Minimum £44 per week on clothes and £106pw on social/cultural activities???

[Snowflake65]

For one adult and two children - does that seem excessive?

Just completed the calculator on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website and this is what it says is minimum income standard

Funnily enough it is telling me my salary is not enough - I should be earning £35,000 a year to have a minimum standard of living or when I put in my actual mortgage and utility figures it told me I need to earn £40k+

Surely they cannot be right? If they are campaigning against poverty I would have thought they would use more credible figures, or maybe IABU.

www.minimumincome.org.uk

I think it's bollocks. It said I needed to earn at least an extra £40 a week, but we live very comfortably on my salary. We took DD to a paid outdoor activity a few weeks ago, have 2 UK holidays booked for this year, buy what we need when we need want it, etc.

Mine said that we'd need £144/week for rent for a family of 4, in central London. Hmmmm.

It sounds a lot. But sometimes it's easy to think I don't spend nearly that much and when you write it all down it's loads. I did that for a few weeks and got a shock. Thought we were cutting back. It was an eye opener.

I can believe that.

£44 a week on clothes for me and the dc's sounds horrendous but average out the shoes, coats, uniform, work clothes, sport and gym kit and casual clothes over the year and it's probably about right. Maybe a little cheaper for me because I'm good at finding charity shop bargains and buying a size up in the sales. In December I ended up buying them new PE trainers (£10) and new running trainers (£25 ) each. So that was £70 gone. I'm sure I bought a few other bits on top of that.

We don't have proper holidays though. Just days out and stay with family in the south west instead.

Having skimmed the thread, I'd say there is a kind of poverty which is about being socially marginalised.

So that if someone invites you to a party or for a meal, buying a card or a bottle of wine puts pressure on finances. Some good mates would be fine with a home made card or a bottle of lemonade rather than wine - but other acquaintances would find it weird or 'cheap.'

People suggest meeting in coffee shops - which are as expensive as pubs - rather than each other's homes.

Even 'cheap' hobbies - such as running - require decent shoes. Or perhaps club membership.

Very few children's activities - even the more non-commercial things such as Scouts - are free. There are subs and special activities for which extra payments are required.

Mine says we're £45 short every week. This is after putting in actual figures for mortgage etc.

I'm the sole earner at £25020 which isn't high but I thought we had a reasonable standard of living tbh.

I'm confused, that calculator said if between us we earned £8,000 more than DH's salary we could get over £200 a week in benefits.

I'm confused, that calculator said if between us we earned £8,000 more than DH's salary we could get over £200 a week in benefits.

Even with uniforms I can't see clothes coming to that much unless you are really trendy, having new clothes as they come out for each person. Understandable if you're youngish and/or changing weight/pregnant.

I swear by having fixed staples in the wardrobe which might be boring, but with all the accessories I've got I can jazz things up.

Working out children's extra curricular activities, we definitely don't even get to half of that supposed budget. That's with football / ballet / swimming for 2. Going out were fans of nature so most trips are free bar petrol. It's seldom an activity costs something.

I'm most concerned about the severe undervaluation of the cost of rent for a charity advocating against poverty... I don't know anywhere within 100 miles of here that DH and I could rent for £96 a week.

We're paying £300 a week at present and could probably be paying about £190/week if we moved to a rougher area out of London and commuted in... but holy fuck!

I think the social/cultural activities covers holidays, xmas and birthday parties. So I can see people spending that amount. But below that I would not see as poverty.

Mouseholecat you can change amounts like rent. And that will vary enormously dependent on where you live or whether it is social housing or private. So it is I suspect a National average

19500 each apparently! We don't get that between us including tax credits!

I think we spend about that per week on activities we and the 3 dc do. That does include 5 instrument lessons between them though.
Clothes wise I'd reckon between the 5 of us it's probably only just over that per month. I get a certain amount second hand and we don't get stuff unless we need it (except dd2 who tells me she's planning on marrying a billionaire so she can shop every day)

We need 26k a year each apparently. Don't earn anywhere near that.

Ours says we are short of £160 a week. It has also seriously underestimated how much council tax is (and I didn't think we lived in an 'expensive' area for that). Very interesting to see what they think we should spend on other things though.

The Joseph Rowntree foundation is always putting out stuff like this. Ridiculous. Once they said that poverty was not having a new bike every year.

There was a woman on the radio a while ago - in fact she might have actually been from that organisation - who was saying that lack of money was difficult for poor people because they liked expensive brands . Yep.

£44 a week on clothes?! That is madness !

Apparently we need twice as much as we actually earn. Oh dear.

The suggestion that for three people you would spend £2200 on clothes (just over £700 each) a year does not seem excessive to me, especially for growing children. Think of the cost of two pairs of shoes a year, for example.

This site shows in 2014 what the average household spend actually was. It says an average of £23.60 a week on clothes and shoes. With the overall average spend being £530 per week.

www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc203/index.html

Another thinking it is a joke ...we are relatively ok , DCs do activities etc, we don't have to worry about money.
I've adjusted it for rent etc - the amount for gas electricity etc seemed low - but then looking at the breakdown I added on for phone line rental and insurance - then they add them on again....even adjusting for that it says we are £40 per week short ....
But no way do we spend £44 per week on clothes ...I spend zero on alcohol - can't believe that is even in there...food seems steep too , £44 per week on personal goods and services???? like what?

Household goods £25 per week - that's £1300 per year.
Unless you replace a couple of big appliances every year...(I've just had an expensive run - needed new tv and a dishwasher - decent ish makes - cost about £700 -but the dishwasher was 8yrs old, TV was 16 yrs old...I haven't needed to buy a big appliance before that for about 4 yrs... )
It actually makes me feel a bit cross - one of the biggest problems is our throw away/consumer society - things like this surely don't help...make us think we should be spending more than we do...

Oh God we spend more a week on alcohol than it says.

I second the concern about students living away from home - parents are supposed to contribute but often really 'can't afford to' & this was ignored

what's weird is that I did it for one adult and it only came up as £7 for clothes? Which suggests either children's clothes are more than twice as much as adults (as that would be 2 x £18 to make it up to £44 in total (which is doubtful?) or the calculations go wrong somewhere! £7 for clothes for an adult seems quite low, that's only about one normal high street dress every two months!

Other things like rent (£87 p/m) and home insurance (£1.21!) also seem very low! I suppose it's very hard to generalise because circumstances are so different - I suppose if you're in a house share somewhere affordable £87p/w would be about right, if you have your own flat in central London you'd be looking at 5xthat!