to think that it's okay to want 'nice' things?

[Jaimx86]

Lighthearted post about first world problems!

I was surprised by the comments on the 'news' story 'We can't live on £50,000'.

Firstly, the newspaper seems to have set the families up to look foolish as they are called 'middle class' and are said to have an 'enviable income' but the article later states that the average income is £26500, meaning as a family they are taking in £3000 less that the average family if their joint income is £50000. I wonder if they knew how the article would actually read?

Anyway, my main gripe is with the comments such as:
'I mean gym member ship , that's a luxury you don't need'
'colour hair at home and go only for haircut, simple.'
'Cry me a river. Everything shown could be cut back. Holidays, children's clubs, season tickets, hair/beauty, takeaways, gym membership, 1k a month on a childminder?!'

Why shouldn't people want nice (and pretty basic) things if they are working? That's not to say that they should buy everything they want, but I'd certainly be annoyed if I had to buy supermarket clothes without ever treating myself at other stores.

I do agree with the commenters saying £100 on Sky is a lot though. I had no idea it cost that much!! Still, if that's what they want to spend their wages on...

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3759081/Why-families-earning-50-000-broke-end-month-figures-say-couldn-t-pay-unexpected-bill-500-four-explain-money-goes.html#comments

I'm just pissed off they get child benefit. We live on a similar wage but as its a single income we don't get it. Hashtag been done to death... 2xworkers = childcare costs. You get benefit of SAHP childcare.

I wouldn't want to raise a family on £50k in london. Probably wouldn't be toooooo bad in my home town up north, but not exactly rolling in it. It doesn't sound like they want crazy things - just to be able to pay childcare, eat nice food from the supermarket and have a few 'normal' leisure activities.

I have a surprise third baby - one accident in 20 years of very assiduous contraception use feels like an acceptable error. Yes, I could be sterilised, but it's not exactly a fun thing to volunteer for and its hard to know in your early thirties that you'll be comfortable with ending your fertility permanently. Ditto vasectomy. If someone could come up with a lovely non-hormonal, easily reversible long term contraceptive that didn't cause the worlds worst periods (I'm looking at you copper coil) then we'd all be lining up around the block for it!

Teddy Oh I know these things can happen. Of all the families I know, I only know one baby that was unplanned. Yet they managed to find two families out of a handful where this was the case.

These articles are only set up to embarrass people. I have no idea why you'd put yourself forward for this.

More than anything - why would you want your colleagues to know how much you earn??!

I like nice things. I spend a lot on my clothes, i don'gt have many outfits and the ones i do are covered in animal hair and child debris But I enjoy them, they make me happy. The amount of people who seem to think this is bankrupting my family is odd

As if I'd go out and plurge o expensive clothes if we didn't have food, for example! It's a very British thing. We're not allowed to>mutter< want stuff

monkeysox so true! I became a sahm after having dd then went on to have ds. 6 years after leaving work it was VERY hard to get another job. I worked in admin and had been doing a degree with the OU and did back to work computer courses but it still took me almost 6 months applying for any and all jobs. Plus another 2 years later and I'm still not quite (financially) up to where I was when I left work and i'm still a grade below when I left work. In theory if i'd stayed in work i would have been 10-15k more a year than what i'm currently on. Swings and roundabouts. We have had very low income and survived -just. Now on a but more and I can understand these families. Simple things like dressing for the job you have seems silly but can be expensive and necessary!

the figure I find most surprising is the first family who spend £1,180 on utilities (council tax, insurance, phones, gas, electric) when their house looks to be a standard 4 bed semi - that is about £13k per year
my council tax is £160 pm
insurance £30 pm
phone £20 per month
mobile - payg - so not much
electric / oil/ logs for heating - about £100 per month
all of those things are not much more for a 4 person household
perhaps they meant £1,190 per year as none of the other families had such high costs - sloppy journalism then.

In my experience, the more you earn the more you spend, you could probably bump their income by £500 a month net and they'd soon find clubs/activities/direct debits for all sorts that would eat it up. Some people just want endless disposable income.

Just my opinion I could be wrong but those on benefits or very low incomes, would imagine 50 grand is a hell of a lot of money to earn.

But it is above the threshold for any help whatsoever.

I'm sahp and partner earns 65, we are entitled to no childcare help, no tax credits, no child health benefits etc

So in some warped way we are often in a less fortunate positthan those earning 30 grand, but have 80% of childcare costs paid for, CHB, working tax credits etc.

It's daily mail, so obviously going to be shit.

Also, 1k on a childminder being objected to? Surely that's so they can work? Hardly a luxury. And kids clubs possibly the same.

Silly article.

Of course you can live on 50k but nothing terrible about saying things can still be a stretch for a family of that size.

There must be an optimum wage for couples/families/lone parents which if you are canny enough you could probably work out.

I am a single parent and when I earnt £33k I wasn't entitled to any childcare costs at all. Pp says at £30k you get 80%! Is that a fact? That would have helped me enormously.

Jainx86 yes that's what I meant. They see more basic things as luxuries whereas other people see designer gear. The DM insinuating that haircuts etc are luxuries is a tad ridiculous as to a lot of people that is a basic need. A lot of people will be judging these people but in reality £50k isn't a great deal to raise a large family on in an expensive part of the country.

A £100 haircut, which one of the women had is a luxury. It is not necessary to spend anywhere near that amount to stay tidy.

The basic cut and blow plus home dye job if needed could be had for about a third/quarter of that price if not less.

A think a lot of people's problem is that they see the luxury version as normal/standard and fail to appreciate that they are spending a lot more than the bare minimum, so seem to think they don't have anything nice, when in fact they do.

