Low salaries not actually low?

[highchairhell]

I'm probably being unreasonable here but it really frustrates me when people say 'we manage on a salary of £24k' etc but conveniently forget to mention the tax credits, child benefit, subsidised school lunches etc that bumps the salary up considerably.
On threads where someone says they struggle earning £50k there are always posters who are incredulous and outraged that people aren't living like kings on that but fail to realise that there would be little to no help for families on that wage whereas the lower wages are propped up with tax free benefits and housing pay that means they have more disposable income than the on paper huger earners!

I'm more annoyed about people (ok just one person but still) moaning about lack of money and how difficult it is to get by and then mention about the £200+ 'personal allowance ' they have each month after all bills are paid, after significant amounts going to savings and overpayments on their mortgage. They might feel like it's a struggle but I just can't relate to that amount of financial security. Anyone relying on benefits is pretty much one paycheck away from a disaster.

@silvercuckoo

@Buswankeress
You are actually getting net almost exactly the same as someone on 24K with no top ups would.
Salaries of 50K usually come with full hours and extra expenses, all depends on where you live, what you do and how old is your child (children). A single parent of a primary-aged child on a 50K / 45+ hour job, with a long commute to central London, could easily be financially worse off than someone on your level of income with a school-hours job around the corner.

I work 40 hours a week, 4 nights at 10hrs a night, pay for travel to get to work too, not a 'London' commute, but I don't work round the corner. And what I quoted was before stoppages so in reality it's a bit less. Not everyone on a low wage works a 'school hours job round the corner' also as there is no childcare for my DDs age, I pay friends/family for childcare - fair enough not the going rate for professional childcare (been there though) but I don't expect her to be looked after for free. I buy my own work clothes, shoes and food/drink while at work - is it the standard belief that anyone who receives top up from the government works round the corner and doesn't have any extra expenses?
I also don't receive sick pay other than ssp if I'm too ill to work, work bank holidays and weekends for no extra, and my job is quite physical. I've never worked a 50k a year job, but I suspect that many of them don't include bank holidays and weekends, and receive sick pay from their employer, at least for a set period of time. I love my job and I'm happy with my lot, but I certainly would be financially better off on 50k a year without question.
I take the point that on (earning) 24k I would be pretty much the same as I am now (without top ups) but anything over and above that I'd be better off.

I get OPs point a bit. On money threads on here, there's often someone who says we manage on our 15k salary or whatever so I don't understand how you can be struggling on your higher wage, and doesn't factor in the top up benefits. Better to compare like with like. Monthly income is usually a more accurate way of looking at things.

That said, whether someone on 24k will be getting a lot of top ups depends entirely on circumstances. With no children then no. With just one child then not much except child benefit unless there are childcare costs. With three children, privately renting and high childcare costs then yes, there'll be a substantial top up coming in. It will also be time limited, ie most of it's bye bye when the youngest finishes education/turns 18.

But housing benefit in particular arguably benefits the landlord as much as anyone, so OP is BU to characterise it so simply.

@DownAndUnder
I would normally guess that a 24K job is actually lower stress compared to a min wage job (which is most likely physical).

However, I know cases where single parents chose voluntary under-employment + top-ups over a good salary (around 50K), precisely because it paid better, and in addition made them available for their children.

My husband is on 30k and I earn 11k. Sounds like a lot, but once the mortgage, car repayment, debt repayment, water, gas, electric, food, petrol, car insurance, house insurance, contents insurance, life insurance and two mobile phone bills (his company pays our internet and phone and we piggyback my sisters Netflix account) there’s not a lot left.
We have two children. I’m 29, he’s 34, and we both work really hard. You add to that the childcare costs of wraparound for one 4 year old and one 10 month old (which is over a grand alone) and work out the ni, pensions and taxes we pay. (No help from the government) you will see our income is just about keeping us afloat.
I’m actually going to become a sahm as my wages (£800 pcm) were being eaten up by a grandad worth of childcare. (-£200)
Consider my husband receives £2,000 per month after taxes. It’s £450 mortgage, £50 water, £50 Gas, £50 electric, £200 for the car, £200 for the debt repayment etc etc you can see how quickly it goes.
That’s without taking my kids anywhere nice, without doing anything with the children, no new clothes, haircuts, nothing.
So yes although we cannot be considered “poor” my friends who have a declared joint income of considerably less receive a lot of benefits from the government that are not tax deductible and therefore they are actually a lot better off than we are.

