General Chat

Disposable income of £185.00!!!!
When my husband was paid off last year and i was in my present part time school job, they gave us £71.00 in unemployment benefit to live off. We have 2 children who were both at school then, one still is and one is in college. Prior to that 9 years ago, they said the law states that we only need £111.00 to live on per week. Thats less than five hundred pounds per month.

Where do they get these unrealisitic figures from? My oh when he signed on once told them we didnt have any money left for food after paying, our electric and oil which were essential as was our home insurance. Their answer was sorry nothing else you can get!

We were lucky that other fam memebers helped us out otherwise, we probably would have had to sell up and move. You see if you work hard, pay your taxes and manage to buy somewhere, when you lose you job, there is no help available. if you are getting tax credits when you are working, when you stop working they take it all away which is when you need help. Does not make any sense at all.

We are both working just now but all our income is swallowed up. We dont have any credit cards just mort,secure loan etc and all the usual monthly outgoings.I have to work til i am 67 to get my pension and oh doesnt have one as he was self employed for 20 years fishing and now it would cost far too much to start one at his age.

So we will carry on slogging day in day out.

It would be so nice to say, lets have a weekend break or book our holiday now and pay for it. Dream on i guess!

Florence
in the hebrides

If I had £185 disposable income a fortnight, I'd be happy!!

It seems that £185 and all the other ridiculous figures for "poverty" are based on less tnan 2/3rds of the norm. Average wage for a full time person is currently £26,500 (just over £500 per week).

I can see that, in the Home Counties, that sort of salary does sound average. And I think the majority of the population of UK lives in Beds,Hunts, Herts, Essex, Middlesex, Surrey etc.

But round here (Valleys of South Wales), £200 per week gives you an adequate income for basic needs. Rates are under £1100 a year for most houses and loads of free buses and pensioner lunch clubs.

And I am sure a lot of Genes members are thinking - £185 per week, poverty :-S :-S

I think it is what is called "relative poverty". "Absolute poverty" (which I think welfare should be dealing with) is something like £60 a week of disposable income. Those are the ones who should be targeted with food banks and welfare cash; they tend to be the ones who sit and shiver and starve and never moan about it - whilst greedy people on over £150 a week of disposable income want even more welfare to pay for their fags and their take aways.

Of course the single luvies need a minimum disposable income after housing costs of at least £185 per week to stay above the poverty line. Have you seen the price of designer clothes, 3D televisions, the latest games consoles and BMW's not to mention "Designer" recreational drugs.

Thinking back to put things into perspective my first full time (Mon~Fri 8:00am to 5:00pm) job was as a laboratory assistant in 1962. My weekly wage was £2/17/6d (£2.87.5p) plus an additional 7/6d (37.5p) if I was needed in on a Saturday morning. I had to give my mother £1.00 per week for my "Keep" (Housing costs + food + laundry) which left me with up to £2/5/-d (£2.25p) disposable income in a good week. With that I ran a motorbike (Road tax £8pa, Insurance £12pa, Petrol 4/-d (20p) per gallon). I had a girlfriend, best cinema ticket 4/6d (22.5p), Knickerbocker Glory ice cream sundae 2/6d (12.5p), 10pin bowling 7/6d (37.5p) per game. I clothed myself, Shirt, trousers, jumper all cost about £2 per item, shoes between £3~5 per pair. I drank the odd pint of beer at 1/9d (8.75p) per pint, I didn't smoke but had I done so 10 cigarettes would have cost me about 3/-d (15p).

Harold Macmillan, the then Prime Minister, told me that I had never had it so good and in truth I think that he was about right. I have certainly never again had such a high percentage (69%) of my weekly income as disposable income to be spent as I saw fit on leisure and pleasure. Money is merely a way of keeping score. When wages rise so does the cost of the items we need to buy with our wages. Do high wages make us better off? In most cases probably not.

Jonesey - I can remember those sort of prices - but how times have changed :-(

I actually don't think, that in this day and age, the figure of £185 per week is that far away from what is needed for a single person to maintain a reasonably basic standard of life. Below is what I would need to exist without any benefits, the figures are average weekly amounts. My rent is for a local housing association studio flat in Outer London and it consists of only one room with a separate kitchen and bathroom. I would add that the average rent in the private sector for a basic one bedroom flat where I live is from £150 to £175 per week.

I do not consider any of my expenditure on the outgoings I have listed as being extravagant or a luxury. If it were not for some help with my rent, council tax, and a very small private pension of just under £25 per week - I would not be able to afford a telephone, broad band, or any other so called luxury.