I spend less than £100 a year on my hair, and that includes colouring. Wet cut once every three months for £16 = £64, plus a home hair dye every two months at £5 a time = £30. It's not necessary to spend £100 a year - sure everyone needs luxuries but lets not pretend a luxury is a necessity when there's a cheaper way to do it!

I'm just pissed off they get child benefit. We live on a similar wage but as its a single income we don't get it

But the childcare costs they bear are probably near to 10x what they get in CB.

I'm madly envious of £1000 a month for childcare in the SE. Ours for a 5 year old and 11 month old is around £1700, and more in school holidays.

Helllooo there definitely is a magic number but tbh the less you have to do with tax credits the better. They've come back to me today chafing me for something another tax department won't provide for another 4 months but they'd like it by Tuesday or else they will stop the money. I'd rather earn it and have no ties to the imbeciles.

Provided you can afford it, luxuries are fab. I think though you shouldn't moan at lack of cash when you can afford luxuries. when I'm in a proper job and can afford things, I'd like to be renting a nice flat on Cardiff bay (lush but dear), shop in m and s sometimes, spend money on purfume and s good gym regularly, have a monthly hair cut, buy decent clothes etc, be able to buy proper branded food and drink, to go shopping without worrying about what I can buy, regularly going on holidays etc. If I could afford any of those things I shouldn't moan at my 'lack of money'. Of course its fine for those people to spend money as they want, burn they shouldn't moan considering most people in this country live on half that. I do think they shouldn't be penalized for earning more - they work hard for their money so why should they give a higher % to the government? Unfair I think

I read it this morning, I felt that a lot of them were being really affected by the childcare costs and felt sorry for them (and the DM comments saying the Mum should stay at home were rather rage inducing!). However I do think one couple had a stupidly high utility bill, one had a stupidly high sky package!

I find it so annoying when people claim people on low or no incomes are actually much richer than them because of goverment help. The example above were someone suggested a family with a SAHP and a worker on £65K have less or similar to a family on £30K is rubbish. The family on £30K with 2 workers and 2 children would get help with childcare but that is an expense the 1st family don't even have. They would also get child benefit of about £150 a month. They'd be very close to the child tax credit threshold which is about £32K themselves so would get very little there. So in total they'd get help towards childcare and about £2000 a year which hardly makes a dent in the extra £35K before tax the first family get in wages. The 30K family would have little more than half the money coming in that the £65K family have. They would certainly be no better off especially as they would still have to pay a good chunk of childcare themselves. These people claiming they would be better off on a low income or benefits should try quitting their jobs and living the life of Riley they think people on low incomes have.
I don't even consider £30K to be low income.

inpale that was me that posted that.

I would say more like 18/20 I was talking about rather than 30.

But you are right you made some points I hadn't seen before! I can see it differently now, although I will admit I think some things are easier, (examples being, free school dinners for benefits, free vet care for up to three pets, as opposed to my expensive insurance and still paying vets up to the 90 pound before can claim insurance, 80% childcare paid for, I cannot go to work because I would earn 40 per day and childcare for all three would be almost 200 per day so we literally have to have the arrangement we have, despite the fact I would love to go back even part time) but like you say the other side of that is that I would obviously have more money in the first place.

I do understand what you've said now.

It's all relative though isn't it, I earn more now than I have ever earnt, but I don't save more, I spend it!

Sky is astronomical, we switched to BT and save £30 per month.

I do also dye my hair at home most of the time but perhaps twice a year (Christmas and birthday) I have it dyed at hair dressers.

I buy my clothes and DDs at places like Uniqlo, Zara and H&M. For treats we get clothes from Cos, Whistles, Joseph.

We get our food shop delivered from Abel and Cole, cheaper options out there but that's what we like. £50,000 a year is enough for my comfortable lifestyle.

I think these days so much seems to depend on whether you have help with childcare as where I live 90 per cent live close to their family (I am not from around here) and thus have people to depend on while they work. They certainly does seem to be plenty of disposable income where I live. It's all right for some!

It really isn't much in London at all.

This is eye opening. I have my hair cut and dyed for £95 every other month and thought that was being rather economical as it's half the price of where I used to go.

The joys of no children to pay for

rainydaybear I agree re: the rage reducing "she shouldn't bother working" on the comments and in fact used my very first DM upvote for the poster who simply said 'why she?' Particularly as in half the families the women significantly out-earned the men, and in all cases, the take home pay of the lower earner was still more than the sum total of childminder, after school club and second car, so they were all better off working, even if fractionally, before even taking into considerations like pensions, opportunities for promotion, etc.

We could all be judgey and see places where the families could possibly cut back. But I think OP has it right - the emphasis is why should they cut out every single minor luxury so they are just existing? The whole reason people go to university and slog away at their jobs all day is so they can have some minor luxuries - and £33 a month for a haircut or £12 a week for two yoga classes are minor luxuries when compared to things like designer handbags or expensive holidays. Otherwise what's the point? There was an interesting thread the other day about what people chose to splurge or save on - the point being everyone has different priorities.

I do think that its interesting all four families were in roughly similar times in life - where such huge amounts were going on childcare and in the first 0-15 years of career and mortgage repayments, which could suggests that they might be finding it hard now but could be in completely different circumstances in a few years when they reap the benefits. For example one of the families noted that they still have a lot to pay off their mortgage but they got it at a really good price in 2009 before prices shot up - in that case, in 10-15 years time with childcare costs far behind them, mortgage paid off and house worth a lot more than they paid for it, and likely having progressed in both jobs due to not missing 4-5 years as a SAHP they might feel a lot more comfortably off.