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?

I have the grand total of 164 in my bank, no savings and bills to pay. I also have two children to feed and benefits won't help because I'm a student and should happily live on 500 a month of my student loan 😂😂😂 I have had money in the past and yes I've probably wasted alot of it but it's swings and roundabouts and you cut your cloth according to what you have at the time, however I never thought I would be cancelling direct debits in order to pay my mortgage and buy food, so when I say I have no money, that's literally having no money - roll on September when I get some more student loan! 🥰

@TwinsandTrifle Strange that you qualified for benefits when on another thread you were apparently a successful model for 20 years, making big bucks off your amazing looks
You've also apparently been an accountant for ages. That's quite some CV
Weren't you also berating a mum for buying too many clothes for her DD's play dates and calling her shallow/wasteful, but you spent £500 on kids' clothes at Boden?

Otherwise, this thread has been interesting and informative. I grew up in extreme poverty in a developing country so I do know what it's like to have no money, literally. I always used to think the Uk didn't have "real" poverty but my eyes have been opened. Thank you to the posters who have shared their stories. I hope you're all in a better position now

No I think you are right, I see that a lot.

Im really fortunate to now have a really good job and good household incomebut back when my eldest was a baby and I was a single parent I had a part time minimum wage job and childcare fees. I used to cut open the bottom of the sofas to find enough loose change for a pint of milk. My nursery fees were always late and my dad had to help me with rent on his credit card.

I do think it's hard to empathise if you haven't been there though.

@Amaya89 thank you for sharing. I’m so glad you’ve got out of that situation. It does sound like hell

And I agree with PP. Always having had the fallback of family money, this - as well as things like the Rashford FSM campaign which led me to research much more - has opened my eyes.

@PrettyLittleFlies

I get that people don't understand, what I don't get is why they offer advice. It's laughable. What on earth could a financially secure person know about dealing with poverty? The level of arrogance and smuggery is breathtaking. Rather like the social media nobodies lining up to tell epidemiologists how to manage a virus outbreak. It's so delusional as to be cringey.

If you are genuinely curious about something, ask someone who knows - and listen when they tell you. Try really hard not to talk over them (I'm looking at you @TwinsandTrifle)

YES. Spot on.

It wasn’t until I found myself in this position that really got what it actually means when say have no money.

Only time it really upset me was when felt really humiliated having to go into reception about not being able to pay for the school swimming lessons and she replied with any donations is ok and she just wouldn’t accept than when I said I had no money it meant no money like zero money.

In end I just left before couldn’t hold back tears so instead I just kept kid off the days they had swimming lessons or made excuse had appointment in morning so went in afternoon.

I do wonder how much was like that receptionist in past. Although when I had money I just paid for everyone because could not to be flash but just because could.

How times did change

I've had no money in the past. Like piss poor single mum and ran out of electricity the day before I got paid. It was very hard.

Then I met my husband and we were still very poor but could afford food and the electricity and a few small gifts for the kids for Christmas. Gifts for each other were home made or foraged. I'll never forget walking across the motorway to the central reservation at 3am because his favourite flowers were teasels and they had some in seed there. My heart was in my mouth but he was delighted with his seeds ( teamed with a pond liner off cut and a shovel I got from a skip). Boxing Day he was out in the garden of our first home digging a little wildlife pond and by summer it was a haven thanks to his hard work and lots of cuttings, free/reduced plants etc

Twenty years on we own a small/cheap rental property and our house and are comfortable but far from rich. We are incredibly lucky though. Even on a state pension our retirement will hopefully be comfortable with a small top up from the rental. Enough for a foreign holiday or two every year and to run a car. We don't have fancy dreams.

We currently have two or three foreign holidays a year and have a combined income of £40k and three kids. But I know that we could manage if we fell onto hard times again. My husband has several health issues, as do I - so I'm always prepared for I'll health with heavily stocked cupboards, spreading the cost of Christmas/trips etc.

@MildredPuppy

I find a lot of people look at poverty from a place of already having a lot of stuff. Its hard to explain but my sister fled her abuser in the middle of the night and had nothing but the clothes she wore. She had to get everything and yes its really exprnsive to be poor as you have exprnsive electricity rates and can only get cheap things that need replacing a lot. I had a rough financial patch but already had a winter coat and a pot to cook in etc. It was only when things started to wear out/ need replacing that things started to feel tight. But i had an in built buffer of stuff and could carry on all my cheap deals. Luckily i found work again but the buffer collapsed..

What it boils down to is that it's expensive being poor - if you don't have the money up front to pay for quality you have to spend more in the long run for worse quality, but you can't save up for the "good" item because you need the item now, not in 3/4 weeks/months when you could save for the quality version.

