Poor life planning..

[pocketpairs]

With the upcoming budget seen many "poor me" posts, particularly from high/middle earners. I find it frustrating that rather than blame themselves for thier life (& financial planning) choices, they blame some arbitrary government policy changes, such as upcoming introduction of new council tax bands.

Example: Sister & hubby earn £14k net p/m. But their choice to buy a nearly £x.xm house in SE & send DCs to private school means they have £3k (approx) to spend on everything else. They could have taken different choices...£1m houses &/or move to grammar school areas.

Clearly this is an extreme example, but I really don't understand why a family can't survive on £4-6k p/m, especially outside of London. Up until recently, I survived on much less and managed to put myself a firmer financial footing in 40s.

Sure this means some sacrifices, but it seems everyone wants to 'have their cake and eat it'.

Can we all stop pretending that high earners are the only people who work hard and long hours / Christmas / bank holidays etc?
Many people slog their guts out working hard, long and antisocial hours on minimum wage.
We also can't pretend that these people should just have "chosen" a better paid career. There are lots of reasons that people cannot do this, not least because there are a finite number of high earning jobs. You can't run a hospital with 500 surgeons but no nurses and nobody to clean the toilets.
I can absolutely understand why high earners are upset at paying out so much in tax. The thing that bothers me is the "I've worked hard so I am entitled to everything I have" mentality, when so many people work just as hard and are struggling to make ends meet.
I think the other thread about "middle earners" was a bit tone deaf because to a lot of us the OP would be considered a high earner. That doesn't take away from the stupid means testing that looks at individual parent's income instead of household income though.Two parents earning £99K each could receive benefits that a household where one parent earns £101K and the other £12K would not be entitled to.

Nobody is pretending that

🙄There are plenty of people on here saying that they have worked hard, long hours etc etc etc to get what they have. There are also people on here implying that low earners have made poor life choices and could be earning more money if only they had done better / worked harder.

But you know what maybe they could have, maybe you could have and maybe I could have made different life choices . You can that say that about probably most people, But that’s life some people do better than others for a myriad of different reasons and some people do worse for a myriad of different reasons but the high earners shouldn’t be made to guilty about doing well because they are the ones who pay a far higher proportion of taxes.

Yes - I definitely could have made different life choices as we all could have. My problem is the insistence that some people have that if everyone just worked as hard as they did everyone would be a high earner like they are.

Agree this is really annoying. 2 people can be earning £119k between them and receive full CB, but one person on £61k is penalised.

But as I said maybe they have worked hard to get where they are just as a cleaner is a hospital works hard. There seems to be so much projection going on from people. High earners are not the enemy so many people here think they are

My post is partly about the all people, including the better paid, living within their means. If one chooses to spend £xk on mortgage payments then that is a choice they made. If that leave them with less for annual holidays (for example), then that is simply a consequence of their decision.

The economy won't grow, it hasn't in any meaningful way for decades. We have destroyed our industrial base, are over reliant on financial services, and created a political system that only considers the short term (eg. capping of salary sacrifice). Just think about it..how many world renowned global companies are British?

You are wilfully ignoring my point and that is fine.
I have lots of high earning friends who understand that hard work and dedication can actually get you nowhere if they aren't combined with other factors. I have also met some tossers who think that they are the only people who have ever worked hard so they deserve all of the rewards and shouldn't be funding "lazy" low paid people who could have just worked harder.
For what it is worth, I do not feel that either group are my enemy. I just think the latter group are stupid and short-sighted. They are often still outliving their means and could lose it all in a heartbeat no matter how hard they work.

And you seem almost joyful about that. And is it not lazy to work half a week because it affects your benefits so you are paid by the taxpayer to stay home?

I think the point of living within your means and having a bit of leeway whatever you earn is a good one. For some people on lower wages it’s difficult to get by anyway and they will find it hard to have any buffers but for others I agree it’s a choice. It’s not because you can afford the better house/car/ handbag/ whatever that you actually need it. If it’s going to bring stress and panic when there’s a budget change or a moderate change in life circumstances because you streched yourself with a bigger mortgage then is it really worth it? Each to their own of course.

Do I "work half a week because it affects your benefits so you are paid by the taxpayer to stay home"?

I don’t know if you do or not. I haven’t asked you. I used the word “you” figuratively

But what’s the alternative. When we’re shown these click-bait newspaper articles that show a mother on UC receiving £3k a month in benefits, everyone is up in arms. But they ignore the fact that £2K+ of that figure is probably for childcare.

If we want single mothers to work full-time, we need to accept that it will result in UC footing the childcare bill. But when they do, they’re still labelled as ‘scroungers’.

The alternative is the state paying them £1500 a month to stay at home and not work. Given that someone on a ft minimum wage will pay a little over £3k a year in tax/NI is obviously cheaper for the state for mother to stay at home while children are pre school-age.

I’m not saying that is the best solution, for a variety of reasons, I’m merely pointing out the maths.

Have I leapt to the defence of or even mentioned anyone who is "work half a week because it affects your benefits so you are paid by the taxpayer to stay home"?
I think the only group of low income people that I have mentioned are those who are working hard, long and antisocial hours on minimum wage with no hope of higher pay.