There's nothing quite as mind blowing as a mumsnet money thread.

If you have a high income but also high outgoings, it's because your have chosen to have high outgoings. That's perfectly ok, it's your choice to do that, but if you bring home thousands each month and only have £10 left over at the end of each month because you have a huge mortgage, and a huge car loan, and school fees etc, it is not in any way the same as only having £10 left each month because your salary is £1k per month and it is entirely eaten up by rent, childcare, electricity and food. The former might feel stretched but they have control over the situation that the latter doesn't. That's the difference.

@Buswankeress

If you work 40 hours a week and earn less than 14K gross, then you are not getting minimum wage. In other words, your employer is committing a criminal offence. Also, 10 hour regular night shifts are illegal (with the exception of armed forces), they cannot be over 8 hours on average.

@treaclesoda
I am the one with the high income and high outgoings. My childcare costs are 2.8K a month (I am off 7am to 8 pm, sometimes 7am to the last train home, so have to find a babysitter / pay overtime to the childminder). Housing cost is just over 1K in outer London, which is quite cheap for the area.

This is the equivalent of 66K gross salary before I eat, travel or pay for utilities.
Which part of my expenses do you think is optional?

Almost all of those are things you could change if you wanted to. You could change jobs, work part time, move to a different area.

I'm not saying you should do those things, I'm just saying that in practical terms they are things that you could change if you preferred a different lifestyle. High earners can step off the high pressure career ladder if they actually want to. Most don't want to, and I don't blame them, I wouldn't want to either. But that's not the same as it not being possible.

On the flip side, low earners are berated regularly on mumsnet for not being willing to relocate, when in actual fact relocating is prohibitively expensive if you are already poor.

High income gives you options that are not available to lower earners.

I earn 13k and we don't get any benefits, tax credits, maintenance, free lunches or freebies of any description. Its low, there's no other way of looking at it. But we manage fine.

24k where I live is a high salary.

@Silvercukoo

Unpaid breaks. I get an hour of each night removed for my break. So I'm 'working' 9 hours, there for 10. Work sole charge, so, if something occurs during my hours 'break' then I have to deal with it. Probably technically illegal because you're supposed to have breaks undisturbed and away from your area of work, but seeing as I work across the whole area, that's impossible anyway. But it's the reality for many people in low paid jobs. IWhinge and you're out, just grateful to have a job tbh.
And (info a little out of date) but don't nurses, hca's and police/fire/paramedics work 12 hour shifts day or night? I believe it's worked out over 17 weeks in some form.
Regardless though, anyone in my position would quite obviously be better off earning £50k a year Vs earning £24k a year. Unfortunately because of the area I live in, such jobs are hard to find even if you can afford the re education for the qualifications.
I guess people like me are just vilified anyway, no matter if they work or not, no matter if it's the collective employers that are paying crap wages for essential jobs. If everyone like me moved up to better paying jobs, who'd do the shitty grunt work no-one wants to think about?

There are some generalisations here which aren't helpful. Some 24k jobs will be less stressful than some 50k jobs, but if the person earning 24k is an NQT or a nurse then all bets are off, and both are quite likely doing as much unpaid overtime for it as the 50k earner is. Some higher expenses can be reduced, school fees are optional for example. But if you're under a certain age then high housing costs, which might well be private rent because nothing else is available to you, can't necessarily be reduced. People will always say relocate, and as a professional living outside London I know just good a setup that can be, but not everyone's skills are amenable to it.

Basically I think when talking about money and outgoings, we need to be aware that the regional and generational disparities in the UK are colossal, even before considering top ups. It isn't a subject that lends itself well to generalisations in a society where variation even in the cost of the basics can be so massive.

Im a single parent and take home about 850 a month...i also get 112 a week tax credits and 170 cm per month and 82.80 per month child benefit.....i manage just fine but thats only down to the fact my mortgage is almost paid off so very low....if i had to pay rent id be stuffed...

