To think most of MN don’t know what having no money means

[icecolddrinks]

And that admitting to having none is humiliating.

I see it here all the time. Someone has no money. Someone suggests something to make life easier. The person says again they have no money. MN suggest a cheaper version.

On the thread about dress up so many people were saying to tell the school.

I know debt and low incomes aren’t ideal but they aren’t uncommon either so why is it so hard to acknowledge that someone might have 3p in their bank account and no money?

[quote properg]@Maddiemademe that's so sad [/quote]
I know it is horrible to have to do 🤢

I think some people might have experienced something like this as a student for a few months/years. I have. However, that's a totally different experience to it being a long term situation, where you can also have responsibilities for others. Our family has very difficult financial times when I was you and DF was very sick. I can only imagine how my DM managed, I'm in awe of her.

edit: "When I was young and DF was very sick"

Qualifying as an accountant 20 years ago doesn't really make you an accountant now so why did you not just come on and say-you were a successful model.

Because I am an accountant now. I don't get paid, it's part of a voluntary program I'm part of a few hours in the evenings. And whilst I might have gone on to earn quite well after my period on benefits, I wasn't prior to, or during.

Yes we get it Twins, you’re a benefit claiming, Boden buying model accountant who is a SAHM with twins who qualified at 23 and is in her late thirties and worked as an accountant for twenty years - we know.

Back to the thread

This sounds stupid but when I was younger, I’m my late teens, early 20s if a friend said they had no money I assumed that meant they were down to their last few pounds. They’d still want to go out and I would offer to pay the taxi or drinks or buy a bottle of wine if we were staying in because even though money was tight for me and I had very tiny savings I wanted to help. It honestly took me until I was in my late 20s to realise basically these people had a very different idea of ‘I have no money.’ Turns out many of them would be down to their last couple of hundred quid plus they also had pretty decent savings all along. I honestly did not realise.

@Soberanne thanks.

@TwinsandTrifle

The amount benefits pay (in most circumstances assuming your rent is covered by the local area housing allowance element of uc) is ok on a short term basis but people have so many loans - cars, pay by the week furniture/white goods, store cards and credit cards, often as much as their uc payment each month.

Yes they want a brand new TV, a better car, new wardrobes from Next/apply any storecard here, new washer, dryer.

So they want all that, take out loans and cards then gripe about it. Oh, I've got no money. As opposed to I can't stop buying things I can't afford and dislike I can't live well above my means.

Do you know why I had £400 left over each month? My perfectly good TV was 8 yrs old. My tumble dryer (which I've still got!) was £50 from the freeads. DS had gorgeous clothes, I got a bit obsessed with everything from Boden. But it all got resold on eBay. £500 worth, he'd wear for a year, and I'd sell for £350! I bought secondhand. I didn't buy a car with repayments I couldn't afford when I had a car that worked. Would I have liked a better one, god yes. Did I go out and get one then moan how I had no more benefits to spend? Jesus wept.

It's a very liveable amount. If its not, then it's down to that individual.

I'm glad we don't have UC here, it would mean a drop in income that we can't afford.

@TwinsandTrifle

Wow amazing advice. Can’t wait to get down the food bank or housing office and explain to the daft people on low wages and benefits there how they should have spent their money on Boden kids so they could resell it in a year for less than they paid, leaving them out of pocket.

And not all people who don’t have a lot of money are buying new expensive items. Some are snowed under trying to pay childcare bills, rent etc. Even on benefits it isn’t a lot, and if you don’t know how to manage your money carefully it’s difficult.

"I'm poor because I have massive debts" means you've chosen to borrow beyond your means, and need debt management.

Total Bollocks and total arrogance! Have you been asleep for the last year?
It means the one thing I never planned for was my industry to be shut down and us ordered to stop working and falling through all the supposed help nets and finding myself virtually unemployable having chosen an industry where my disability wasn't an issue, and robbing Peter to pay of Paul to keep the ship from totally sinking.

My debts are entirely CT, rent and the court charges for being in debt.

Next largest bill (paid up) is standing charges for gas and leccy, both of which are rationed. I'm an expert at making every penny count, I've been un-monied before, I just wasn't expecting this to happen now, and it's wiped out everything I'd built up.