Even if you tried to save up for the quality version, everything you own is in the same state so you never manage to buy the quality stuff because there is always something breaking or wearing out ... which is another thing about being poor, everything is always breaking and wearing out and it's just demoralising to constantly have to replace things when you know a quality item would have a much longer lifespan, if only you could afford it.

Terry Pratchett summed it up the best way I have seen in one of his books:

“Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of ok for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

Also Lakielady the stats you link to include that 15% of people who own their own home outright are living in poverty. There's a big choice being made by those people not to liquidate a huge financial asset to meet your income needs. It's not absolute poverty if you own a house outright.

It might not be absolute posverty but you can still struggle even though you own your own home outright.

I live in a low property price area, flats in my street got for around £60 000. What happens if you sell that? You then have to pay rent or at least £500 a month and have no security. You might be better off in the short term but over the long term you end up in a vulnerable position.

I've had this disagreement before about the boots theory. I don't think it holds weight (but only because that excerpt is lacking detail).

Based on the information available in that excerpt it's easy to assume (deliberate choice of word) that if £10 could be afforded once (to buy the boots when you really had to) then in any other month you could save, say £3, towards the boots and eventually buy the expensive boots, thus experiencing a cumulative benefit...eventually.

It's a good excerpt, but it's not detailed enough and it doesn't really show that it's expensive to be poor. (Sorry I'm a stickler for the detail). IMHO it's 80% there and just needs a line to include something about the difficulty of saving when just about managing.

I prefer the Micawber quotation.

I thought it good explanation about boots, it’s kind of like the cheap shit shoes school situation.

The £3 saving misses the point of having no money. People find it hard to understand that there is no £3

I can only think of a very few households who were unable to learn how to manage money when given support and coaching to do so. Two of them were couples with mild LDs, two were single people with MH issues, a couple had brain injuries and one was where one partner was an alcoholic.

Most people can learn to manage their money with a bit of help. Sadly, funding for that sort of work is rarely available.

I agree that most people could learn if offered the opportunity to do so, and that the opportunity to do so is vanishingly available.

But, there's no teaching someone to stretch money, if what is coming in, does not equal what needs to go out, no amount of budgeting skill is going to fix that. If your basic outgoings like rent, council tax, water rates and school uniform etc exceed what you've got coming in, what then?

I've been in that situation and it's really obvious that some people haven't when they start going on about cutting your cloth etc. If your cloth isn't big enough to start with and you've no means to increase it, then it's not going to work no matter how you cut.

You can make all the necessary cuts and still be in the negative, because some things, like rent and council tax are non negotiable, you can't cut back on them if you suddenly have time off sick or your employer decided to slash your hours because far better you suffer the concequences of reduced business than them.

I can tell you, it's fucking miserable to be recovering from surgery, sat with the curtains closed so the bailiffs can't see in with the council telling you that you should just pay what you owe and if you are entitled to any benefit because of losing income then it'll be applied and you'll owe less in the future, but right now pay up or the bailiffs are coming in and you'll get penalised for this happening financially, ensuring that you stay in the situation longer.

While freezing your backside off because you can't afford the heating on because you've cut that back to buy new school shoes or otherwise your child ends up in isolation for not being in the correct uniform.

Then you're expected to get better and get yourself back to work and leave the fact you've just had yet another wash in cold water so you're clean and tidy to meet the expectations placed upon you, at the door and be professional, though you don't get regarded, paid or treated as such.

Then you read that you waste it all on fags, booze and wide-screen TVs and really, it's your own fault because you should just have a better job anyway.

I'm away from that situation now, but by God, I remember what it was like to be the lowest of the low and ridiculed for it, while feeling like other people are managing to get on with their lives and do their better earning jobs because I'm here like some mug being paid a pittance to make sure their elderly and vulnerable relatives are looked after so they don't have to.
It's absolutely miserable but a clear sign that people like me, well we don't matter.

@Wallpapering

I thought it good explanation about boots, it’s kind of like the cheap shit shoes school situation.

The £3 saving misses the point of having no money. People find it hard to understand that there is no £3

It doesn't miss the point. In the month that the boots are bought £10 is found to buy the boots!!!

This is why it annoys me. It's not a good description of poverty as too short. It needs maybe an extra line about how finding the £10 when really needed is difficult (robbing Peter to pay Paul type stuff??) too.

lquitit

You put that so much better that I could and there will be people reading like me thinking it’s people like you that very much matter.

What I have noticed that when you poor you become invisible, your opinions on poverty don’t matter but everyone else’s that speaks about poverty does. Like somehow being poor means thick as shit

@Wallpapering

lquitit

You put that so much better that I could and there will be people reading like me thinking it’s people like you that very much matter.

