Reminder that we pay the government taxes partly to either not let things get this bad or to do something about it - they haven't really been up to a whole lot have they.
Nepotism:
> the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives, friends, or associates, especially by giving them jobs.
On his wife:
>She is the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, a founder of the Indian multinational IT company Infosys, and Sudha Murty. She holds a 0.93 per cent stake in Infosys along with shares in several other British businesses.
On why I think so
>Rishi Sunak's wife's firm Infosys received 50% boost in public sector invoices in 2023
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/akshata-murty-infosys-contracts/
Why do you need a "trade deal" for it though?
Couldn't you just strong arm the Health Secretary into accepting whatever Infosys' is to run the NHS' systems?
That way you don't need to worry about stuff like what farmers, fishers, whisky distillers, retailers etc on both sides want.
Parliament is dissolving today, as of tomorrow we’ll no longer have any MPs so there’s not much the government can do seeing as there won’t be one in a couple of hours.
edit: Oops, it’s already dissolved. Happened a minute after midnight today.
I'm sure they're signing supply contracts to their friends/families companies as we speak.
*So you'll supply us with....8 loafs of bread. How much will that be? 2 mil? Let's make that a monthly contract for the next 80 years, that should see 3 generations of my family looked after.*
Got my dates wrong, parliament already dissolved a minute after midnight today, meaning any contracts they’re signing won’t be government ones.
Well apart from the IOU’s labours signing and will enact once they get in.
In ten years time the country will be broke from trying to pay off millions of boomers cashing out their impossibly cushy pensions. By the time the Tories get back into power we'll be back to a barter economy and getting paid in food.
Lowest state pension will increase by annually is 2.5%
BOE target inflation is 2%
So even if everything is working perfectly and there are no issues, pensions will still rise. And remember, they're paid for by taxing current working people.
It's just not sustainable to have pensions increase in real terms indefinitely
I think NI needs to be abolished and income tax reformed to compensate. A lot of benefits for richer pensioners need to be withdrawn as well.
Because those that are on *just* a state pension are in poverty, it's not generous if that's all you have.
What I always find fun is looking on past stats and the kinds of conditions these same boomers were happy to inflict on the generation(s) before them. Pensioner poverty was the norm, OAPs were one of the biggest users of the very few food banks we had, whole charities set up to support folks who could barely afford to keep their homes warm and would simply freeze to death in their thousands every winter.
Now its the boomers turn, a solid quarter of them and rising are millionaires, they get a raft of benefits on top of generous pensions that no one under the age of 50 has a hope in hell of getting for themselves. They have enjoyed ***such*** an easy existence by any reasonable comparison, yet they seem the absolute worst bunch for *endless* complaining about how they had it so hard and are so absolutely deserving of all this good stuff that comes their way.
The issue is the government has sold off so many assets eg council houses that problems are extremely expensive to solve. Now we have to pay market rate to property owners to house those in need of social housing which eats a lot of money.
See water companies, post office, rail and train builders etc.
For the short gain of a bit of revenue from the sale we now pay far more for worse services. The long term fix is to reverse the asset loss
The second issue is that Cameron & Osbourne's Austerity cuts to departments were enacted so quickly and So severely, that there was no nuance to the cuts. This left departments either running severely inefficiently or not functioning whatsoever and they had to hire Independent contractors to ensure the departments could deliver on what they were supposed to deliver. so Ironically Austerity made the running of government departments less cost efficient than before.
we are giving an ever increasing proportion of our salaries to the government in taxes for an ever decreasing quality of services.
I also think taxation needs to be looked at.
We used to have a working class, middle class etc.
Now we have the class of people that generate the majority of their income from work and the class that generates their income from owning assets. The second group is massively under taxed
> We used to have a working class, middle class etc.
>Now we have the class of people that generate the majority of their income from work and the class that generates their income from owning assets.
No we actually always had that, we just pretended we didnt
>The long term fix is to reverse the asset loss
Only for the Tories to come back and say (re)nationalisation was too expensive and sell it all off again.
It was depressing watching that raft of inquiries going on last year. You got the very distinct impression none of the Tory ministers actually understand what the role of their various jobs actually was and seemed somewhat taken aback and defensive about the concept of them being expected to do something/anything that wasn't just making banal PR statements to a TV camera.
We pay the government taxes because they take it from us before we've been paid. They do it to control inflation. They don't need the money, they can make as much of it as they need to. We do all the work, they don't do anything. When they spend money it is to allow us to help one another. If they didn't tax us, we wouldn't need money.
> Reminder that we pay the government taxes partly to either not let things get this bad or to do something about it - they haven't really been up to a whole lot have they.
Isn't the problem with inflation in the first place was people had too much money? It was covid stimulus, furlough, moratoriums, and everyone just had to much and now it is the waiting game for that tide to slowly come down.
