I sold a magazine today on ebay for 8 quid, including postage. It paid for for dinner. Spent the week working at tree surgery, out of the house at 6am and back at 7.30 pm after a 2 hour commute each way. £50 quid a day. My missus does 2 days a week in the local post office for minimum wage, and we spend the rest of our free time buying things to sell at the local car boot sales. And I read a whinge in the Independent about a nurse on 26 grand a year who says she needs to go to foodbanks. I’ve not bought any music for two years, we think music is great but grub is better.
We are lucky to live in such a great country. Not sure what this post is about to be honest.
Rock and roll.
The nurse isn’t your enemy, though, Vim.
26 grand isn’t a good wage. I earn more than that and I’ve spent a large part of the school holiday selling cds, books, magazines, toys – pretty much anything on eBay and Music Magpie trying to avoid having to sell the house I live in with my son. Times are tight and you have my sympathy, but the nurse isn’t the enemy.
£26k for a single person equates to a monthly take-home of £1,740 to the nearest tenner (with normal tax allowance, no pension or other deductions etc). Depending on where you live this could be more than enough or not.
In London, a studio flat somewhere like Croydon for example would cost you around £720 a month for starters, then there would be council tax on top of that which even in a piddly wee studio flat (and with 25% off for living on your own) would come to another £60-£65 per calendar month over 12 months.
If you were working in central London and bought a season ticket on the train to get to Victoria, this would cost you at least £126/month.
So to get a very basic and not very extensive roof over your head in one of Greater London’s more affordable postcodes, plus pay the council tax, plus commute to work you’re forking out over £900/month leaving just under £840/month for everything else. I’d agree with you that this certainly isn’t food bank territory but it doesn’t involve variables like family, bigger accommodation, childcare, paying back a student loan or whatever.
Basic message: you could live in a shithole like Croydon, earn a healthy £26k/year, have a tiny studio flat and commute up to London for work – this would eat up more than 50% of your monthly net wage before you even bought a Balanced For You meal-for-one at your local M&S.
Truly sad and depressing. I remember the era mid 80s – early 90s when you really could take a a chance, move to London on the then equivalent of a month’s rent upfront, nice room/bedsit, rent oncea month in advance /deposit and £200 or so to keep you going for a month until you found work. Fine memories form a world long ago.
Old git alert: I felt I could afford to move to London when my weekly wage went up from £10 to £12. Rent was £5, which meant I had a whole £5+ after tax to spend on beer, fags, dope, vinyl, all-nighters at Middle Earth and tins of sardines. In retrospect I have no idea how I managed it.
At the rate I’m going, she’s my saviour. No, she’s not my enemy. I know who the enemy is.
Keep your chin up mate – hope better times are on their way 🙂
Sounds really tough, Vim. Hope you get a few lucky breaks soon.
Sending you some good vibes from Stockholm. A load of bloody use they’ll do, I know. But maybe knowing that people are rooting for you helps in some small way.
Jeez – wish you and Mrs Fuego all the very best.
I am saddened as I am surprised as I gathered from your previous posts you are in the legal profession?
The average salary in the UK is apparently just over £26,000 pa according to the ONS.
PS. The actual average income in the UK is significantly lower than than £26,000. Just under £20,000, off the top of my head.
Average income is a completely useless measure. Age range and very high earners skew the figures such as to make them meaningless as a guide. A median is better, but to make much sense it all you really need one for each age range.
And perhaps even a geographical breakdown?
The average income in London compared to other parts of the country would give a far better overall picture.
And by property ownership. I bought my flat just before things went nuts, so all bough I have never earned anything like 26k I benefit from low interest rates and a pretty minimal monthly mortgage payment. I do all right, and I know how lucky I am. To buy the same flat now on a single wage I would have to earn 50k+, which is completely mad for such a modest property.
Theon figurespecially I gave are from the ONS. Other organisations arrive at different figures. One uses the ONS data to arrive at a median of 27,500 ( albeit based only on full time employment).
FWIW the average where I live is said to be around £19, 000. The average in the nearby county town is far higher. Partly because there are better paid, skilled jobs st thee hospital and Countyou Council, partly because more people work for the lubricant sector on national pays ales.
Yes, I’ve had recourse to a food bank more than once. My only fixed income amounts to £2,232 per annum. I live on a wing and a prayer. Without commissions and sales of my art I will end up destitute and in all likelihood dead in a ditch. Every day, every week is challenging. I don’t live. I survive by any and all means possible.
I am however blessed with the friendship of wonderful people. I have my health. I am not under the imminent threat of violence or subjugation. I know from bitter experience that death is the worst and most final thing that can befall one. I am not afraid.
Life is about the love exchanged between people not material gain which is transient and meaningless. On those terms I have been and continue to be exceedingly wealthy.
Life is not a competition.
Life is brief.
Money is not a true measure of worth.
Best thing I have read here.