Rent £100.00
Council Tax £ 20.00
Gas £ 7.50
Electricity £ 5.00
Water £ 2.50
Food £ 28.00
Toiletries £ 2.70
Clothes etc £ 2.50
Insurance £ 3.00
TV Licence £ 2.80
Travel £ 3.00

Total £177.00

Money means a lot when you don’t have much.

OFITG. That list is right approximately.. But £185 a week for Rowntree poverty excludes housing costs - so you will have to spend another £120 a week. Enough for ciggies, pictures, lottery, charity donations, pizza and MacDonalds, and a host of other essentials.

And don't forget a large box of Rowntree chocolates every day. That will add £35 a week to your budget. :-D :-D

I do believe that there is a cost of living problem, with many people struggling to make ends meet, as many are on the minimum wage, the old slogan of a fair day's pay for a fair day's work is only a dream for many.

The current minimum wage for those individuals 21 and over is £6.31 per hour and for those 18 to 20 it is £5.03 per hour, if you are lucky enough to work a minimum of 35 hours per week, your take home pay before tax and deductions would be £220.65 and £176.05 respectively. I say if you are lucky enough because many do not get the opportunity to work 35 hours per week.

Many argue on the one hand that wages need to rise to allow people to have a reasonable standard of living- on the other hand many argue that if wages rise jobs will be lost or prices will go up - so how do we solve the problem.

The problem as I see it is, that since the deregulation of the financial markets which started in the early 1980's, to much emphasis and resources have been directed to creating growth in the financial & service sectors, something which has been pursued since the early 1980's by governments of all persuasions, not enough has been invested in other areas such as construction and manufacturing.

In my view, unless drastic measures are taken to re-balance the economy, the number of low paid jobs will continue to rise and this will result in more individuals seeking help from the benefit system, that will cause serious problems to any government plans for reducing the cost of benefits, albeit governments, at the risk of alienating large numbers of voters, could continue with their plans and carry on regardless.

As I have said before, an economy built on low wages, high house prices, and personal debt, will not solve the problems that many are facing today. One thing I believe should be done, is that instead of spending billions of pounds on the HS2 rail project, they should spend the money on a massive house building programme as that will not only create jobs it will create demand for many products from bricks and cement to household goods and furnishings.

I had a joke badge years ago and on it was "my take home pay wouldn't even take me home". I think I should have kept it to wear now ;-)

Dear IFITG despite legends to the contrary the UK has never had an economy focused on manufactured goods except for a brief 50 years in the C19.

Since the invention of Lloyds, funny money and the Bank of England etc the principal source of income for the UK has been banking finance and arbitrage. Next one up is the media industry from computer games to movies and sport. So far as large scale manufacturing survives it is pretty high tech eg BA, modern car plant, Rolls Roycs, bio-tech etc.

There are lots and lots and lots of well paid jobs. The big problem is that there are not lots and lots of highly skilled people waiting to fill them nor lots and lots of young people with the essential qualifications.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDDswGsJ60

The sad fact is that since the 1970s UK state eduction has for the most part been mediocre at best producing for the most part poor to mediocre finished product. This applies from primary schools to university. Sure the top 10% is very good and the next 20% just about ok ... that still leaves a lot of the iceberg below water level.

From the employer's perspective the fear and hatred of mathematics is the number one evil and the inability to speak, write and use English number two. How many people on this list have A-level maths ( which is not all that difficult) ?

Employing young people has the same challenges as for a football manager looking for entrants to his academy. Spot the ones with potential while hoping that previous tuition has not spoiled the product, resign yourself to 9 in 10 not meeting the grade and move on. That's why recruiting ready to foreigners is so attractive from the Premier League downwards.

Nearly all of our leading politicians are innumerate and unable to speak English preferring mumb-jumbo and snake oil. Just like young would be toilers they also dislike showing up for work on time especially if it means on time or working late. I doubt if anything much will change.

Hence the boggling scale of school fees or the high prices of houses within catchment area of a decent state school and of course the vast number of people on low wages.

A lot of people with no special skills have been caught out by the rapidly shrinking demand for low to middle level managers and junior bureaucrats and administrators whether in the public or private sector. The downward trend is largely due to modern IT technology.

Over the past year the IT business has picked up quite a bit. Pay is also up sharply. I was going to post current daily rates for software engineers with 3-5 yrs experience but on second thought maybe not. All I can say is buy yr young relative a RaspberryPi and encourage them to use it.

John I knew we had got caught with high interest mortgage rates early in 1980 as we had just moved but 22%?

Checked with OH and he said 14%+ - googled and in 1982 was in the 15% - 15.50% range.

You may well have, we thought ours was bad enough.