I've not come on here whining about my lot because I know better, but
I've lived on a fixed income of £150 a week for everything for a year and a half. Things have systematically broken and can't get replaced. No amount of careful budgeting will make it cover the rent, let alone the rest. I'm not entitled to UC without fiddling the system.

I'm grateful for if embarrassed about the food bank parcel I get, but having lost a lot of weight have had to take a look at the calories in it. Spread over seven days it's under a thousand a day. It's there to help but not depend long term on.

But obviously I'm just profligate and should have seen being ordered not to work coming and had plans in place for it. 'Tinkly Bodenesque laugh'

[quote TheQueef]@TheLovelinessOfDemons and your DH will be expected to put another 10 years in.

It's a trap and you don't escape, eventually you retire but you are still held back.

To go big picture,
Poverty has to be a trap, if you pay high enough wages then the top tier don't make their massive profits.
Anyone that believes it's a fair system (meritocracy) is deluded.
Keeping people poor is part of the system.[/quote]
And because we're on WTC, we don't qualify for PP. DD pays about £6 a day for 2 sandwiches and 2 drinks at secondary school. I've just had to pay £25 for a school trip for her. She used what was on her Go Henry card for spending money.

@TwinsandTrifle

You have no idea what it's like today, not a single clue.

I have. I'm an accountant with quite a bit of experience in advising in this area.

And did a calc to see what UC I'd qualify for. 1 adult. 3 kids.

I would get all my rent paid. All bar £8.40 a month council tax paid. And £1373 in UC and child benefit. After bills and food, that leaves me circa £500 per month for non essentials.

I'd get if it left me £50. But £500? And for those who want to claim well that's loads, you've got 3DC. Let me just clarify that the amount drops by about £250 for having one DC instead. So you are actually better off the fewer DC you have.

Presumably that £1373 includes the element for your rent?

I was once reduced to tears of rage and frustration by the plight of a client who was benefit capped. Her rent was £276, her total income was £384.62. She had to pay over £7 pw towards her council tax; her HA house was punitively expensive to run (electrically heated hot water) so she paid about £40 pw for energy. Her water bills came to £10+ a week and Tv licence and internet came to about another £8.

That left her with less than £50 pw to feed and clothe herself and her DD7 and DS 14. When her son came home from school with the sole hanging off one of his school shoes, she was in tears. He couldn't go to school in black trainers, he'd outgrown his old school shoes and she had no money to buy any more. She didn't even have the bus fare to get to the nearest town to buy some! And if he didn't go to school, she risked a fine.

I knew the lady who ran the local food bank, which also had a charity shop. I took them both to the shop and, miraculously, found a pair of plain black lace ups in his size. Because I'd also given her a voucher for the food bank, the shoes were foc. The client was so relieved, she cried again.

When I left them, I couldn't stop thinking about what a mad world it is when someone in one of the world's richest countries can't afford to keep a roof over their head and feed and clothe their children. (The client has since had surgery for the problem that prevented her from working, and has got a job as a TA).

Being poor complicates everything. You have to decide whether to spend £5 on the bus fare to a cheap supermarket or use the local co-op, which is more expensive. But you can't tell which will work out cheaper overall, because you don't know what offers will be on. Dare you risk using the tumble drier, or will it mean putting more money on the electric meter? You need to phone the DWP because your ESA hasn't come through, but you know it will be a 45 minute wait and you haven't got much credit on your phone.

And yes, if they have some daft day at school, you can't afford to make a costume and you don't have a spare £1 to pay.

It's absolute shite, and if you haven't been there or seen it at first hand, it's unimaginable.

And it's one of the reasons why I got burned out and had to stop doing frontline work.

I hear you op.I live month to month, no savings and some of the suggestions on here to save money from people who quite frankly don't have a clue make me laugh out loud.

@TwinsandTrifle

"I'm poor because I have massive debts" means you've chosen to borrow beyond your means, and need debt management.

No it really does not mean that. Massive debts can arise for any reasons including, but not limited to, job loss, ill health, being the victims of crime, financial abuse, relationship break up, etc, etc

I have a family member who is in massive debt and none of it because she has borrowed beyond her means. She can't actually borrow anything. When you have nothing, you can't borrow. So debt grows due to other reasons.

She's so poor and the type of debt mean she cannot qualify for debt management.

