Do you think Brits are really as broke as the media makes out

[SlothfullyYours]

I took some flexi leave this afternoon to run some errands and do some "life admin."

Started off in town. The shoppers' car park was packed, the shops were packed, coffee shops packed. People spending money.

Came home and tried to book car in for a service - garages booked up weeks in advance. Tried to get some trades round to quote for work on the house - all too busy (have been trying for months!).

Friend popped round. Recently started as a self employed cleaner. She says all her slots for house cleaning have been snapped up - and she's charging £20 per hour and we're in the Midlands!

My hairdresser & dentist (private) - have to book weeks/months in advance.

Are we really as skint as the media makes out?

I'm spending all mine, there will be nothing left but an old cronky house when I go.

Average unsecured household debt in the UK, ie not mortgages or student debt, is about £14k. Or £7k per adult.

If people are still spending while owing that much, that's quite worrying.

Or here's another thing you can do.
Play around with the Joseph Rowntree calculator. and the IFS calculator.

See how far up the income scale a family would have to get before they reach what the Joseph Rowntree foundation consider a comfortable lifestyle.

It will be further up than you think.

Garages being busy maybe means more people hanging on to older cars that need MOTs and more work doing on them

our income and the things we pay for have been the same for a couple of years, but the joint account is empty much earlier in the month.

i am lucky enough to have an NHS dentist so I make damn sure I go to my appointments or I will lose it!

I also make sure (by borrowing if necessary) that I get my car serviced and MOTed so that I can actually get to work.

Things cost more. Pay has not increased (for me). I don’t go out to cafes or yoga or the pub as I once might have done. I still pay for things for my dc so they don’t miss out. It’s me who misses out, and OH. We will still do some shopping for Christmas, of course, but have agreed to a much lower spend this year and already I’m thinking where we’ll skimp given the plans we have.

Sounds like there is a cost of living crisis and a massive shortage of hairdressers, dentists, mechanics and builders, just like the media have been saying.

They may be spending on necessities and have nothing in their pension fund for example…

Not in my experience.

I’ve been stuck there. It’s harder than you think to stop spending money, as I mentioned above I have to have a car that works so it has to be serviced and repaired if it breaks down. It has to have petrol. I have to be neatly dressed and clean for work, so I have to spend something on grooming. It costs more to spend less in the supermarket where items are discounted on bulk buys, so if you don’t have room for bigger or more (even non-perishable stuff like loo roll or tins) the things you buy cost more over the longer term. Sometimes you have to pay out to maintain social ties, like seeing friends or buying birthday presents for your child to give a friend. Those might be tiny spends but they all add up. Prescriptions. Keeping things going when the income is being squeezed, because to let them go will, again, cost more when you turn the corner (because surely you will, things can’t be this bad for much longer). Being in work and not entitled to help but the income covering progressively less is really really tough.

I think if you're a spender you find a way to spend - be that credit cards or no longer saving.

We earn the magical six figure plus salary and have cut back, no cleaner or personal trainer anymore and we are holding back on house improvements but we still save and put a fair whack in pensions.

My town centre was much busier than normal for a Monday when I popped in yesterday. This is because it’s nearly Christmas. Go back on a random Monday in January, and it will be quiet again.

I just heard a hospitality boss interviewed on the radio saying that people are still eating out in their restaurants, but spending a lot less. This tally’s with what I have seen- everyone is downgrading. If they previously ate out every week, it’s now once a month. People buy more own branded food, go out less, decorate instead of moving house etc. Food shopping in particular is so much more expensive

People put a lot on credit and have very little savings.

I dont think most people are broke either. Those are quite absolute terms. But there's still a wider issue.

In fairness though, you didn't invent by yourself the idea that a COL crisis means nobody spending any money on anything. It comes up very regularly!

nauseating. This has to be a bait post. You have absolutely no idea of poverty. Apparently, unless you are tripping over “the broke” dressed in rags, with no teeth and begging you for money then it doesn’t exist. Use your privilege to volunteer at a food bank or a soup station and see what poor looks like, rather than popping into M&S and realising parking is difficult and you can’t get a coffee so it must mean people are better off than they think. Give your head a wobble.