It’s time for the edit function to drop it’s bastard offspring: The UP Button.
Nice one Peter.
Superb post, pencil!
**manly shoulder thump P**
My wife has chronic back pain, she will lose her £30K a year job with very little pension. This is a big blow BUT what matters is health and the love of one’s family and friends. We are lucky we have this love. Just saying and I will add that what Peter says above is as dai says ‘Best thing I have read here’. I would expect nothing less of Peter a true human in everything that is good.
Vim – believe, a word often miss-used in these times but I mean it.
Humbled yet again by the good folk on here.
26K a year should be ample to live on. If someone earning that much is reduced to food banks then I have to question how much is spent on rent or mortgage, transport, holidays, Sky/cable and mobile phone contracts. I think these days we expect to have everything whether it is affordable or not.
Those here struggling on much less have all my sympathy.
It depends on where you live and what that £26k has to provide. If you grew up in an expensive area (London being the obvious example, there’s plenty of social housing in Chelsea) and your job, family, kid’s schools are there then it’s not as simple as just moving somewhere cheaper a long way away. I sort of agree that some spending is totally discretionary but income tax, accommodation, food and getting to/from work take a big chunk out of that monthly pretax amount before paying for clothes or unexpected expenses. In rural areas, a car is pretty much essential as public transport is expensive and often sparse. A friend of mine moved from North London to rural Herefordshire and after a couple of years, they had to move nearer to a town as they couldn’t afford to live so far from schools and shops as the cost of fuel proved the final straw on their household budget. In Crouch End, they had walked everywhere and just didn’t consider the cost of transport when they were doing their sums.
Good points. I think that the main issue is property prices. I know that Herefordshire is not cheap. When some are paying 60-70% of net earnings on mortgages etc there is little left for anything else. But some things are considered necessary, when they are not.
I haven’t owned a car for 5 years and for a while was spending 3 hrs a day on the bus. I don’t pay for cable TV and the only Canadian/US TV I see comes down a $30 antenna.
It’s not really property prices. It’s more the cost of keeping the roof over your head. Though a combination of luck and lucky timing (so that’s more luck) we bought our house at a (relative to now) sensible price and our mortgage is £2.50 a month because we’ve been overpaying it for years*! I have no idea, whether our house is worth £100,000 or £200,000 because we’re not about to move so it doesn’t matter at all. If we lost our jobs tomorrow, we could remain where we are for ages because our high outgoings are all reduceable (Sky, holidays, two cars etc).
*Again, this is largely luck because we both have jobs that pay well purely because they’re technical and that’s what we happen to be good at, it’s not through especially hard work or dedication.
I was born in Chelsea and grew up around the corner.
The Worlds End estate was the finest example of urban social housing you’ll ever see. Wonderfully laid out, engaged local communities, great play areas for us and two tower blocks with river views and a SW10 postcode.
Guess which was the first estate to be subjected to questionable gerrymandering (well before Lady whatsherface and the Westminster shenanigans) and then right to buy? We couldn’t afford it and shipped out to an estate in Hounslow under the flight path in ’83.
Those flats now sell for anywhere between £600k and £3.1m.
Social housing and social cleansing politics there. Still bitter
The Guinness estates still to a wonderful job though
Peabody do a good job too. I had a girlfriend in the 90s who shared a Peabody flat behind the Young Vic in Waterloo. Not the best view from there (Waterloo East station) but brilliant location.
Economic history seems to be bearing Marx out. Remember he was talking in terms of hundred year cycles and the Russian revolution was a totally premature surprise.
Technology was meant to liberate the working man and herald the beginning of the workers paradise but we are a way from that. Rather we are still in the phase of the increasing impoverishment of the masses. The contradictions are inherently unsustainable but we may not be alive when the next cycle of economic history unfolds.
At the moment I am reading the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It was written over a hundred years ago. And yet it still chimes. A few quotes:
““you know very well that the country IS being ruined by foreigners. Just go to a shop to buy something; look round the place an ‘ you’ll see that more than ‘arf the damn stuff comes from abroad.””
“I don’t believe in the Society,’ observed Crass. ‘I can’t see as it’s right that a inferior man should ‘ave the same wages as me.”
“Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it’s not caused by machinery; it’s not caused by “over-production”; it’s not caused by drink or laziness; and it’s not caused by “over-population”. It’s caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it”
It is all depressingly familiar.
I read TRTP in the ’80’s and it was as true then as it will always be.
The OP wasn’t a bid for sympathy by the way. I used to be a lawyer, with the salary and outgoings to match, and it did my head in. I love my new life, been to 4 carboots this weekend. Bought bags of good stuff which will go well on ebay. I’ve worn a suit 3 times so far this year (2 funerals and a wedding). I’m developing some muscles and a great suntan. And….. Vim junior got her grades and is off to Cambridge. BOOOOOM!
