To think wages should cover the cost of living?

[KeepYourCup]

I'm a single parent, I work full time and pay for childcare for my primary school ages child. I physically can't work any more hours and my salary is just above the NMW.

I rely on top-up benefits from Universal Credit to get by. We have a nice life - nothing fancy but there is food on the table, a comfortable home, car etc. I realise I am in a better position than many people who claim UC but it pisses me off that I am left relying on it each month.

Last month they wiped out my entire payment with only a couple of days warning. I am appealing that decision but in the meantime I ended up having to borrow money to cover a couple of bills and a repair on my car.

Single parent families are normal, and households should be able to get by on one wage. My rent alone eats up almost half of my take-home pay, and I only live in a two-bed flat so not a huge house with a garden or anything.

I realise its all relative and that everyone's circumstances are different, but there is something very wrong when an adult working full time doesn't earn enough to cover the costs of simple living when there is only one adult and one small person living at home.

AIBU?

Sorry missed she will be buying clothes etc but I still think she needs to give you food money. It’s a crap situation but that’s the way bursary’s work.

People need to make their mines up about what they want.

We used to have council housing to provide stable, secure homes for lower paid workers; but people decided council homes were 'never supposed to be for life', and to support selling them off - often to private landlords.
Now you want to complain that rents are too high. Make your minds up. Do you want social incentives to provide a stable workforce and economy or not?

I feel for you OP and you are YANBU. Something is clearly wrong with the system when some people have to just scrape by and go to food banks etc and on the other end of the spectrum people get paid hundreds of thousands of £s just for kicking a ball around. I appreciate all that takes training etc but its not a matter of life and death and its much too much money just to kick a ball around.
The world has gone crazy.

But also some big employers .. will RELY on the fact that UC or Working Families Tax Credit top up money so they get away with paying close to or minimum wage.

Employers cannot underpay workers, they don't have a monopoly on jobs. If employees could could get more somewhere else, they would. If they can't, they aren't underpaid.

think we should make minimum wage £12 an hour and scrap in work benefits.
Well no because plenty of people earn £12 an hour and still need in work benefits.

40 hours a week at £12 an hour would give a person £2,000 take home pay per month. After tax and national insurance that would be around £1,500 a month. In most parts of the country you can rent a small decent house for £600 a month. £900 a month is plenty for most people to cover bills, food, transport, clothing etc. For the majority of people £12 a hour would be completely fine. I live on about this amount and I don't feel poor and I don't claim benefits. This is in a one income household. If there were two people then then there would be more luxuries. Obviously in London people earn more or move to cheaper parts of the country.

The problem is the price of property in general, both buying and renting and buying, if these go down to more realistic levels then the quality of life if everyone will improve.

I was having this conversation with my partner the other day. We are both quite down at the moment, as it feels like the second we earn our money, we're paying out for x, y or z. Mostly either bills, or something DSS needs for college or trips or whatever.

I said to him that I couldn't remember the last time I used my wages to buy something non-essential for myself.. and that's absolutely true. I think it was about 14 months ago when I bought myself a Fitbit. How many people have to go back 14 months to remember buying something for themselves!

We do have some savings, but that's our buffer, and our money for doing the house up. As far as day to day living goes, we're living pretty much hand to mouth - and although I know not everyone has the savings, they are all spoken for. We own the house, which is something, and the mortgage is almost paid off. We're counting down the months as that will make a HUGE difference to us.

But it's not fair.

HermioneWeasIey

I agree. It doesn't stop there with maintenance loans, either. For example, if you have disabilities that make it too difficult to attend university in person, and you instead study full-time with the OU, you may be entitled to a maintenance loan.

If you are on UC, your UC will be reduced pound for pound for the maintenance loan even if you don't apply.

Yep, that's right. If you are disabled and you try to better yourself with the OU, you may lose your entitlement to UC and have to take out a loan, which you will obviously have to pay back + interest if you successfully get a good job off the back of the degree.

How is that not penalising the most vulnerable in society?

OU= Open University

someone has to do OPs job or it wouldnt exist. Surely that person should be able to live.

If that person were a childless adult sharing a household with other working adults, their financial position would be far better. I'm not saying she should send her children back, I'm merely pointing out that it's not the employer's responsibility to pay one worker more than another due to their life circumstances.

It is being a single parent that has put OP in a bad position, society wants her (and her children) to have a better life than she would otherwise, therefore society through the benefits system must (and does) pick up the tab.

I always wonder how sustainable these companies are if they are only in profit because they don’t pay their workers a living wage.

Yep.

Listen to some of you arguing for the system that’s failing so many, either you have a vested interest in the current system or you are to unintelligent to be able to pull the wool from your eyes, definitely some useful idiots here, read the ragged trousered philanthropist it might be eye opening to some of you, that the privelidged few will always work against the interests of the many and there will be plenty of stupid enablers in our midst to try and persuade us that this is ok

It is almost impossible to control the price of property. It's a whole lot easier to raise wages for the poorest.

alot of vital jobs are low paid. But how many of you are going to be willing to pay your childminder £18 ph? Then you have care workers, hospital cleaners, retail and general office assistants and service industry workers all on mw or a little above. Are you willing to pay more for their services whether it be in tax or the price of goods?

think we should make minimum wage £12 an hour and scrap in work benefits.

