Are other full-time working families finding there is nothing left?

[fatface001]

Alarm went off at 5:30 this morning, then an hour stood on a packed train into London for the commute. We are a normal family: one child and two full-time jobs. I’ve always enjoyed working and have always worked hard, and I don’t mind that at all — but I do expect that full-time work should still mean there’s something left at the end of the month for a normal life.

But that really doesn’t feel like the case anymore.

There’s nothing left at the end of the month. Everything has been stripped back, all non-essentials have gone, and even basic things around the house are being put off or done ourselves because there isn’t spare money for trades. It’s just constant cutting back.

What’s hard is that we’re both working really long hours and doing everything we’re “supposed” to do, but it still feels like we’re going backwards rather than getting ahead.

When I hear talk about “those with the broadest shoulders” contributing more, I honestly don’t recognise it anymore in real life. It doesn’t feel like anyone in our position has anything left to give — it feels like the pressure is entirely on ordinary working households just to stand still.

I’m not looking for luxuries — just the sense that working still gives you a bit of breathing room. Right now it doesn’t feel like that at all.

Is anyone else feeling the same?

This is a correct reading of the situation - directors and shareholders pay has sky rocketed.. workers pay has been kept the same. It’s all deliberate.. I think the Tory ‘austerity’ played into this very well and made everyone think we are all having to cut back when actually it’s really just a way to keep people’s pay low whilst the spare money is syphoned off into the pockets of a few.

People slag off a labour government and Europe, but both of these things would have helped hold this at bay and we wouldn’t have been where we are today. Brexit was like the cherry on the cake allowing the ultra rich and companies to erode peoples’ employment rights (amongst other things) again slowly continuing this trend of low wages, poor employment rights and general less fair-share of profits.

My salary has gone up but I’m paying more in tax so my take home pay has gone down. I work f/t and earn £50k a year but I’m honestly not sure how I’ll cope in a couple of years when I no longer get child support from my ex. I doubt very much my kids will leave home until mid 20s and I’ll still need to help support them through uni. I guess I’ll just have to cut out everything but the absolute basics. How depressing.

The way tax works is that’s impossible for your take home pay to have gone down solely because of tax at a 50k level (slightly different for a specific band of earnings between 100-125k).

You will be paying more tax than you did before but that’s because you’re earning more - you will not be taking home less because of tax.

I think sometimes being a higher earner brings higher bills, some examples are:
Needing to live in a major city like London to have access to such well paid jobs which is much more expensive
Needing two reliable cars because there is no wiggle room to be late due to car troubles when a large team rely on you.
Needing more robust childcare eg nanny because you need to leave/ return after the wraparound club start and finish times and there is no flex when you are senior
Paying for professional membership/ high levels of student loans from training
Having to source quick and easy food because you work longer hours.
Paying for taxis for teens to get to activities etc because you are still at work.

Don't get me wrong, it's still better to be higher paid of course, but depending on what you are doing to earn that you can end up spending a lot on supporting your career, particularly in a daily where both parents have 'big' jobs.

Or not even those things. We moved out of London, the train travel for two of us is over £700 a month. Mortgage is still high as the commuter towns are expensive. Nursery costs went up overnight to fund the NI increase and funded hours to well over £5k a month for two children. As we don’t receive the funded hours. Annoyingly they put up the ‘sundries’ charges also for nappies and wipes, even though we used cloth nappies, to try and recoup some of the funded hours costs.

My point was we don't spend 44% of all tax generated on benefits (including pension) We spend around 22%
That 22% is split into 55% pensions 44% other benefits ( this 44% includes sickness. Housing, out of work etc)
The unemployment part of that is very low, if you read the link

A pension isn’t a benefit. It’s something you pay into and get back. Because of the bootstrap problem the state pension doesn’t work like a private one where money was saved and invested before people claimed

but the principle is the same. If you pay into it you are entitled to it.

and we should try to keep it that way - what is advancing humanity, labour saving technology , if we still expect people to work till they die?

That's exactly how some benefits work too though, eg contributions based ESA and JSA.

Is it not based on a "stamp"?

I mean, people who are "paying in" to their state pension are not paying in anything for themselves. They are paying the into the pensions of the people who are claiming state pension right now.
People seem to wrongly claim that paying into their state pension is some sort of savings account that they get back when they retire. A lot of people would have not paid in enough anyway. But it does not work that way.

Someone on benefits gets their NI stamp despite not actually paying in anything, which also counts towards your state pension. This has to happen, otherwise disabled people will get to retirement age and have no income at all.

What made you choose to have such a long commute?

“We can afford to save each month” How about those people you’re talking about don’t save each month and actually spend what they actually earn on actually living. You know what most people do.

Mind you what about all the women that stayed at home with their children and have never worked since and who are now pensioners. They wouldn't have contributed at all. I bet there will be pensioners like that.

I can never understand the vitriol towards pensioners and largesse towards benefits claimants on MN.
We never know what's round the corner for us, WE might be benefits claimants one day, so the rhetoric goes.
Yet the one demographic we will all be - hopefully - is pensioners.
I wonder if today's 30 somethings will be happy to have their income so derided when THEY are pensioners?

Both of which last 6 months.

Yes, my gran was one. She only worked in her early 20s, raised her kids then ended up being a carer for my grandad who became disabled.
She was on Pension Credit.

Years ago, it was common for women to leave work once they got married.

It was common for them to be forced to.
Does your grandma know you think she's a sponger?

Sponger? I never said she was and I do not think anyone is. You used that word, not me.
I guess I could get a Ouji board out and ask her.

It’s caused by that generation. The people who were fully adult and able to change events in the 80s and 90s, and used their power and agency to enable the sell off of public property, council houses and services. Many did very well out of it and all gained from the cheaper housing of the time. Very few seem able to acknowledge how much things have changed. Many seem unaware of how much things have changed. Many seem to sit around making up hard luck stories from their youth which was no worse than mine and think that’s an excuse to exploit everyone younger through a rentier society.

It does bother me that my generation (I’m 50) is likely to cop the burden of hate for the elderly, I’m already seeing and hearing comments from the young who, equally unaware of dates and change, seem not to understand that my generation was the first to be hit by wage/ house price disconnect - and in many ways, hit the worst, and think we’re the same as the baby boomers. We get the load from both sides, financial and dislike.

At some point it will be acknowledged that the first of generation rent is hitting their much later retirement, probably with reduced lifespans.

What all of them? Don't be ridiculous.
Never voted for Thatcher. Never voted for any of it. The majority of my generation of the early 60s didn't. Those who voted Tory were our parents.
But hey, all that matters is that you, who have reaped ALL the same benefits of the rising market, plus historical low interest rates of the past 25 years, might cop some hostility. My heart bleeds.

It wasn’t only common, in a lot of cases it was compulsory. The employers thought if you got married you had a man “looking after you”, so women got the sack.😬.

Now people on here are blaming them for it.

Benefits of rising prices, when I’ve clearly said I was one of the first of generation rent? Such a good advert for that generation.

also there was no child care , nurseries wrap around care or childminders subsidised or otherwise even if women of that generation wanted to work. If you had kids you had to look after them yourself

Not true - I've been on contributions based ESA for 5 years.

Not strictly true , I had a childminder from 1983 to 1987 - but it was less formalised and certainly no contributions .

My husband was born in 1969 and his mother went to work while he went to a neighbour