To believe that some people stay broke because they don’t want to make sacrifices?

[ForSharpBrickKoala]

It’s hard to save money but isn’t it true that a lot of people could improve their financial situation if they made different choices? AIBU to think it’s not always about the system?

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. I'm 100% 'good enough' to experience generational wealth - I just didn't, because my father squandered first what he inherited, and then what little capital he had before he died. There was none on DM's side either - there might have been something, but her father was financially inept so that all vanished.

The system isn't great, but its the least worst we know of. And you can make good financial decisions to help yourself: I did on a moderate income as a young adult, because I was terrified of ending up in the same financial bind that I grew up in. I've known people who began with nothing and never earned a fortune, but were careful and sensible, didn't waste £££ on pointless crap, and are comfortable in retirement.

But I also know that the option of making yourself better off via good decisions isn't open to everyone. A friend of mine is seriously dyslexic and came from a family where no one valued education. His health has not been great and the poor sod is perennially skint.

How does the not-system operate? How do I run my tattoo boutique without charging customers for my art? Buy equipment without loans?

Yes sort of. My sister always criticises me that i always seem to have money etc because we go on a fair amount of holidays that she says she 'couldn't afford'. Only she has two DS who she has never accepted any second hand clothes or toys for even excellent quality designer stuff. No she just won't accept pre loved for her kids. I would and have gladly accepted for mine.
At Christmas our Elf arrived with a cute little note, hers arrived in a €75 balloon. She spends money on unnecessary tat. We don't. That's how we have holidays and she doesn't. But she won't admit or change her ways. Rather just moan that she has it hard and I have it easy 🙄
I could list millions of examples but that's just two..

The stuff I've already mentioned. Wages too low, costs too high. Wages haven't gone up in real terms in 16 years. Fifty years ago the average house cost three times the average wage, now it's ten times. Childcare costs so high that they eat up a whole wage. Costs of food and energy and everything going up and up. Good for you if you're so rich that none of this affects you, but you really must have been living in a cave for some years if you don't know that they affect most of us.

I do look after myself, but I don't earn enough to save anything at all, which is what OP's question was about. And a lot of people are in the same boat. A lot of people are working as hard as their parents, but have a lower standard of living? Do you really, truly not know this?

The choice isn’t between the current system and chaos! We can still have commercial businesses and markets. They just need to be better regulated for the benefit of all — not just the already rich.

We’ve been here before, in the nineteenth century. Two world wars and we started to climb out of it — only to start the long fall back into inequality.

There will be people at the bottom end of earnings where they don’t earn enough for decisions to make much difference. People at the very top end of earnings where what they spend again doesn’t make much difference.
Where the OP is correct is that there is a vast middle ground of earners where some are totally frivolous and make poor financial choices and therefore cannot save and others who make better choices and end up much better off

Some people of course are poor because of bad choices they've made. Same as some people are rich despite bad choices they've made or because of good choices. On mn a lot of people like to pretend all poor people are virtuous and good- but people are just people. Some are bad, some are good. Some are lazy and feckless. Some have just had some bad luck

I'm not well off, but I have enough (just about). I'm so glad I chose quality of life over money.

I’ll bite!
I’m in my 60’s, started off with a low paid job as a counter clerk, DH similarly low paid BUT… we could afford to buy a flat with a mortgage at age 21, in the Greater London area, with an affordable 5% deposit.
Now we have paid off the mortgage and own a 3-bedroom house, have had some DC along the way and a lifestyle that most young people can’t even dream of now.
Since the CoL has increased from about 33% of take-home pay to about 75%+ over the past 40 years, it’s no wonder that most young people (and some older, too) are broke, and these people have also most likely grown up with fewer hardships and more lifestyle expectations, so it’s hard for people in the current climate to adapt to this new reality.
To paraphrase Mr Micawber, if your expenditure is more than your income, misery!
Wages are not what they were, and some people need to realise this and stop admonishing those who complain - they are right to complain if they can’t make a decent living (by which I mean enough money for their full-time working effort).

But my point was to these people it isn't small, that 30 a week is a much much bigger sacrifice when you're living on close to nothing. Should they really go with no pleasures at all just for a 'safety net' in case their landleech decides to make more money by evicting them?

We've had to cut back on how much we put in savings. We don't spend on holidays, our car is second hand and 13 years old, but DH is limited in how much he can earn and the cost of everything keeps going up. I'm dreading what our council tax is going to be this year, 6.9% was the proposal.

I'm also going to be made redundant before the end of the year, a month before DS DLA is up for renewal, just to add to the stress.

I think we’re agreeing.

my point is the bootlickers on the thread who seem to think saving £1400 is the difference between poor and not poor and have spent pages detailing how they are so disciplined and forward focused they manage to buy basic properties and go on holiday (THE ABSOLUTE LUXURY!) whilst the real rich are laughing at them turning on each other like rats.

its got it all- neighbours who buy designer shoes for their children EVERY SINGLE PAYDAY range rovers instead of private school and my still beloved SAFETY PINS HOLDING TRAINERS TOGETHER.

Take a look at what Labour doing and consider that cost of living will only increase. Raising salaries, national insurance for employers makes cost of production and services increase.

The only way to save is consume less. If you think that Gov paying / building and gifting you a home is going to make groceries cheaper … you are wrong.

what I do know, is increasing population (maybe it’s immigration???) makes housing scarce and drives up the price. So house prices you cannot afford is the price Brits pay for being a welcoming country who allow in hoards of people who cannot afford anything. They drive YOU out of the housing market.

