To think people on middle incomes are forgotten about?

[Squeezedout]

I am so upset tonight and just need to vent. I have always worked, as has my partner. We have 2 children who we could provide for until my industry pretty much collapsed and I had to find a less well paid job.

The cost of childcare and rent (south east) is absolutely crazy and I can’t keep up. I put in an application for universal credit that said we’d be entitled to a few hundred a month so have jumped through every single hoop, taken unpaid days off work to attend a job centre (the irony!)

Only to find out now (6 weeks after the initial claim) that we are entitled to roughly £4.50 a month.

On paper maybe we have decent salaries, combined with the rent and childcare we can’t even break even each month. I know we are not alone.

It seems in this country that if you are the poorest of society, you are helped (in terms of council properties with decent rent, council tax help, 2 year funding and everyday benefits as well as lots of media attention to the problem) to ensure you have enough to live on. If you’re the richest in society, you obviously don’t need help but the squeezed middle are just completely forgotten about.

I am NOT benefit bashing at all but It really doesn’t pay to work sometimes. I’ve calculated how much better off I’d be as a single mum not working in a council house and tbh I cannot keep taking out loans and am starting to think this is the only option to keep my kids fed.

AIBU to think the ‘squeezed middle’ are completely forgotten about in this country? And that it is fucked up that I can’t feed my kids on an average wage?

If your only getting £4.50 a month UC that's all your entitled to, you have 2 incomes coming in plus child benefit, everyone who has to pay childcare struggles, you'll be better off once there at school.

It's all very well advising to move out of London / South East but fact remains that London and the South East will always require cleaners, manual workers, etc, -jobs which don't pay the rents. Take on another job, lose benefits plus pay more transport costs - it's not an easy one to solve. Those just above a threshold line will always suffer due to costs incurred whilst working - you need decent clothes, transport costs, contributions to colleagues do's, etc.... OP s right, not even middle earners suffer - those just above benefit threshold do too, and quite often they're the poorest in society.

What are you proposing to 'cool demand'? Some kind of cull?

Employers could have been encouraged to move or set up new workplaces outside the already over-crowded South East. There could have been tax breaks for opening up new businesses/branches in other parts of the UK. There could have been reductions in employers NIC where an employer takes on "local" workers. Lots of incentives could have been introduced to at least stop the continual flow of more and more people moving to the SE and leaving behind a vacuum in other areas of the country which are just decaying. London and the SE is sucking the life out of the rest of the country - it's not sustainable and the longer it goes unchallenged, the bigger the problems to resolve.

Kazzyhoward, I'm part time on min wage, I pay tax, NI and company pension.
What are you on about???

OP, it just doesn't seem fair when you're both working hard to stand on your own two feet. If you didn't work and didn't have the high cost of childcare, transport and clothes for work, with extra benefits would you be better off?

If you're children are younger and you've got more than two beds, perhaps you could rent somewhere smaller - we managed in a two bed for 15 years. We've struggled in the past, so only used the car/ public transport when we really had to, other times we walked, cycled, in fact I still mostly do my food shopping on foot a few days a week. When you're buying food, look for cheaper alternatives, ie pulses instead of meat for a meal. I know you shouldn't have to do any of this if you're both working hard, but just wondered if there's anything you can take onboard which might help.

Same here, pay day to pay day, both children in full time childcare, combined with mat leave. Forever living in overdraft, 3k in debt and car is still on finance. TO break even we have to have no unexpected bills but of course that never happens, we have to get some urgent plumbing work done and our car repair costs (£££) and that's before you add in buying decent rain coats, shoes, birthday presents etc.

Thankfully our eldest is about qualify for 20 hours so hopefully we will be able to at least start paying off our debt.

We have we had any luxuries, haven't been overseas for five years, rarely go out. Our holiday this year is staying with the PIL....in Nottingham (nothing against Nottingham but it's hardly a nice sun holiday)

Cannot leave London because of job, our friends are here and family.

It may be very difficult to live on a middle income if you are paying childcare for preschoolers but that is only going to be the case for a relatively short period of time. Ultimately people on benefits will be far worse off. If you think that they are better off than you, you can always try it.

I agree but I think the political philosophy of our dear leaders the Tories is that you basically have to stand on your own two feet and fend for yourself in this life unless you are really unable to do so. Even then the benefits are bare minimums.

I'm a centrist and can see the argument for left and right, but I can see how some people would say that reliance on the state should be minimal.

The problem is it's not just childcare costs Until school begins. A lot of people have to pay for the kids to be dropped off and collected, potentially til they're able to walk to school by themselves.

I think things are often tight when children are small .The thing is you would not be" given" a Council House necessarily anyway !.We struggled when ours were younger .Most of us are the Squeezed Middle !As those people at the bottom are in a precarious position ,and with the Government we have at present ,I can only see benefits being cut or frozen .If you are at work ,you have a better chance of getting a better paid job ,and are not reliant on the state.Can you see if there are any savings to be made?.A cheaper supermarket ,maybe a smaller home or a little further out maybe .The thing is we live in a democracy ,and those people who are at the lower end may have disablities ,MH problems stopping them from working .You have a partner ,home and job.Can you retrain ,get more qualifications maybe ?