*fist bump*
Good on ya, Vim. I decided a few years back that I’d rather be poor than do a daily job that doesn’t interest me. I now work part-time (two afternoons a week). I never have any money to spend, but I do have a good time all the time (except for two afternoons a week).
Smiles all round. My motto is quite simplistic, like me maybe and it’s this – ‘Fuck ’em’
I think people get used to a certain lifestyle, then struggle to cut their cloth. I’ve always been the sort of person who spends everything they earn. I feel quite ashamed about the sums I fritter away when working people are living on the poverty line. I think we sometimes forget how privileged we are in the grand scheme of things.
Totally agree. I’ve been tiptoeing round this thread, not quite knowing what to say, feeling guilty because I’m basically quite comfortably off. Then I remembered that the main reason I’m comfortably off (after a lifetime of trying to bring up a family and maintain a privileged middle-class lifestyle on never enough money) is that my wife died prematurely and turned out to be extremely well insured. Plus I have to my certain knowledge three life-threatening diseases (two of them probably self-inflicted), so I can hardly be said to have my health. But I live in the sun with a woman I love, having new experiences more or less daily. So swings and roundabouts, game of two halves, etc.
The world is full of unfairnesses, things that don’t make any sense. On the one hand you have this piece of shit:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/29/saudi-tourist-brings-four-gold-cars-worth-more-than-1m-to-london/
On the other you have Vim and Pencil, struggling to make ends meet while sticking to their guns. Onya mates, as they say round here.
just cock a snook and say “vulgar little man”
Nice journalistic trick. The word “gold” crops up so many times in that short piece we could be forgiven for thinking the cars are really made of gold. Alas it’s just gold coloured paint.
The four cars would be worth pretty much the same in any colour, but emphasising the vulgar “gold” aspect makes the guy seem like even more of twat, so let’s go with that.
Like mikethep I have deliberated before posting on here. Yes I earn a good salary and so does my wife. We live in a nice house in a nice town. However as we divorced our first spouses and started again later in life we will certainly have to down size when we retire which is okay I am prepared for it. Most important as Pencilsqueezer said is friendship and support of loved ones. Some of my best friends I have met on here – they know who they are and I truly value their friendship. What I will say is that I just spent 2 nights in the biggest city of excess in the USA and there were people sleeping on the streets in close proximity to people prepared to gamble $1000’s per night and to be frank that made me angry. What world are we living in??
As the song says Steve “The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Assylum”
Walked into Chateau Fuego half an hour ago, having left at 6am. Another 50 quip on the hip. Just checked ebay and I’ve sold £100 worth of stuff. So, all day in the sunshine with my oldest and best friend, working up a good sweat dragging trees to the chipper and building up my biceps, chatting with the lads and eying up the lovely young ladies in the most beautiful part of Suffolk, and home to some ice cold beers, with £150 banked. The legal profession can go and do one!
And I made my debut on Sunday in Superleague darts, which is one step below county. Bloody nervous but I did ok. They keep your averages and everything!
I’m late to this thread, Vim. You (and Gary) have my admiration. I wish I had the courage to drop out of the rat race and develop my muscles as you have. I’m sure everything would feel better, the skies more beautiful, food more delicious and love more lovely. Maybe, next year.
Good on you, Vim. I’ve been thinking a lot about simplifying recently. I think it’s the time of year – there’s something vestigial about the end of summer holidays and the impending drudgery of going back to school that still raises the question Do I really have to do this?
I’m not much bothered about wealth or luxuries but I do like being able to offer my elderly parents a bit of help, and get our medical issues sorted out effectively. Those things are worth working for. But 60 hours a week of packed trains and desk-droning which I could better spend with loved ones, just to acquire stuff I don’t need – what’s the point of that? I’m not sure I’d have the energy and entrepreneurial spirit that you do, and for me the bottom line with choosing to live a different way is that it has to be self-funding. Expecting other people to pick up the tab for your chosen lifestyle is the biggest luxury of all. I’d rather work the tills at Sainsbury’s than live on handouts. But I don’t want to work the tills at Sainsbury’s, which is why I’m on this train now…
A lot of wisdom on this thread, and I wish you, Vim, every happiness with your future life. I’m not sure I would have the guts to consciously downsize (urgh), although having undergone two redundancies in the last ten years I now earn a whole let less, and now only work part-time. I’m not badly off, have to be a lot more careful than I was with my spending but, thankfully, manage ok. Stuff can be nice, but I don’t need anymore (by the time I die, I’m sure I shall be leaving behind unread books and unlistened to records). What has given me more pleasure & will do has been my nephew’s A level results, my other nephew’s graduation and to see them do stuff, get married etc. I’m a whole lot more relaxed and don’t spend my Sundays fussing about what work horrors Monday would bring. Better to be grateful for what you have, rather than pining for something unatainable – that’s my back of the fag packet philosophy on life & work.