the country). And let's address the point that your DN is part of a generation who have been unequivocally shat on from a housing perspective, who is unable to choose to buy a home at anything other than an extortionate rate compared to what her father's generation had access to. And yet her DU, who by virtue of his age (unless you're being really disingenuous and he's your 30 year old toyboy with a much older sibling) enjoyed the sort of privileged earnings to price ratio she could only dream of, however hard he might have worked, is boiled up by her thinking just maybe she'd like in on a bit of that cheap housing action too? Your DN is not the only one who could stand to adjust their attitude a bit.

Hyacinth, the DN in question works part time because she doesn't want to work full time because, well, that's for her boyfriend to do. She is a bone fide financial f*ck wit and does actually use the word entitled to describe what thinks she should be given. Shes just got back from her third foreign holiday this year. She is the sort i refer to, not people who are doing their best swimming sgainst the tide and being dragged under by profit-driven corporations and a system that doesn't care. And no, I don't have a toyboy husband

OurBlanche am I reading that correctly, that access to some food banks is 3 days worth of food 3 times per year? 9 days of food per year?

The trussell trust guidelines are 3 vouchers in any 6 months. Each voucher is 3 days food. Simply because it is a crisis organisation, not a long term support one. The volunteers are able to signpost clients to organisations that can help them long term.

Obviously these are guidelines so there are exceptions.

Independent food banks may do things differently obviously, but the TT are the majority.

Yes I noticed the part time bit squidgy. Which assuming she doesn't having caring responsibilities is why I implied that she too could do with bucking her ideas up. But your DH, who in his generational privilege is outraged because DN thinks she might deserve the chance to buy a house at a rate that is no doubt much more expensive than his first purchase in relative terms, is not coming out of this well either. How dare the yoof think of themselves as deserving the same housing opportunities as their parents! The silly bitch should've thought about house prices before choosing to be born in the late 80s.

I am in my fifties live hand to mouth have no savings only debts and almost no pension
It's a good month if I reduce debt rather than increase it
Yet I work full time and earn above the average wage
Most of my situation is as a result of being a lone parent for most of the last 20 years, 3 failed relationships have cost me dearly in terms of property so I still have a big mortgage
I'm not extravagant and run a 13 year old car
Thankfully I've never had to resort to food banks although regularly refer my clients to them
I also try and help those who are worse off than me

Hyacinth, my last post as it's derailing the thread, I take your point about generational outrage etc but he is outraged at her complete refusal to put her back into it so to speak. He is sympathetic of his apprentices (for example) and people who are doing what they can. He, like me, has no tolerance of those that could but choose not to, they deflect resources from those in genuine need.

And it would be fine if your DH was simply annoyed about people who could work full time refraining from doing so, it's the pairing of this with annoyance at DNs desire to enjoy some of the privilege he did that's problematic. If he were to say he thought it was a disgrace that she should be placed in the housing position she is purely because of when she was born whilst also thinking her bone idle and idiotic, that would be valid. As it is, him not having joined the dots between his own ability to purchase on one salary and DN and DP needing a discount to do so on one and a half is telling. I do consider this relevant to the general theme of the thread too because, as others pointed out before me, the spiralling cost of housing is a huge contributory factor to the problem debt situation.

Agreed.

Hyacinth, broke my not posting again, but to defend DH it's not him who hasn't joined the dots it's me who dripfed. It's the feeling entitled but wanting to put any effort in. Why should she be given preferential terms on anything over someone doing their best to keep their family afloat because that's what it comes down to. The diminishing amount of financial assistance available can only be spent once so who gets it, those who truly need it, or those who think they should get it because they want it?

I'm really not posting again on here now. I've been perfectly clear on my stance, twist and skew at will.

