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?

When I said the squeezed middle own property I'm thinking of outside London, or in London but older than 40. It's impossible in London now. Most less well off people I know there live in shared ownership flats and that can be a struggle.
And yes wages for normal jobs have been going down steadily for years.
Still and all, if you are outside London zone 3 and you earn 2 salaries in professional jobs (middle class) you have the ability to secure your future. Job losses are much much scarier when you have no savings.

£361 is not enough to live on in London and not be in poverty. That’s my point.

You said that you cannot pay rent in London if you earn £361 a week because £361 wouldn't cover the rent or mortgage. Therefore people with £361 a week cannot be living in London.

You can't say it is not enough money to pay the rent and then claim that people are managing to miraculously pay rent in London on 'just' £361 a week. EIther it is enough to pay the rent (albeit leaving them in poverty) or it isn't. You can't have it both ways.

I agree with @WorldsOnFire

I was at private school in the 1980s and 1990s. The kids in my class typically had a dad in middle management and a mum who was a nurse/secretary.

No one in those roles now could really afford private education.

A family with one person working earning 60k won't get but a family with both parents earning 50k each will get it.

I always thought that this child benefit policy was nuts!!!! Why isn't it based on total household income? Anyone know?

YANBU, OP. The poor have been demonised, the divide is getting bigger and two-working person households are struggling.

I think people and society in general were a lot more compassionate/charitable and empathetic when being so was a choice and not rammed down everyone’s throats that that had to be...with a healthy side dish of shame!

Private car ownership is not something the poor can afford, as more people find their incomes diminishing then a car & the expense will be easier to get rid of than move home.

It’s all relative.

but if the image wasn’t as important to a lot of people £40k wouldn’t be hard up.

40k is not going to allow for school fees, new cars & holidays.

My friends and I are on similar incomes with professional jobs & all on the ladder for a while so have more disposable income. We all have older phones, shop in Aldi/Lidl etc, drive 2nd cars, have affordable holidays. The people paying for school fees, 2 weeks in Greece, 2 yr old cars, weekly brunches are earning 150k plus.

@cokehoke

"@ThisMustBeMyDreamSo people earning 2.5k can get benefits?"

Yes. My own example is that me and partner with a joint income of 50k, with a mortgage, 3 children (one gets DLA), £200 childcare costs would still see us with £400 UC per month.

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.
A couple each bringing £1.25K (e.g. each working part time on min wage), yes. A single mother earning £2.5K net (so £40K gross), no.
That top up will bring the hypothetical "gross salary" of this couple to around £70K. Which kind of was the OP point.

@rhubarbcrumbles I do get your point.

We aren’t poor. Probably count as ‘squeezed middle’. Enough money to cover our basics and some ‘luxuries’ - a car, after school clubs for DC, the odd holiday. We count ourselves very lucky, but we don’t have it all figured out. DH has a crap pension, we don’t have savings, we have a disabled child who will likely need to rely on us financially for life.

If DH and me ever want to ‘better’ our life or release equity to give us security later in life, we will need to leave London...and eventually we may be in a position to do this and definitely haven’t ruled it out. But our circumstances mean we can. I’m public sector frontline in a job where there are vacancies everywhere. DH is self employed and largely works from home. We are home owners.

It’s not that straightforward for lots of people.

I always thought that this child benefit policy was nuts!!!! Why isn't it based on total household income? Anyone know?

I think it's to do with admin. It's the same for 30 hours, people both earning 99k each can claim.

DH and I used to live on a street which was mainly council owned property. We were privately renting from a landlord who had bought his council property 10 years previously. We earned over 20k each and had a young baby at the time. We were paying a lot of rent. Our neighbours were in receipt of benefits including housing benefit and didn't pay for their property. I'd say at the end of the day we both had about the same amount of spare cash each month (zero). (They were lovely neighbours, but it did used to bother me that DH and I both worked full time and had to pay childcare for our baby, while our neighbours could stay at home with their little ones and didn't work. We paid a lot of rent, they paid nothing. Identical houses and same street. They would also have opportunity to buy their council property at a v cheap price in the near future, whereas we stood no hope at the time of getting on the property ladder and could not afford to live in the same area we were renting in)

Most of the time though I do empathise when people need to use benefits, and understand that alot of the time people are stuck.

I think to be comfortable in society today though, you do need to be earning a LOT.

(My ideal would be a super rich husband so I could stay at home with my children! In reality I'm the higher earner and don't see my children anywhere near as much as I want to)

£361 a month in london is possible if a) you are a council tenant (hens teeth) or b) you are on benefits and get housing benefit or c) you live in a studio flat on the outskirts or shared accommodation.

It’s not enough to live as a family without being in poverty for the vast majority of people.

Come in, you’ve lived in london. You know £1400 a month for a family is skid row territory.

@ThisMustBeMyDream is 50k the limit?

Does it matter if you own your own home or rent?

£361 a week sorry!

@SympatheticSwan "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.
A couple each bringing £1.25K (e.g. each working part time on min wage), yes. A single mother earning £2.5K net (so £40K gross), no.
That top up will bring the hypothetical "gross salary" of this couple to around £70K. Which kind of was the OP point."

A single parent earning the same (2.5 k) would be entitled to nearly the same. The single person over 25 amount is £317. The couple amount is £498. So £1686 (couple) vs £1506 UC (single).

I had no idea benefits could top you up to the equivalent of 70k!!!!

I work 40hrs a week for 100 pounds a month LESS than working 2 days a week with top ups as a single parent. It's awful.

Some people are so out of touch. A friend of a friend was complaining they don't get any help from the government when her husband earns 60k minimum per year. I asked why she felt she should get help and she said because she has no income. She's a sahm by choice.

@IfNot Totally agree about the squeezed middle.

People always talk about London being expensive but I grew up in a relatively nice area of Zone 2/3, the vast majority of my neighbours & school friends had 1 person earning in good but normal jobs & a parent at home.

If I could have got a mortgage at 17 & not bothered with uni I would be far richer now just from property gains.

My DSis doesn't have Sky, hardly ever drinks and has never smoked in her life!

As for 'people don't know what real poverty is any more', thank fuck for that! If we, as I think the eighth richest country in the world had poverty like existed 100 years ago then it would be a disgrace. People should be able to afford the basics of life though, particularly if they're working a FT job. And in many rural areas or those poorly served by public transport that means a car. People should also be able to feed their families, afford things like washing powder and nappies and feminine hygiene products and afford electricity, gas, water and to adequately heat their homes in winter. Affording take aways and drinks in the pub is a luxury, the above aren't - they're the basics of life in a modern, civilised country.

@ThisMustBeMyDream
When I try to run numbers through one of the online calculator, it gives the overall entitlement of £0 with someone earning £40K (outside of child benefit).

@Loadofbaubles yeah, it'd be pretty dire. Don't ask about the £8 a night room near St Pancras station - you don't want to know!

I’m damn lucky to be a homeowner and have a roof over my head.

On the face of it our earnings look good.

But there are 4 of us in a small 2 bed terrace with no way of being able to afford anything bigger, heating and electricity is £150 a month, council tax is £155 a month.
We don’t finance our cars and run cheap cars but our fuel bill for getting to work is around £300 a month.
We don’t have holidays abroad.
We don’t buy new clothes.
We don’t have subscription services.

There isn’t money left over at the end of the month and most of the time in our overdraft.

It’s scary