To think many working/middle class are now ‘poor’?

[WorldsOnFire]

Inspired by the ‘People are terrible Scrooge’s who clearly don’t want to help the poor’ explosion on MN recently I read an article about a single mother on UC ‘left in tears’ as she ‘only’ had £60 left for Christmas. (Many similar threads recently about tight Christmas budgets so a lot of people in similar boats).

What shocked me was the hundreds of comments from FT working professionals - nurses, teachers, tradesmen, IT professionals, social workers... the list goes on. All jobs earning £20K+ and many with two adults in one home, all saying they were in the same (some even worse) situations. They receive no help as they earn too much but the cost of living is so high they can’t afford to heat their homes and pay their mortgages/childcare 😦. I find this shocking!

It sounds like those who don’t work/work PT (for whatever reason- not here to debate right/wrong of UC 🙄) are topped up by UC whilst those working FT aren’t and actually there’s not much difference at the end of the month.

AIBU to think that the whole country maybe aren’t terrible Scrooge’s and in reality the working/lower middle class who used to give to ‘the poor’ are now becoming The Poor and therefore are less compassionate/willing to help?

Don't worry because BoJo is going to wave his magic wand and it will all be fiiiiinnnnne...

I earn too much for UC and work full time
However as am on my own with a big mortgage and a few debts (both due to last relationship ending) I have little money to spare
I’m frequently surprised at how much friends and acquaintances spend on takeaways, taxis, nights out, expensive phone or broadband packages, sky/Netflix
I keep bills to a minimum - put an extra jumper on etc
Any money I have spare goes on a cheap holiday as often as I get chance!
We all make our own financial choices

Having high outgoings doesn't mean you are poor but everything I’ve mentioned are non negotiable high outgoings: transport to work- childcare- mortgage (and I’m lucky mine is “low”) - i don’t drink or smoke- but even if I did, it’s sad that a gin & tonic after a week at work is now considered frivolous.
Of course as I said I consider myself as “lucky” but isn’t that sad that just because I’m not at a food bank I’m considered well off!

@longtimelurkerhelen Sickening isnt it?

I agree OP. I have commented before that council tax alone is a hefty percentage of take home pay. If you are working there are also travel costs . Many people working are quite poor in relative terms although still very rich in global absolute terms. I dont habe cash to guve to charity for instance as every penny goes on bills and trying to keep the house in good repair.

@Waxonwaxoff0

I understand your you’re not poor you earn £40k, your outgoings are just High POV but it makes diddly squat difference if your outgoings are non negotiable!

If your 40k salary is dependant on you being in London to do your job (would get significantly less elsewhere).
If you have to pay for FT childcare (you don’t have the option to leave an infant on the sofa all day 😂)
Rent/transport/basic bills - all Have to get paid.

So yes a single parent earning £40k - tied to an expensive area for work with a child in FT childcare - 100% can be poor! They can be left in negative figures at the end of the month pretty easily and there’s nothing they can shave out/cut back on in their budget!

IWouldPreferNotTo

"London pricing but representative, two people with a baby

Two bed flat in Zone 3 - £1275/month

Council tax - £110/month

Electricity & Gas - £80/month

Travel Card - £160/month

Phone & Internet - £30/month

So £1600/month before you have any other expenses which reasonably are around £400/month

Childcare is so expensive it's effectively my partners entire £28K salary once you take commuting into account so it's not worth working.

On what is a good salary of £40K with a 7.5% pension contribution you're looking at around £2,500 month take home so around £500/month to save to cover holidays, emergencies, one of child expenses and periods of unemployment.

So yes, I could see how people on £25-35K could feel pretty poor."
On a 2.5k take home with that rent (I don't know the LHA but assuming private rent and all rent covered under LHA) that couple and baby would be entitled to £616 per month under UC. If two were working to earn that same figure, say childcare costs were £1000 a month - the UC figure would be £1467.