There's no twisting or skewing involved. You have posted something that does not present your DH in a good light. I'm sure he's lovely otherwise and I'm sure your DN is as much of a tit as you make her sound, but the sight of a person with generational housing privilege hissing in outrage because a person without it wants a deal probably half as good as he got from an accident of birth is not a pretty one. You aren't going to make it that way. His own good fortune, and I note you don't mention him doing his best to keep a family afloat because presumably that's only relevant for people who don't already own property, cannot go unacknowledged as he boils over at the prospect that maybe he's not the only person who'd like to get an undeserved advantage over other people in our deranged housing market.

How do you know they choose not to work more though?

I might look like I choose not to work, as I am a qualified primary school teacher with one teenage DS, yet we usually live on just under £770 a month, made up of child maintenance, child tax credits and child benefit, after rent (about 80% covered by housing benefit). Yet the truth is I have CFS and anxiety and in FIVE fucking years of searching, I can't find a part-time teaching post. I'm not fit enough to work as a full-time teacher and be the only support for my teenager, who has some MH issues of his own (he sees his dad once or twice a month, but they don't tend to keep in touch between visits and there are no other family around), so the only work I can get is the odd day here and there of supply. I have thought of looking outside teaching, but I have no up to date skills in anything else. In fact, one of my lowest points was being rejected for a part-time Christmas temp position at Next last year, without even making it as far as interview.

However, I am very lucky in one respect, as the only debt I have is under £2000 on my credit card. Well, apart from about £8000 of student loans, under the old system, but I doubt I'll ever earn enough to pay that back. I'm 38 now and I have always been below the limit to pay it back since I graduated in 1999.

Boogers I may have the 'per year' wrong for TT banks. I did think that was the right info, maybe it changed to meet a need, maybe I have always misunderstood.

Given that I was wrong, then 18 days per year for those in crisis.

Remember no food bank sets out to feed people in the long term. They are totally different from food kitchens. Their aim is to tide people over until the machinery catches up.

CremeEggThief tell me about it. In the last 6 months, on top of working as a temp and hoping something would come out of that (it didn't, didn't even make it past longlisting for a job I've been doing since September) I've had online assessments for so many places, including (and this hurt the most as I've worked with dead bodies in the past) the Co-op funeral parlour. Not many people could do that job, but I could. But because I didn't tick the right box on a form I was dismissed immediately. Still miffed about that one, but hey ho.

I'm angry because there are many reasons I can't work full time. I'm angry because if you've worked in several jobs you're looked down upon as someone who can't hold down a job instead of someone with many transferable skills. I'm angry because of the attitude that people who are in debt only have themselves to blame. I'm angry because of the ignorance of the 'haves' towards the 'have nots'. If you're a 'have', you don't have to worry about contributing for school trips or school uniforms that the school has suddenly sprung on you. When your cooker breaks down, or your washing machine, or car, as ours have done over the last 6 moths, you just go to John Lewis or wherever and buy a new one. The 'have nots' don't have that luxury. We save every penny from our purse and wallet, put it in a jar and cash it in at the end of the month, hoping it'll see the overdraft right.

I'd love to live in a world where I can buy something outright from new, but I can't. Our holiday last week was paid for using Tesco vouchers topped up by the in-laws. None of us have passports, the kids have never been outside England, Scotland or Wales. We live frugally, not yet at food bank level, and the only 'benefit' we claim is child benefit because I'm too scared to even apply for tax credit should I get a nasty letter next year demanding it all be returned.

Everything the kids have in the way of gadgets was bought by their grandparents who kindly give it to us to wrap up and put under the tree at Christmas or on the fireplace under the banners and balloons at birthdays. It's humiliating to have to ask for help from your in-laws but we do because it's the only option we've got.

But it's all our fault because we have a 90" flat screen tv and we all have iPhones and iPads and iPods and go on 3 foreign holidays a year and drive a BMW and eat out every night. I wish.

In terms of housing costs, what is important is the monthly interest payment. Higher prices are directly linked to lower mortgage interest rates.

page 12 figure 2.4b shows % of monthly income on mortgage properties was 5% in 1969 and 10% in 1981. It is 10% today, having been 15% from 1989 to 2008. The problem, if there is one, goes back to 1989, not recent.