I think it’s clear someone who works full time is definitely NOT a scrounger and if you are on a low wage which needs to be topped up then so be it and top it up.I think most sensible people would probably agree with that. But if you are able bodied person and not a carer for a SEN child you need to be working full time and not being paid to stay at home for half the week. People are not being unreasonable in being pissed off by that.

I’m not disagreeing but I do recognise that most unskilled jobs are not full-time. Most jobs in retail or hospitality are zero-hours, or if you’re lucky you might get a 6 or 8 hour contract. It’s impossible to sort childcare if you don’t know what hours you’re working on any given week. UC will only pay for the actual days you work. You can’t put a child in full time nursery on the off chance you’ll be working that week.

Care is really the only sector where you are guaranteed longer hours, but I know people who can’t work in care because they can’t get childcare at the weekend, and generally shifts end later than nurseries kick out.

It is a shitshow, but I recognise that it’s not as simplistic as mothers “not wanting to work”. There are huge barriers to employment in the UK, especially for unskilled workers and even more so for unskilled single mothers.

I wholeheartedly hate zero hours contract and they should be banned but are many jobs people can do that fit into the working week. As for unsocial hours where are the fathers in this? Why don’t they look after the kids so mum can work? One of the biggest problems this county had is that feckless fathers sire kids but don’t pay for them. This is where the government needs to invest to make sure they pay therefore freeing up taxpayers money to be used by other service. I don’t think that’s unreasonable

I've lived on three different continents and worked on a fourth, rubbing shoulders with people ranging from African villagers who have to go to the communal well for water to billionaire financiers in Asian financial hubs.

The situation where the cost of someone's lifestyle increases at the same (or faster!) rate as their income so that by the time they're in the top 1% of earners they are still living paycheque to paycheque and somehow view themselves as average does seem to be quite unique to the UK, although I'd qualify that by saying I haven't stepped foot in the US for over forty years and it may well be prevalent there too.

By any objective global measure these people are extraordinarily well-paid, and because our tax systems focus on earnings (income tax and NI in the UK) and spending (VAT) they pay the most in tax. And they should: they have the broadest shoulders in the tax regime we have.

What they might not be is wealthy, not because they're taxed out of existence but because wealth isn't what you earn; it's what you keep. That's the choices OP started the thread about, and there do seem to be an awful lot of poor choices out there.

I wholeheartedly hate zero hours contract and they should be banned but are many jobs people can do that fit into the working week.

Can you give me examples of which full time jobs are easy to obtain and fit into the working week? I live in the north, and where I live these positions sadly don’t exist.

A traditional week is 9.00 to 5.30 of course there are jobs out there that fit that criteria. Yes there is a lot of competition for them that is a given but to say they aren’t there would be wrong.

Good I’m glad you haven’t defended them. People do have agency over their own lives and jobs. If you have no hope of a pay rise move jobs, look at ways to improve things. It’s not easy but life isn’t easy but it should not be an excuse to at least trying. I pivoted in my career. It wasn’t easy at all but it can be done

Yes, that would be you.

First of all, the changes to pensions only take effect from 2029.

Second, if you salary sacrifice below the higher tax rate, you do indeed avoid the 40% tax rate regardless. The change is that you will have to pay national insurance contributions; but national insurance does not change when you move into the higher tax brackets.

Yanbu

DH and i are well off. We'll pay more, thats kind of the point of taxation. We have a lot of choice driven expenses we can reduce if we have to - cheaper holidays, axe the posh gym. Someone earning £35k has far less flexibility to cut most of their costs

The changes to salary sacrifice in the budget would never impact me - no chance of having a "spare" £200 a month to sacrifice!

I work hard, very hard. I'm reasonably intelligent, but you would have to put it down to luck in my case that I can't earn a high salary any more - I didn't make any choice about being born with an ND that makes it hard to progress up the career ladder. I tried, and it broke me having to mask all the time & fighting with my own nature given personality every day. So yes, it IS to a degree down to luck if you get those higher paid jobs. I'm short, stocky & not good looking and I know I've not been given a job in the past because of my "image" not fitting the corporate high heels & pencil skirts image that suits a company's clients. Again, genetics has dealt me a bad hand combined with a severe accident that wasn't my fault dictating flat supportive shoes at all times.

There's also the fact that senior people would be the first to complain if there weren't any cleaners so the loos & kitchens were filthy, or post not delivered, or no receptionists at their offices, or the roads weren't fixed, or there was nobody to collect their rubbish. And those jobs are known to be badly paid if not minimum wage, while shielding the seniors from the less pleasant aspects of their life.

These people, and people like me doing all your administration, are mostly among those who better off people are complaining about being taxed to support. I happen not to have any dependants, so the only benefit I claim is lower level PIP (NOT due to the ND, but for physical reasons due to my accident), but I work with people like my friend who's "D"H ran off with another woman so she's supporting herself and one school age child on the princely salary of around £1.1k a year (gross) above minimum wage. Completely impossible in the South East without some assistance from the Government. And don't say "she could always move to somewhere cheaper" because the job will still need to be done, so there would just be a different person having to do it for the same salary.

People have to realise that may people in essential roles just aren't paid enough to manage on, especially if they have children. The prices rising the fastest are the kind of things nobody can do without like food, housing & transport costs. If everyone in that situation even had the natural ability (intelligence and personality) to be able to move into a higher paid job someone would still have to do the lower paid role they've vacated, so the problem is just shifted to a different person.