I think a lof of people don't grasp how high you can actually earn whilst still being able to benefit from Governement assistance. I don't agree with it in the sense that people should be paid enough to live without the Governement stepping in - but that's how it is.
People make assumptions that they would not get any help, when people living in higher rent areas and have childcare costs most likely will do.

OnlyFools I never said you were well off, but I think it's daft that anyone on that money would think of themselves as "poor." Once you no longer have the childcare costs you'll be a lot better off, whereas someone on minimum wage will probably always be struggling.

@WorldsOnFire I'm not disputing the cost of outgoings. I'm saying it's ridiculous to call yourself poor when you are earning that salary. I am on half of that and would never describe myself as poor.

Until the 1980s if you were on a lower income there was a decent stock of social housing in most communities, less stigma attached to living in them, and there were credit controls that meant that people had to live within their means.

Abolishing credit controls caused debt to spiral, and selling off council houses turned us into ‘a nation of home owners’ to quote Mrs T. It was a massive piece of social engineering that we’re still feeling the consequences of.

Why's everyone going on about labour bringing in tax credits ?? They'd been going way before Blair came into power. I remember my mum getting them and she worked full time albeit a load wage. Don't worry, we weren't loaded. The house she owned had ice on the inside of the windows and we never had hot running water the entire time we lived there.

Tax credits came in around 2003.

You must be thinking of income support.

No, there was a benefit similar to tax credits that wasn't income support. OTTOMH it was called Family Supplement? May be wrong about that but it was something along those lines. It was introduced by the Thatcher government and served the same purpose as tax credits.

Yes I agree with @onlyfoolsnmothers

Certain outgoings are non negotiable and cannot be reduced...council tax, cost of trains if commuting, childcare Tec

So let's say you take home £2500 after tax

Mortgage/rent can easily be over £1000 in zone three London for a very modest home.

Council tax is over £100 a month usually...mine is £130

Travel into London..easily £150 a month

Utilities...gas, water, electric...easily £150 a month in cold weather

Broadband, tv license, mobile phone...£40 if you shop around

Then let's say you have children...my ds goes to a bog standard state school...he spends £65 a month on lunch roughly

My dd is in primary school...school lunches are about £55 a month

Now perhaps you have a car.. car insurance monthly is £50...plus petrol at £20 a week.

Now food...easily £70 a week even if budget shopping

We haven't even considered childcare for very young children in these calculations.

Then what happens when your dc needs a new coat...New school shoes...or there's a school trip. Both my dc have residential school trips this year totalling £400...ok, that may be a choice, but virtually every child is going and I don't want them to be left out.

Yes, you'll get by but you'll be panicking if your washing machine breaks or your boiler fails.

Waxonwaxoff0

"@OnlyFoolsnMothersit's not bullshit at all. You're not poor if you're on £40k. Having high outgoings doesn't mean you are poor. Working full time and having to claim benefits to top up your wages as they're not enough to live on is poor.

Childcare costs, are a massive drain on income, but they don't last forever."

But people on 40k can claim benefits to top up their income, particualry those living in high rent areas, and paying out in childcare.

A couple with 1k rent, 1k childcare costs, 3 kids all born pre-2017 earning 2.5k takehome would get £1686 in UC per month. Add disabilities in and those figures willbe higher.

It is housing that is the main problem, and the cost of that varies across the country, so it is not surprising that to some people £25k seems wealth beyond measure and to others it is barely sufficient.

Wages in the North and in the Midlands are not far different, and yet housing in the Midlands is twice the cost of the North. I therefore have no sympathy for teachers and nurses in the north complaining that they have no money, but in the Midlands it is an entirely different matter.

