It’s like a parallel universe

[Imustbemad00]

Inspired by a few threads recently about money. Specifically money in London. I’m shocked at how many people seem to think you need to be rich to live in London (£100k per year is rich to me) and how many people think £100k is not a lot in London.
Why is this specific to London?Other than house prices?
Just to put it into perspective, I’m a single parent with 2 children living in zone 1 London. I take home £22000.
Admittedly, cheap rent at £650pcm. But we manage. Obviously we’re not well off, can’t afford fancy holidays, buying clothes for summer at the moment is a struggle, have no savings, can’t afford to decorate. But we have what we need, the occasional treat, short break
Most people I know locally are in similar positions. But I suppose people have a tendency to mix with their own kind.
I just find this ‘other london’ bizarre. The London where you need 100k to barely get by

DH and I are on 70k combined, in the north and that's not enough for us - we have to scrimp for holidays etc. So as another person has said, yes you manage - but a lot of people don't want to just manage.

flirtygirl
Idk how the rental prices in expensive locations such as the one op is living are determined. However I imagine the rental prices are low because they are mostly owned outright or were purchased before the massive increase in property prices. Thus the costs will be low.

If more housing stock were now acquired the current rental prices for these future properties would be unsustainable. Even accounting for the current very low interest rates, it can currently cost more to purchase a property than it does to privately rent one furthermore the on costs for a ll are higher than for an owner occupier.

Consequently if social housing stock were massively increased, either rents for all properties would have to increase or the rental prices for these newly acquired properties would be on a par with private rents.

Prices in the rental sector are over inflated due to over inflated property purchase prices. This all due to a succession of poor governmental policies.

On a side note, I feel its a parallel universe where a £22k salary is topped up to more than £50k by a benefits system. That's insane.

Where on earth is this happening? Sign me up please

This thread is laughable.
OP YANBU, you can see the envy from some of the posters because you have cheaper rent!

Also just because the OP is on on 22k does not mean she claims any kind of housing or council tax benefits or tax credits.
At 1 point I was able to claim housing benefits as I earned a very low wage but I just didn’t do it I didnt want the headache from the council (they get things wrong a lot!) so paid my own council rent.

There's a lot of misinformation on both sides here. As others have pointed out, social housing doesn't cost money for the rest of us (unlike selling off social housing, which reduces the supply for those who need it and leaves people in need and the rest of using council taxes and the like to pay to keep families in crappy b&bs).

On the other side, it's not true that £100k earners get any child benefit (that stops at £60k), and nor can you afford a nanny and zone 1 rent on £100k.

£100k is loads of money, it's just that these days to live what people truly consider a 'rich' lifestyle -skiing trips, private schools etc - you need even more. Which is crazy too.

But that's the truth of it.

Due to social housing, a government benefits scheme, the OP is living the same lifestyle (a 2 bed flat in Zone 1) that would only be otherwise affordable if she was earning £50k+.

Whether it's morally right or wrong, if OPs flat was on the market now, it's rent would be more than £1000 higher.
So if she were renting it without a government scheme, she would need to have that higher income.

The moral question here is more should the social housing in highly priced areas not be sold off, in order to buy two or three times more properties in a lower priced area (and by this I mean further north, not "don't have social housing in posh areas").
A 2 bed flat in zone 1 would be... What? £450k?

I live in a lovely town in the Midlands - that money would buy at least 3 two/three bed flats/terraces here. And thus would serve three families, rather than one.

Earlier, I agreed with OP it is a parallel universe.

I also said £100k+ households needed to understand they’re better off than 98% of other households in the UK. Money buys you choices.

I am in a £100k+ household.

Blingygolightly

Some horrible sneering* posts by Flying* to the OP and the assumption that people on low income don't have a nice lifestyle and 'pay fuck all'

Redsuitcase - that's called social cleansing and is happening fast - see Elephant & Castle. Why shouldn't lower income people live in Zone 1? Low paid and just 'normal' jobs need doing in Zone 1 you know. London is a living breathing city, for all types of people, not just rich people who work in finance, and Russian and Chinese Who don't even live in the properties they buy.

So all the younger nurses, teachers, firefighters, childcare practitioners, shop assistants and so on can commute in from the Midlands? Good idea.

I just want to point out (having worked for a HA for many years) that they do not make a small profit - they make millions. And the CEO's sometimes earn 3-4 times as much as the PM. Not really justified when looking at the standard of some of these homes and customer satisfaction figures.