Wealthy people are notoriously thrifty and not embarrassed to mend and make do …. Because they are still wealthy … despite the safety pins.

Describe regulations please.

Money Advisor here. This is correct in many cases (obviously not all).

I’m physically disabled and I’m a single parent to a severely autistic child. I’m ‘broke‘ because I have no opportunities to get out of the situation I’m in. It’s not about sacrifices - many of us don’t have the opportunities

And also of course because possessing old, battered things is a class shibboleth — you’re not a flashy arriviste, buying your own furniture and such horrors. 😀

I remember a profile of the Middletons in something (Tatler before it started trying to appeal to the nouveaux?) that featured lot of quotes from the parents of other children who’d been at Marlborough at the same time as the Middleton sisters.

On the surface, all of the reminiscences attributed to them seemed perfectly polite, but by emphasising the newness and perfectness of all the Middleton luggage and uniforms, and how the parents would always show up in a polished car with perfectly packed picnics at school sports/matches (‘We always felt terribly disorganised in comparison!’), it was pretty snide. The subtext was ‘try-hards, getting it slightly wrong, NQOT’.

What… all of them? 🤣🤣🤣

Just one or two of your regulations to address the fixes to the system … the regulations to change the neo capitalist rent payer system into system that allows people to not be financially broke ?

This. The potential difference is huge.

One simple difference between buying your lunch at work every day and buying it once a week and taking leftovers or other food from home most of the time.

Say a coffee on the way to work and something mid priced such as McDonalds, Greggs or Pret for lunch, normal stuff, not the cheapest meal deal but not a sit down lunch. This costs £10 a day. Say your food from home costs £2.

£10 a day is £50 a week. Once a week plus food from home is £18 a week so a difference of £32 or about £130 pm. Or nearly £1500 per year, which is a very decent emergency fund, or £15k per decade, which will buy a good second hand car. Add in an average 5% interest and will be worth almost £20k in a decade.

All simply due to making a sandwich and getting coffee at work most of the time rather than buying it.

Repeat for some of the many many other ways there are to spend money or not on non essentials, or by taking a more expensive choice - more expensive car, mobile phone, pizza from the supermarket rather than delivery, not shopping around so paying full price and you can probably add a zero to those numbers. The difference can to add up to hundreds of pounds a month, often with little noticeable difference in lifestyle.

Most people (to be clear excluding those who's income does not cover their essentials) do have sufficient money to not be broke, all they have to do is spend less than they earn.

This is an urban myth in the fashion of “wealth whispers” - stop being a bootlicker bootlicker

The problem with poverty -and I mean genuine poverty rather than not being able to afford a £7 quid coffee - is that it is not about just money. Poverty is cyclical and often runs through generations, and usually involves one or more other issues such as poor health, disability (learning and physical), deprivation, lack of education etc. it might seem easy to say ‘just get up and work rather than claim benefits’ but that completely overlooks poor education, a lack of qualifications, poor health including mental health, lack of role models when you live with three generations of non-workers, addiction etc, I could go on. What we really need to do is plough some real cash and effort into the most deprived - in schools so they don’t fall behind, into health and lifestyle so they develop healthy habits and stay well, into housing so they don’t live with damp and infestations, into educating parents about how to break the cycle of poverty that is no-ones ‘fault’.

for some people it may look like a choice but the real issue is the complete and utter lack of hope that some people have as a result of what life’s lottery has thrown at them. Sympathise by all means but please don’t judge.

From my own personal experience, I would agree. (Disability and sickness excluded).

I'm 32, it was when i went to uni I first realised my parents were 'poor' - didn't own a house, no savings, debt, always somehow buying new things/clothes, no stability due to renting etc. That made me realise how much I needed to save and be careful with my money when i earnt any as I didn't want to be like that. I wanted a stable home life.

Fast forward, I bought my first house at 26, I was only earning 19k, DP at the time was earning around 40k. I got so many comments from family saying how 'lucky' we were to have bought a house and how lucky we were to have saved up so much in the space of a few years.

I just remember thinking of all the times we'd go out shopping with them and they'd buy expensive clothing from ted baker, hugo boss, go for meals out all the time, go to 5 star resorts on holiday, constant weekends away, and drive expensive cars which they changed often (audi,bmw).

We weren't 'lucky', we rented a small 1 bed flat, and saved an insane amount of our income every month, while driving an average/old car and shopped at primark. Of course we wanted to buy better things, but we knew we needed to sacrifice for the sake of buying a house. We did have a balance, and still managed to enjoy life, but we did it on a budget.

Buying that property has allowed me to buy my next property with my now husband. We again have sacrificed experiences/holidays/renovating to build up a 12 month emergency fund, we both grew up with financially illiterate parents and this is important to us. We drive two old ford fiestas, but are hoping to get a new car this year once baby is here. We will also be 'doing' a lot more this year when baby arrives, and now that we have our house/savings foundation sorted.

Again, we still get comments on how lucky we are to have this nice big detached house, meanwhile my parents received a 140k inheritance and are spending it going on cunard cruises, bought 2 new 24 plate minis, all while renting a bungalow with no security for their old age.

Both owned properties previously, but somehow squandered the equity after divorce.

Outside of disability and sickness, most people have a choice in life, but lots don't want to face the reality of their spending and keeping up with the jones'

Urban myth? These folks live in the countryside! Surely you mean … rural myth, or country home with a pheasant shoot myth…
I think if you find yourself in the mothball wardrobe of a wealthy person … you will find that I am correct.