What I have noticed that when you poor you become invisible, your opinions on poverty don’t matter but everyone else’s that speaks about poverty does. Like somehow being poor means thick as shit

Thank you, I'd disagree politely though on the being invisible bit, I've found you're a target for the blame for everything that's wrong in society, why taxes are so high, why there's areas of depravation, why social housing is in such short supply - we just don't try hard enough and don't work hard enough and want everything handed to us on a plate because we're so entitled. When we're being screwed over by just about everyone.

Totally agree though that my opinions on how I ended up in that situation are dismissed and I'm told, by people who have never faced it, where I went wrong and how to fix it, and if I respond that the methods they've "suggested" won't work, or I've done them and am still in the same situation, well that's the trouble with people like me, full of excuses!

And this isn't directed at you, but I also notice that no one has answered my question about the whole 'retrain' or 'get a better job' advice they are so fond of dishing out, and who exactly, is going to do these jobs if that happens? And what happens if no one does?

I think poverty has similarities with other challenging situations e.g having a SEN child.

People not in the situation can't/don't want to comprehend how shit/broken some of the UK's systems are unless you're rolling along nicely.

With SEN I've seen parents in here advised to 'just' move to a specialist school, or parent better because autistic kids should have the same treatment, or get respite when the reality is, there's very little safety net. But like poverty, people don't want to believe it - they'd rather point the finger at the person affected, because if it's their 'fault' it's preventable. Sometimes circumstances mean, it isn't. Hence unhelpful advice about bulk buying, or taking in ironing when the person giving that advice has no clue at all...

It's a kind of broken cognitive process:

Do what I do, because I'm not in poverty and never have been
Vs
I can't do what you're advising because I am living in poverty

The person not living in poverty is given too much credit for their situation (hidden privilege), whilst those in poverty are assigned too much blame (must be the fags and flat screen).

Poverty for me was having 2 pair of trousers and feeding the DC over myself.
I'd to give up work my 2nd DC had a severe attachment disorder I tried working nights he'd still cry all night eventually diagnosed with ASD.
DP was earning though our rent and bills swallowed it.
I grew up poor so it wasn't a shock however it was miserable worrying
I cut my own hair, done my own self care until I couldn't be bothered caring when life was shit.
Everything that could go wrong did during that period.
It was awful.

The person not living in poverty is given too much credit for their situation (hidden privilege), whilst those in poverty are assigned too much blame (must be the fags and flat screen).

That's pretty much the problem in a nutshell. And those in poverty aren't listened to because they are believed to be less overall of a person.

There's times I want to scream "I'm more than my negative bank balance and job title, I'm a person with needs, wants and thoughts just like you!"

@TwinsandTrifle

"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?*

For me, two things. Firstly, from having to claim benefits myself and astounded at the amount I was given. We literally lived no differently to when I was in full time work.

The second. I had no money, one month. The clutch went in my car. I had "3p" in the bank that month. What I can't understand is how people only ever have 3p in the bank continually.

So my view, is that I know what you receive, I wasn't special, that's what I received too. I know what average bills are, and if consistently you are left with 3p, then it is not down to lack of initial money, but your own choices on what you've done with it.

The odd month with a surprise large expense can't be helped. The rest of the year? It's down to personal choices. Some months I'd have £300-400 to just spend on whatever, after all bills and food. That's a huge amount. And it wasn't like we lived like misers.

So yes, because of having been in that exact position, and knowing how very easy it was, I question what made me so "lucky" when some people swear they are so hard done by.

You are not better off on benefits, maybe short term you don't feel the difference but longer term you would.

Am waiting for TwinsandTrifle lesson on how to do riches of living on benefits whereas I too can take holidays, where was that again?

I highly doubt @TwinsandTrifle ever claimed benefits as a qualified accountant or suffered poverty. I suspect she/he knows the system through work and like many public sector workers in that type of employment has a bee in her/his bonnet. I think the attitude comes from the empowerment of the little people while working in the job centre.
Same tripe on the camping thread tripping themself up.

I agree with the analogy of the boots. Finding £10 one month may have meant making a huge sacrifice that month to buy those much needed boots. Maybe going without electricity or food but thats because its a needs must, doesn't mean the person can make a sacrifice of £3 every month.

Our system is so so flawed.
Unpaid Carers for instance who many already have the extra financial hardship of having someone in need of care to look after are expected to prove they care for 35 hours a week for £65 a week. Then to add to the financial burden they cannot earn over £128 a week or they lose their carers allowance. Meaning that because someone in a caring role saving our tax papers a small fortune by providing care can never realistically get out of poverty.
There is just so many flaws
Free school meals for all primary 1-3s in scotland is fantastic but no help for the teenagers whose parents earn just over £6500.

@wallpapering

Am waiting for TwinsandTrifle lesson on how to do riches of living on benefits whereas I too can take holidays, where was that again?

You need to get a second income modelling.