It's the fat cat wages that should be questioned not normal hard working families whatever their income

Some really nasty posts towards the OP. I can see the point OP was making, I think in life whatever you earn depending on your choice, you'll always need more.
Attacking the OP for her way of life is awful, judging someone for being able to manage on a 5th of the wage, to sneer thinking OP might manage, but her life must be shit.
If London's elite moved all the low earners out, who would serve their needs.

😂 love the assumption that working in finance means you are a high earner!

biscuit for the OP
I don’t understand how people don’t understand true costs of living their own lives.

Her lifestyle doesn’t cost £22k gross
she might earn 22k but add in all the benefits /reduction in taxation and the salary requirement to service a non subsidised 2 bed in zone 1 and her notional take home is far higher than £22k

she’d starve on 22k post tax if she wasn’t being subsidised up the arse by higher rate tax payers and given secure accommodation well under market rate

^

What a repellent individual you appear to be horsemenoftheapocalypse! How can you possibly justify speaking to or about the op like this?

AIBU really is like a fucking bear pit these days, I agree with the whingers.

AIBU really is like a fucking bear pit these days, I agree with the whingers
This, with bells on.

Your rent is insanely low - I was paying that for a bedroom in a house share almost 15 years ago and that was zone 3!

One of the problems is that a lot of people wrongly assume that all SH tenants are unemployed and claiming benefits. A lot aren’t. A lot are in low paid jobs where they can’t afford 5k a year for a season ticket to commute in to London from the Home Counties. That’s precisely why I moved into London. My work is here and I exchanged to a property here. When I started training (2 year programme) to do the job I currently do, I was living in Hertfordshire. I was taking home 1200 a month. My rent was 600, CT 100, and my kids were still young then so £400 commuting costs on top would have left me only £25 a week for food for the three of us and utilities. Impossible. If you made everyone in social housing move out (17,000 in my borough alone, as I said upthread) the city would come to a standstill! There are far, far more people in SH in London than some on this thread think. Many of whom do key jobs essential to keep things running.

I didn't assume working in finance makes you a high earner: I wrote 'rich people who work in finance' as a shorthand for people who are in high-earning jobs. Of course there are less well paid jobs in finance too.

However the whole austerity thing was brought about largely by the financial crash caused by 'rich people who work in finance,' who were then bailed out to the tune of billions, with the costs being carried by everyone else. All that wealth was (some say deliberately) created for super-rich at the real expense of the ordinary person. Yet people on here are moaning at the OP for paying a fair rent.
Massive asset transferring going on. This is why although the UK is around the 5th largest economy (personal not public wealth) it feels increasingly less so, actually being meaningless to anyone on a low wage, paying high rent.
Sorry I know I'm ranting, but all these people blaming the OP when they should be looking at why our economy is so fucked that people can work full-time and still need to be on benefits.

bibbitybobbity
Apart from the biscuit and “up the arse”, that post is factually correct. I think it’s to counter the emoticon, which the op used herself. The emoticon seems to be widely used when a poster wishes to be passive aggressive and / or patronise others. Perhaps op doesn’t mean it this way. But that’s how I read it. Especially when talking about such an emotive topic.

The tax payer is subsidising you by a minimum of £1000 a month for your social housing if your zone 1 rent is £650

How's that then if the OP isn't on any benefits?

Redsuitcase - that's called social cleansing and is happening fast - see Elephant & Castle. Why shouldn't lower income people live in Zone 1? Low paid and just 'normal' jobs need doing in Zone 1 you know.

Sure, but so do middling-income jobs and they're paying market rate - it is a pretty significant distortion.

Mummyoflittledragon - I couldn't care less if that post is factually correct (although I doubt all of it is) but it's precisely the biscuit and the "subsidised up the arse" comment that I object to. It's just disgustingly viscious and unnecessary.

The economy cannot survive without people doing lower paid jobs. The low paid should be earning more, no doubt about that, and fucking hell they don't deserve to be "spoken" to as some have on this thread.

I think you're getting your confused emoticon mixed up with your cynical emoticon btw.

As someone who pays tax on her income, with no trust or inheritance dodges, no properties signed over to other people, not getting a tax break on private education and whose rent money that she earns herself goes directly to a provider of low cost housing, I would say that the OP is contributing a higher percentage of what she has to society than many on Mumsnet. And yes OP this place can look like a parallel universe sometimes. Of course someone in the top 2% of earners is well off, regardless of where they live.

No-one needs to live in zone 1, they can travel in from zones 2-4, which are presumably significantly cheaper and a short commute.

At least London has a functional public transport system that covers most, if not all the time. I saw a program that said the London nightbuses were 'only' every 30 minutes. That's peak frequency here from the suburbs to one of the largest cities in the country. They're once an hour outside rush hour and none at all between about 11 pm and 6 am.