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?

@cokehoke

There isn't a limit as such as it is all completely individual. UC is made up of elements. You add them up, then there is a calculation made. The first £287 if you have kids and rent or £503 if you have a kids and a mortgage is not taken in to account from your wage. So your remaining wage has a calculation done on it - divide by 100, then times by 63. That figure is then taken away from the total UC amount you could recieve made up from all the elements. The final figure is what you recieve from UC.

Eg. Single over 25 element £317. First child (pre April 2017 birth) £271. Second child £231. Rent £600 (sometimes not all rent is taken in to account depending on the local housing allowance). Childcare for two £500.
Total elements £1919.

Earnings £1000 - £287 because they rent = £713. That means £713 is taken from the maximum they could recieve - giving a total UC amount of £1206.

This was discussed the other day and there were quite a few posters saying they'd turned down promotions as they'd be worse off. One poster said she'd turned down a promotion which would equal an extra £3 an hour. With my weekly work schedule that would be almost an extra £8k a year, so it surely follows that there are people earning this extra £8k who are less well off than the said poster. It's easy to see how somebody would have to be on around an extra £10k to be as well off as the said poster with UC, and how people with an extra £15k would be loads better off month to month.

Affording take aways and drinks in the pub is a luxury

Don't you think this is actually quite sad that a take away is considered a luxury? I'm not talking every night and I know it's not essential but I really don't think that it should be considered a luxury for a working family to get a takeaway on the weekend.

@sympathticswan Which calculator are you using? Not all of them are good. With UC a manual calculation is far more accurate. I've posted how to do it above.

Nemo- you don’t mention salaries. Why is money so tight? Do you have a big mortgage ? What is taking all of the income?

'Wouldn't be loads better off' I meant.

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.

@WaterOffADucksCrack

That’s scandalous!

I’m not saying your friend has a point but I do think that her DH earning £60k gross may not be representative of what they revive.
As mentioned In my PP my DH earns just under £70k per year but after deductions (including SL and mandatory professional fees) he receives £3200 pm (less right now as exam fees are hitting us hard).

That’s £38,400 per year on average which is 55% of his salary. But we don’t get any support or child benefit ... because he earns too much 🤔 his exams and fees aren’t a choice either, they’re a condition of his job.

I think it’s very easy for people to say ‘oh her DH earns X amount so they’re rolling in it and CF’s for expecting any help.
His job is also very unfriendly for shifts/family life so I’ll no doubt have to go PT after mat leave 😒

Labour introducing tax credits was a good thing. Before many people were caught in benefits trap where if you would get a job you would lose all benefits. But tax credits meant you would get a job and still get some benefits and it would taper as you earnt more. Conservatives made the taper more steep which is why as soon as you earn more, your credits come down a lot more. People on benefits never have lead a life of luxury though!!! Far from it. Poss they may be better of than some on min wages though.

@Catkin8 They are over the moon actually thank you! We have a good family behind us and we all help each other. Wow so vicious!

Agree that affording a take away is hardly a luxury nowadays and should not be considered such

I think there's less childminders because a lot of them are only getting something like £4.60 per hour per child (3-5) due to the free funded hours and also tax free childcare is holding up when they get paid as it's very blippy and extra work, like the funded hours is as well.

It's great for us obviously, as parents, to have these funded hours but as with everything the government rolls out, someone suffers. A childminder could have 3 under 5's full time or part time around school nursery and only be getting £13.80 an hour then on top of this they have food, insurance, expenses for equipment and activities to pay for then their tax and NI and pension. Realistly it's only about £10ish an hour. Some may charge the parents a bit extra for snacks and things but I don't think enough to cover everything. Would you look after 3 kids, get a weeks holiday a year if you're lucky and have all that responsibility for like £10 an hour take home? I wouldn't

@ThisMustBeMyDream
I used entitled to, but now I see where I made a mistake - I entered the housing as mortgage and not rent, and lumped all childcare costs on one child rather than splitting between not three (I think there must be sublimit applied).
You are right, a single parent will also be topped up to approx. £68K gross salary equivalent. If you run two twin calculations for the scenario you describe, salary of £40K gives exactly the same total net (as net salary + UC) as salary of £68K.

I think it’s always been the case that working class and lower middle class families have always struggled financially. The early years, when income can be restricted, are a notorious pinch point. It’s why the middle class often defer having children until they are better off.

To live in London, unless you are in social housing, you need at least £25-30k pa to more or less get by. As a couple with children you need 2x that.