As for expectations changing across generations - that is another excuse. It's total rubbish. My parents had unskilled jobs for which they needed minimal or no qualifications, and no CPD ever. They could afford a mortgage with that, which they paid off by age 50, and had children, pets, holidays and two cars. I and my kids on the other hand now need degrees to have any hope of earning semi-decent wages, which still won't pay for mortgage deposits in the Midlands without a partner on the same. The kind of jobs that pay those wages all require CPD too, ever more skills, and usually voluntary work previously. The academic arms race hasn't really helped any more than housing has.

@maggiecate

www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/the-rise-and-fall-of-council-housing-56139

In the 1980s, residualisation may have been a partly unintended consequence of housing policies pursued with varying ideological intent

Since 2010, and more so since the return of single-party Conservative government in 2015, we’ve seen something further: welfarisation – ‘a conception of social housing as a very small, highly residualised sector catering only for the very poorest, and those with additional social “vulnerabilities”, on a short-term “ambulance” basis

@Waxonwaxoff0

But how much you earn on paper has nothing to do with what you come out with/your life. Maybe you earn £20k- maybe your outgoings are significantly less. In my book anyone who is barely/not quite scraping by each month just to afford absolute essentials IS poor and has the right to consider themselves so.

Personally I think society would be much better if we all looked at salaries as net figures rather than gross ones. For example my DH is currently averaging £700pm on non refundable exam costs (essential to his career progression) 👍🏻 So is it really fair to count that as ‘our income’ - not really.

@Marleyisme

Gordon Brown was told, repeatedly tax credits was a bad idea and it was.

We had people at work, working 16 hours, their wives a sahp. They got almost the same in tax credits top ups, as they would working full time.

When the rule changed and a couple had to work 24 hours between them, they all wanted extra hours that we couldnt give them. No idea why out of a couple (assuming fit and healthy) you could get tax credits for working less than 1 full time job between you.

Now people feel they are losing something. Also employers stopped giving wage rises, in part because they knew employees were getting top ups. That makes the employers, shit. But it's still a consequence of tax credits.

This in spades. ^

ALSO, tax credits have caused people to owe shitloads of money, by being overpaid, because they earned a grand more than they projected that year.

I know a few people who had £3,000 to £5,000 of tax credits debt, and some are still paying it off - 5 or 6 years later!

Why aren't more people becoming childminders if childcare costs are so astronomical? I heard on the news last week that the numbers of registered childminders are falling dramatically. Surely it could be a good source of income for many.

I bet those complaining they are poor have sky, smoke and drink. It’s all about priorities. I’m not making a wild generalisation. I’m commenting from 30 years of dealing with people from the lower end of the economic scale.

Says the person making a wild generalisation.

I've googled Helena's sensationalist claims that the Tories are profiteering from foodbanks.

Ms Cates, a Tory MP, developed an app that costs foodbanks £180 joining fee. The article also says:

Other similar services also charge individual foodbanks for their use. Those that join the Trussell Trust’s own network, for example, must pay a £1,500 joining fee and then £360 annually on top.

I suppose it must follow that the Trussell Trust is far worse.

Definitely @ImGoingToBangYourHeadsTogether

Housing costs are the problem and agree about being able to buy houses on unskilled or semi skilled wages

*He can’t simply not sit them and stay where he is he either has to sit them and continue his training programme or take a significant demotion.

a. i didnt claim it. I replied to another poster.

b its not sensationalist.

Ok childcare costs don’t last forever but they are easily taken by breakfast club, after school club, school uniform, school trips, lunch money.
I consider poor being no money to save, shitting yourself should something break down -as formerbabe pointed out. Also if I had to
Rent by property I actually wouldn’t be able to afford childcare at all.
You may not say “poor” but then where do we stop the comparisons - the UK poor on UC and using food banks can’t be called poor when compared to the slums of India....?

Why aren't more people becoming childminders if childcare costs are so astronomical? I heard on the news last week that the numbers of registered childminders are falling dramatically. Surely it could be a good source of income for many.

Red tape is the reason for the fall, or so I've heard.
You need to own your house or have written permission from a landlord too, so that's that for many.