I am going to be paying 100s a month until my daughter is old enough to have a key.

Someone said veing poor means you don't have to pay a company pension like that's a good thing, yay people now haven't got any income to retire on woop woop

@Squeezedout what do you mean by “middle income” though? Are you going to divulge earnings here?? You might think you are a “middle income” but to some you may have plenty and just have bad money management/a lot of outgoings?? I’m not saying that you do btw! Is there ANYTHING you could cut down on? Sky, Netflix, eating out etc??

I totally agree with the OP, the middle earners have always, irrespective of the party in power, been squeezed, earning just too much for help. Lots of people are worse off but that doesn't detract from the original post.

I am a single mother on a wage that was defined by Labour as "fat cat" territory, and my childcare + housing was £4K / month for the last year, leaving me around £800 for everything else. Cheapest nurseries, cheapest housing in SE.
School wraparound care is £7.50 per hour per child, making it still around £1.2K / month once both are in school. Full-time holiday care starts at £400/week for two, times 8 weeks that I can't cover with my annual leave.

Some people have no understanding of what it is to be poor. It's these people we should be supporting via the state, not those on above-average incomes ffs.

And some us are poor, working and earning just at the cusp of average.

People dont seem to understand that. And I did move to a cheaper area. Unfortunately it cost a fortune in petrol to get to my job.

Well you are benefit bashing

But you are right that lower middle income families (the JAMs) of this world are only "just about managing" and no there is little help.

But you are completely misdirecting your anger and frustration. Why kick the people who have less than you? You are totally mistaken about the current rationale for benefits. Universal Credit means just that. Everyone gets to be at the same (fairly crap, insecure, ever changeable) level of support. You're entitled to £4.50 to get you to that level of support. It's not based on your relative merit because you've managed to have a comfortable life hitherto.

Yet someone I know has never worked her partner doesn't work they claim benefits and get 15 hours free child care per week.

My understanding of this kind of situation is that the free childcare is entirely for the DC's benefit, to give them a better start in life, nothing to do with giving the parents free time or a chance to work. So that's a separate matter, not something the middle classes need to benefit from - broad generalisations of course but a huge system can't be nuanced.

Someone said veing poor means you don't have to pay a company pension like that's a good thing, yay people now haven't got any income to retire on woop woop

If you have no pension provision, you get state pension and pension credit. If you pay a relatively modest amount into a private pension, you get state pension and pension credit is reduced by the amount of your private pension, so you're no better off after having paid pension contributions you could barely afford. Private pensions are only worth it if they're big enough to give you a pension far in excess of what you'd get in state benefits.

It’s not a new phenomenon, the years with small children have always been lean for people on average incomes.

I'd say we're classed as middle income. DH earns 35,580 before tax and we still get around £430 a month UC. I started a part time job recently, which dropped that down to about £150 a month (on top of my 380ish earnings) but we are significantly better off on UC than on tax credits. We wouldnt be entitled to any tax credits at all as we have no childcare costs.
Our outgoings aren't particularly high, but we're also not elft with a huge amount at the end of the month. Child benefit goes into a savings account every week, but usually it needs to be used for uniforms, school trips, emergencies etc so we're not exactly stashing it all away. It's up to £180 at the moment but I'll need to use that for school shoes towards the end of summer.

It's all very well advising to move out of London / South East but fact remains that London and the South East will always require cleaners, manual workers, etc, -jobs which don't pay the rents.

Absolutely, but that's a London and the south east problem to solve, and shouldn't figure in the thinking of anyone who is being priced out. It's still appropriate to suggest to low and middle earners who can't make ends meet that they could at least consider moving out of the south east entirely. Obviously they may not be able to for good reasons, but London needing cleaners certainly isn't one of them.

I agree with you OP. Both me and DH work full-time and earn about a UK average full-time salary. But we both need cars to do our jobs which are expensive to run, and have two pre-schoolers we have to pay nursery fees for, and pay South East prices for mortgage and bills. We are basically just getting by most months by the time we've covered those costs plus food etc. Every time we manage to save a few hundred some minor disaster happens (like a plumbing leak, or a car repair bill etc) and all that money has gone again. We therefore have no savings at all now. Financially we are keeping our heads above water I guess. But I see others around me who are similarly just getting by but they're getting by because they are not working and getting benefits and subsidised costs for everything, and of course not having any childcare costs because they're not working and so don't need childcare. I'm categorically not saying that people shouldn't get benefits or help if they re in need, because of course they should, but it does make you wonder what the point in being a 2-parent working household is when you end up no better off than households where no-one works at all.

If you own your house outright but only have your state pension you don’t qualify for pension credits. That means if you don’t have an occupational pension because you chose to buy a house instead, your income at today’s rates is £168.60 a week. I wonder how many people who prioritise buying a house over a pension realise that? No tax relief on mortgage payments either.

Well you'll be better off than them once the child related benefits stop KitKat, and it's many a person who's had a nasty shock about how little state financial support is available once their youngest no longer qualifies them. It isn't a position I would envy. But meanwhile, it's still a problem that people in your position are struggling to pay basic bills.