Excepting cases of disadvantage and bad luck, we should plan our lives and pace our aspirational expectations. You can’t have it all before 25 or even 30. I doubt you ever could. By that I mean wanting a 3 bed, cars, 2+ kids, holidays tech and all the useless crap we buy (that’s gets dumped and destroys the planet).

But I say that knowing it’s far too expensive to climb property ladders these days. But the perpetual British housing crisis, 100 years and counting, now means that securing a home destroys family finances. Because a family needs to get on at rung 3, the semi with 3 beds they can’t afford.

And I don’t think the we will see improvements in western standards of living for a generation. I think we will stagnate until other parts of the world catch up. Bizarrely great gains have been made in developing countries since the financial crisis. So there is some good in all this.

Why are people talking about heating and internet being luxuries? There normal things in 21st century. My 90 year old uncle doesn't have a tv or internet but most people of working age would struggle to get by without ever using it. What next, people having indoor toilets are living beyond their means, because people used to live without them?

I hardly know anyone who smokes but when i worked out how much it would cost I can't believe how people can afford it. My PIL have friends who smoke and we worked out that it would cost more than our mortgage (which is not small)

@SympatheticSwan there most be loads of people not realising they can qualify for benefits?

I think the definition of poor is very different to many. To me it’s having not enough money yo have shelter food and heat.

Others think it’s not being able to have takeaways, holidays, subscription tv etc.

The choices we make are so important down to where we live, how much we work, the number of children etc yet people are so quick to blame the state etc when those choices don’t match finances.

A few years ago our income jumped from £18k to £31k because of a career change/ new job. But our disposable income went down!

We got well over £100pwk in tax credits before but when the income jumped this dropped. Then after tax NI, pension, student loan deductions, travel to work costs for longer commute we were no better off!

So it annoys me when people on low incomes see high incomes and think they must be better off- we thought that too but it’s not how it works!

Internet is not a luxury anymore. It's now more of an essential utility along with electricity and gas.

My dcs school only communicate with us via email and the school app. We pay for their lunches, clubs etc online.

Their homework is online too.

Former babe totally agree there.......we were quite late getting broadband and didn't have it until 2012. It seemed like a waste of money along with sky etc but as the DC got into school it was needed.

I'd say we save as much from having internet as what it costs, I kind of feel resentful being made to have internet to be able to live a.life these days. It's a necessity for sure.

Many people spend a lot of time in libraries using the free internet, schools, banks, benefits all online so people need to be able to access free internet.

Not sure what those do that can’t get to a library

@LoisWilkersonsLastNerve

Don’t forget that workers are much more at risk of redundancy now. No such thing as a job for life anymore.

DH and I both work and are really struggling. He works full-time on a 21k salary, I work school hours as a TA on £9/h. DS1 has ASD and can't manage before or after school childcare so I had to quit my higher paid job (I needed an MA to get it) last year. Once the mortgage, council tax, and bills come out each month we have £28 a week to feed a family of four.

We don't have Sky, takeaways, run a second car (DH needs one for site visits at work), we don't smoke or drink. We haven't been abroad since our honeymoon 12 years ago, and have had a grand total of three weekends away in the UK since DS1 was born 8 years ago. We're living in a tiny three bed terrace, full of damp, with a kitchen that's falling apart. The kids don't do any clubs or activities because we can't afford it. But we're not entitled to anything. No UC, no DLA for DS, nothing but child benefit.

In response to a PP who asked why people have kids they can't afford: when we had DS2 we could afford to have a second child. We didn't know DS1 was autistic at that point, and expected that I would be able to go back to work full time and progress up the pay scale. Sometimes people's circumstances change unexpectedly, through no fault of their own, and they get squeezed.

Cokehoke - that’s what I was thinking

Earning £35k a year joint income but have a mortgage and we aren’t entitled to anything.

Does this mean if we rented we would be in receipt of around £1000 a month UC?!?!

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

As a single parent I've struggled. Got some tax credits for childcare and my parents had to do my weekly ship for me while I worked FT, paid the nortga6and my 1300 per month nursery bill. I was always in the minus, a few debts. Havent had ANYTHING for myself in 8yrs.

Slogged my way through at work for the past 8yrs. Just got promoted to 54K. Now I can sort my debt (run up by abusive ex in my name) and perhaps buy myself something for a change. Or get myself a bed, as I haven't been able to buy one and my ds and I have shared my old childhood bed for the past 7yrs.

Letter a few weeks later saying I had to pay child ben tax and/or wouldn't get it anymore.

I wonder why I've bothered to be honest. I get given in one hand through a lot of hard work and then its all taken away

*mortgage