Not RTFT but the tonedeafness of some to an OP saying she’s skint is a bit like someone saying she has lost the use of both legs but can’t afford a wheelchair and having someone reply “Well, just walk to the shop, work, wherever”.

I've currently got £2.17 in my account and no savings. It's like this every week. I pay the bills, buy food and the money is gone.

@EleanorOlephantisjustfine last drink I had was at Christmas because a colleague bought me a bottle of prosecco, I don't smoke and I don't pay for a TV subscription, I have an old phone on PAYG, ds' phone is relatively new but on PAYG too, ex dh pays dd's contract. I get my hair cut once every 4-6 months (costs me £10) don't wear make up and dd painted my nails yesterday (and I have to remove that before going to work tomorrow), last time I had a night out was March last year.

@52andblue I was in tears a few weeks ago because some boys threw DS2's school shoes in the pond in the park. Luckily, they weren't ruined. I wouldn't have been able to handle the shitty letter from school about "wearing correct uniform".

Yes we get it Twins, you’re a benefit claiming, Boden buying model accountant who is a SAHM with twins who qualified at 23 and is in her late thirties and worked as an accountant for twenty years - we know

It's really tragic that despite explanations, you seem to have to act this stupidly.

17 or so years gets rounded to "twenty" and you have to pretend you're hard of reading.

I think the fact you get so hung up on someone being a model says a lot about you. The fact that mention of Boden makes you lose your head, when the actual matter in hand was demonstrating being able to buy it, then resell it to get back 70% of the cost.

Why is it, do you think, that you have difficulty with a model, or a certain brand of clothing. Like a child, yelling "ha ha, yeah I know you are". Sorry, but no amount of your inability to accept it, changes that I am, who I am. What happened in your own life to project in such a nasty manner like that? I'm sorry whatever it was.

Your inability to understand that someone who knows the system incredibly well through both personal experience, and advising others is honestly, embarassing. All because the actual experience doesn't suit your theoretical narrative. A little education on the subject would help you here, but you don't want to listen to that.

Read the quote about playing chess with pigeons.... I'll leave you to "strut victorious"

Wonders if Boden will be on here at some point attempting to disassociate themselves from such twattery.

@icecolddrinks Many ppl who post on here don't know what no money means or what being broke means. So many threads about being poor or in financial trouble have terrible remarks on them and then, if the person gets pulled up for it, they often go "don't hate me because I've done well for myself"...totally missing the point that it was their ignorant comment, not the fact that they've never experienced poverty, that is the problem.

There's an attitude like if you are broke you must be a freeloading layabout, sat in your cold house, arms folded while you starve, refusing to help yourself. I'm frequently amazed at how so many people seem to think that's realistic.

Don't get me started on people in poverty not being allowed nice things. Like, you should live on air alone and then somehow you'll sort your financial issues out.

I saw a clip somewhere on you tube about this man who was very ill, on some sort of benefits but nothing that covered his treatment and someone came round to his house to advise him on his budget and noticed that the roses in his garden were new and he could have saved £20 by not having them there so he should stop asking for more benefit money. He said to this person that, yes, ok, he could also paint the windows black and stare blankly at those all day but that £20 of roses was what he looked at all day everyday and that was the limit of his pleasure in life. It's such a punitive attitude.

I don't consider myself skint but feel like I have no money. I have no savings. After bills, I have about £1000 a month to cover food, petrol, and everything kids and I need. Sounds fine but I don't drink alcohol, don't eat takeaways, don't go out, don't get my hair cut, don't buy clothes anywhere other than Primark, buy second hand often, don't smoke, no beauty treatments, no gym membership. We don't go without necessities and kids get extras like the odd toy, days out. Its depressing but could be worse

Just ugh at some of the people on this thread. No wonder we have this Government, they've done a brilliant job at making sure the poorest are blamed for their own poverty.

@Celyon

Wonders if Boden will be on here at some point attempting to disassociate themselves from such twattery.

I like some of their stuff. I’m not a model accountant SAHM on benefits though.

@BeyondMyWits

I grew up with homemade cardboard insoles in my shoes, so that the holes in the bottom were covered, so for me "no money" is no money at all. People at work, and on mumsnet etc don't understand that generally. "Why didn't you wear another pair?".

I had my school shoes and my daps for pe/home, both were worn through.

Simple pleasures, but the day I went and bought a shoe rack because I needed one I got a bit emotional.

I totally understand