I totally agree that what you see depends where you live. We increasingly live in bubbles so you have minimal idea of what life is like for the people outside that bubble. I live in an affluent tourist town - the kind of place people dress up to go for afternoon tea in, and have a scenic day out in - and to look around, you’d think everyone in the UK drives a Tesla or Porsche or Range Rover. If you go to an exercise class, all the attendees wear clothes from Sweaty Betty; the only bookshop is a (beautiful and wonderful) independent bookshop where you generally pay full price for what you buy. But if you go three miles south of here, you come to a town where everything is boarded up, buildings are becoming derelict, no one chooses to go. Our closest city is one of the most deprived in the UK. There was an event on in that city last year that I recommended my class visit, and they said to me “Oh no, we don’t go to xxxx.”
And I understand why their families don’t go, but it does reinforce your perception that everything is golden. So I think it’s something you can only judge with actual data.

The Uk is one of the fastest growing economies in the G7, and the GINI coefficient of inequality has dropped. So despite all the doom mongers saying we’re all skint, the data doesn’t suggest that entirely. Nor does the amount of money going on (for example) weight loss injections as opposed to keeping the roof over someone’s head…

As long as Rachel Reeves doesn’t screw employers to oblivion tomorrow, we should be ok. I do think the only good thing about Brexit is that it started an honest conversation about were we actually really good at anything, and the country has had to up its game to survive.

But people who are truly skint don’t go on holiday or to coffee shops. They’re at home - not out and about spending money. They haven’t got any money. The fact that airports and coffee shops are full and that there are people who can afford cleaners and car services proves nothing about people who can’t afford these things.

Look instead at statistics for people who are using food banks, for children on FSM etc to gain an overview of increase in poverty in the UK over the last five or ten years. Walk around an area of deprivation at school pick up time and see for yourself the number of people including small children without proper winter coats or adults out with pushchairs in dreadful weather because they don’t have a car. People who live in poverty aren’t hanging out in airports.

It’s illogical to deduce that nobody is living in poverty on the basis that you’ve recently been on a packed aeroplane. Everything you say is mere observation and confirmation bias. It makes no sense.

Interesting topic. I was talking about this with someone recently - we both work in a younger persons area to a degree. I had recently been to a baby shower where it was highly noticeable that most of the 18-20yrs ish girls had lip filler and lashes. Both are costly to maintain - the answer is apparently 'Klarna'. So if one can obtain credit, they can easily appear to be affording a lifestyle that is actually just accumulating debt.

Wish we'd done that without shooting ourselves in the foot first.

I think expectations have gone up - when I grew up in the 70s & 80s we never ate out, coffee shops & takeaways were things we didn’t do. We had one tiny metro as our family car, things like city breaks weren’t common. We rarely had the heating on. Days out were rare & not something we often did so school holidays were mostly spent hanging around the park or a mates house. People do have higher expectations now & people will say they are short of money if they can’t afford a take out. They expect to be take children to theme parks & on sunny holidays.

I get fed of hearing about boomers as they had very little growing up & some are doing ok now but not all of them are well off. They didn’t have the luxuries lots of young people do now.

Come to my neck of the woods, extremely deprived area in a generally affluent city, go to the local food banks, charities helping families get a bed for their kids to sleep on rather than the mattress on the floor or the sofa, these local charities having to put nappies and formula or their wish list of donations constantly due to need, people food shopping just before closing to get yellow ticket items, not on a whim but out of necessity. Local community centres putting on social meals like a soup and sandwich for anyone who wants one no questions asked.
If you did come and see all these people at these places you would think very differently

No, I wouldn't because I know a minority of people are poor and struggling. It's awful but it's nothing new. It doesn't mean that the people of Britain are broke. Just an unfortunate minority. So no need for the media doommongerering.

Edited - duplicate post.

Where in the midlands do you live op? If its an expensive town like Solihull, that's why.

Go to poorer parts of the country like wales, Cornwall (away from the coast), the north east & Lincolnshire. It is radically different and far poorer. The uk is a very divided country.

There must be lots of people struggling, particularly younger people still on lower salaries. If you bought a house years ago when prices were lower and did long fixed mortgage rates at 1 or 2% your mortgage is likely to be half that of people that have started out in the last few years. If you're renting the situation is worse!

I really think housing is the biggest problem for most people. If your mortgage or rent is cheap you can absorb some of the increases elsewhere, but if you've already maxed out your budget trying to get on the housing ladder or you're stuck paying £1200 a month rent it's not so easy.

Then add in all the people that maxed out mortgages based on affordability of 2% interest rates that are now on 4 or 5%.