My 13k (16k if I worked full-time) salary is very stressful. This is because of ridiculous and ever-moving targets, culture of bullying, an actual bully as a manager, no pay rises - ever. It's no wonder that half of our team have developed mental health problems. I struggle at work every day, and I'm a graduate. The work isn't physical but requires a lot of mental agility, which is very tiring; having to remember 200 things simultaneously and never make a mistake is very stressful. If you do make a mistake you get yelled at, in front of everyone. Every time a change is made, usually every week, it's to our detriment. Work is often torture.

But yes, life is easy for the low-paid.

And that's by no means unique namechanger22.

I had to sign in to respond to this utter bullshit about working for a bank.

My dp is very successful working for one of the top banks in the world. He doesn’t wear any designer clothing at all, years old m&s clothing is as fancy as it gets and he doesn’t have a lot of work clothing. The reason he is successful is because of his talent, hard work and skill set, not because of what he wears.

He gets promoted because of his brain, not because of his appearance.

When we had a household income of 26k (2 adults,1 child) we got absolutely nothing other than child benefit. We were just above the cut-off to get tax credits and certainly did not get any extras whatsoever so no free lunches or anything like that.

Also I would say the key factors in someone on a ‘good’ salary struggling to make ends meet are-
Needing to pay full time childcare for one or more children
Large mortgage repayments
Large finance repayments on a car etc
Other debt repayments

Whatthequack

One person's experience in banking does not reflect the entire industry.

We are both 30 and under, joint salary income of 63k, 2 dc. I am under no impression that we are hard done by. However the stress of the corporate world has us both working nearly every night after coming home from work and

Hit send too soon.

Spending time with the kids. I feel like everything has pros and cons. Everyone struggles with something in their life.

Ours is the guilt we feel having to work to keep up with the pressure. I would love to spend more time with my kids.

"Salaries of 50K usually come with full hours and extra expenses"

So do salaries of 24k. Not many people earn £24k without working full time.

However, as we are talking about benefits and top ups lets add a little bit more into the mix.

Someone on 24k is not likely to receive many additional benefits unless they are working in the public sector, which means their employer will make a 13% ( average) contribution to their pension.

Someone on 50k in the public sector actually benefits from a package worth £56,500 package. I doubt anyone earning £24k gets that equivalent in benefits.

However in the private sector someone earning £50k will most likely recieve a package worth far more. Private health care and insurance for them and their spouse ( worth at least £1,500 a year), discounts of gym memberships, health insurance, and of course employer contributed pensions. Overall I reckon your average private sector worker on £50k gets an overall package of £60k or more.

Someone on £50k ( or a household with that income) can still claim CB btw.

"Very high-level roles are about socialising to win business or to influence decision-makers. In these interactions people strike up "friendly" lifestyle discussions about cars, where you holiday and where you shop etc. to test you out. "

Only in positions where you didn't earn your place but got their by nepotism, and so did the people talking to you.

Real people go with people who get the job done well, and have the proven track record.

It’s always going to be an emotive subject.

I have a friend who works term time and is on slightly more than min wage, but gets paid 52 weeks a year. As a result she gets housing benefit, tax credits, childcare stuff etc. Whereas I’m on 50k a year and get no assistance from benefits. However my friend has more available cash than I do, we know this as we sat and worked it out. The big factor in this is that I have to pay for full time childcare and she can claim 70% of hers back via the benefit system, and doesn’t work during school holidays and has reduced hours during term time (not 9 to 5 is what I mean)

But, and it’s a big but, the added benefit I have, is that, I will own my own home after a certain amount of time (she rents), and my pension is better and won’t have to pay rent/mortgage during my retirement. Plus when her kids are older her benefits will reduce, but my salary won’t. So yes, I’ll be better off in later life, but she has more disposable income now.

Perhaps there should be a standard wage for all jobs, house prices should be capped and people shouldn't be allowed to have more than two successful pregnancies (if they have twins or triplets, I won't force them to be put up for adoption - I'm not a monster).

Then people would go into the jobs that they had a passion and aptitude for and we would all live happily ever after.