What about the people in supervisory or management roles who currently earn £10/12 per hour?

Pay them £15/18?

The resulting inflation would immediately wipe out the benefit those on the new, higher, NMW felt.

Great idea...

I never supported all this stae interference which is where the problems come from. We have allowed the staet and the very veyr high taxes some of us pay to keep wages low whilst parents are paid UC when working (or housing benefit etc) If we revised the system so the market could provide then wages would have to go up if employers want workers to do the work - rather than our messing around with minimum wage rises.

Also it used to be the case that had you worked and paid nationali nsurance when out of work you got an awful lot more than those who had never done a day's work in their life. that is how Beveridge (andm uch of the EU) organises their benefits system but we lost that entirely and now you can be better off not working even and never having worked in some cases.

I would suggest as someone who worked full time even with a 2 week old baby (!) keeping going with work can be a good idea as longer temr when you don't need after school childcare etc you will be better off. Also try to think if there is a way to move to higher paid per hour work.

May be one issue is the one salary. i know the post says there are klot of single mothers but it is virtually impossible to have a baby without a man so surely we should be asking where are the men in all this? Why are we the full time working tax paying women paying all these universal credits when the errants disappeared idle lay about fathers are not picking up the tab for their night of fun sex?

I would be happy to pay a childminder £12 a hour. I think a lot of nursery workers and childminders earn less than this now. They should be earning this. Morally they should be. Childcare should be better organised - schools should do more wraparound and holiday childcare. Childcare for the under 4s should be heavily subsidised by government and payment should go direct from government to the nurseries, not via the parent.

If that person were a childless adult sharing a household with other working adults, their financial position would be far better. I'm not saying she should send her children back, I'm merely pointing out that it's not the employer's responsibility to pay one worker more than another due to their life circumstances.

I rarely swear but fucking hell. First of all, people's circumstances change - illness, divorce, redundancy.

Secondly, it is well-known that many women's earning capacity takes a downward turn after having children due to the coat of childcare and the difficulty of balancing work commitments. Some people will take on a lower paid job as that's all they can get that fits around family commitments.

Even for people on a full-time wage, housing costs are too high. I am a full-time teacher, towards the top of the pay scale. If I separated from my DH or he died, I would have to rely on benefits as there is no way I could pay for housing and full-time childcare in my area (SE, not London) on my salary alone. And I am reasonably well-paid.

Childminder's earn a lot more than £18 p.h in my area. 4X5.50 per hour.

Yes, I think you should be able to pay all basic bills such as housing, utilities and food from a one lowest paid full time wage. You then have the incentive to work towards higher paid roles to improve your quality of living and have more treats etc but you shouldn’t have to rely on benefits and changeable government policies just to survive when also working full time.

I agree Xenia. Where are the men indeed? Most are not paying maintenance; but they should be. Maintenance should come straight out of their pay in the same way tax does. Why is the onus on the women to try and chase it up?

Been on both sides of the divide and this situation really irks me

I can't get my head around that in this day and age in a country supposedly rich to a degree and happy to send aid out to every other country rather than their own,normal decent hard working humans can't afford to live even working all the hours possible.

It's disgusting.
I grew up in a council flat where my parents saved and saved for a mortgage to buy a place.

Being skint we still shopped in Sainsbury's,dad still bought tobacco and had a few pints a weekend,we still went to the cinema once a month.
And yet now families are going to the food bank to feed themselves on a weekly basis,schools are reporting the number of kids coming to school without decent nutrition at an all time high

I don't know where it went wrong buts it's really really wrong

The divide is bigger than it ever was. And yet they bring in uc and fuck the hard working over even more.

I am in a lucky position that we don't have to claim anything but I never forget how hard and stressful it was on a weekly basis on one wage trying to keep everything afloat.

I will never ever understand it

@Inebriati

do you understand the timescales involved here? It wasn’t my generation that sold off social housing and it’s my understanding that what we’re experiencing now is exactly what was warned of at the time.

This situation hasn’t just appeared over night. It has been a long time in the making.

I don’t think a knee jerk reaction of raising the NMW to £12 per hour is the answer as that would just lead to chaos.

I do think there should be a rise in the NMW to £12 per hour over a 5-10 year period and slowly wean people off benefits and more into earning a living wage.

I actually don’t think council housing should be for life.

I think it should be there when you start out in life or if you need it after an upheaval but I think a time limit needs to be imposed.

So people know that they have 5/10 years to save enough to either buy or rent privately as they need to make way for someone in need.

I also think council housing rents should be looked at.

Friend has lived in her council house for 40 years.
Apart from one time in the early 90s when mortgages were at 16/17/19% our mortgage has always been less than her rent.

Yanbu...i thought UC would incentivise work . Nope.