Good luck! Being prepared is important, but for what it's worth, self-care is the most important thing the day before and morning of! Make sure you get enough rest, eat enough food, drink enough water, so you're physically sharp as can be.
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you all this, but thought I'd just send some support and positivity your way, random stranger!
Thanks! It's public sector and I was there last week for another position. So I know what I did wrong that time lol. Bloody stupid question format, not getting a better understanding of a terribly written question and then answering wrongly because of that lol.
For some reason the same day they send interviews out they also take down the job notice and all the supporting stuff so I'm trying to get hold of that now. Would be useful since I've applied all over. Need to get that waybackmachine extension to stop this.
Positivity is always useful to spread about. Have a good one 👍
In our public sector interviews we do STAR. Situation, Task, Action, Resolution.
Because we score on a 1-4 scale it's important that you squeeze every point out of it to get the role.
Yeh I had feedback after and they basically said that one question failed it for me. Would have been good if the question made more sense to begin with. After I'd asked them to repeat it once I ended up rambling through it since I had no idea what they were after. When explained I had a very good example to use but asking what the hell they were on about in the interview didn't seem like a good idea atthe time. Ah well this pays more anyway.
I hate this framing, I really think it's almost discriminatory becuse it assumes your mind works a certain way and puts basically more marks on *how* you say something than *what* you're actually describing having done.
I got a new job! Going from really flexible boss 2 days wfh to supervising 8 staff at my old paygrade, all for the princely sum of 800 quid more a year! NHS! Mixed feelings
Same, friend. After setting up money for my rent and the food to a virtual pot, I have barely anything left each week for myself. I also got an interview on Thursday, it has to go well. :(
Wish you luck with yours.
Thanks for asking! Just finished up half hour ago. Seemed to go well and we even went over the hour allocated. Not sure that was from me rambling on too long or being detailed. Definitely seemed to be positive body language feedback when I mentioned certain points very specific to that team versus a generalist in the same industry. Absolutely none of the questions I expected came up but there we are lol. Should find out soon, this week I think.
Swear job hunting is worse than any job I've had and I've done dish pit for extremely busy places solo. Always full of dread for the bloody things then the job itself is way easier than the interview, at least since I tried to increase my earnings above dish pit wages.
"Almost half of people are dipping into their savings"
Then there those that aren't dipping in to Savings, like me.
So, lots of people have savings, if that answers your question.
I don't have savings. I can't even afford to pay into my pension due to the net financial risk that'll put me in with regards to rent + utilities, not to mention essentials.
I imagine that latter point is going to crop up in the news sooner or later as a wider issue.
Yeah, and that’s why the young are getting their financial arseholes gaped… to fund a generation of Boomers who thought the same and now want taxpayers to bail them out of their own stupidity.
Australia has the correct model. A high mandatory contribution from worker and employer. Guess which country won’t have a pension crisis in 20 years time, and who will.
You shouldn’t have a choice. I view it like a mandatory economic seatbelt.
The boomers also voted to keep their parents generation poor when they were pensioners, so the boomers paid even less tax.
They made the very deliberate political and moral choice of making the generation who fought in the war poor when they were old. Their own parents.
Then the boomers decided to make their own children and grandchildren poor to make them comfortable.
Again, it’s pension crisis in 20 years time versus cost of living crisis now. It’s a lovely sentiment to force people to put more into their pension but you clearly have no idea how many people are *literally* living on or below the breadline today.
That’s not always possible for people at certain times of life (eg when kids are little). What there needs to be is ways of people having flexibility in pension saving and more knowledge about how it works. Perhaps information on ‘if you can’t do it now, here’s how to do it later’.
People never do it later though. It’s always can kicking.
People shouldn’t have a choice with the forecasted demographic issues we have. It is always possible, because many countries make it mandatory and don’t have any issues.
That’s what state pension is supposed to be for. Whether it’s there or not in the future who knows but at the moment that’s how it’s supposed to work and what people are paying for.
Private pension (or employer pension if you are employed rather than self employed) is a separate thing. I do think there should be better options.
No, it isnt. The state pension is meant to be a base line safety net to make sure you don’t starve to death. It’s meant to supplement your own private investments you’ve made over you 30-50 years of working by putting a little bit of today into a big tomorrow.
Why are you so willing to hike taxes on your kids and grandkids down the line so you don’t have to give up a poxy 5% of gross pay, which won’t even be 5% because you get tax relief back on ot.
Yes. That’s right. The mandatory state pension is the tax that people pay for to ensure they’ve got the basics for when they are older.
It’s not meant to supplement a private pension. Otherwise it would be means tested. Private pensions supplement state pension.
I pay a lot more than 5% tax.
As people go through life their costs change. Sometimes they can afford to save extra and sometimes they can’t. The system needs to be flexible for that.
Can't you understand why, though, with the cost of greed going up, childcare is a joke. What's the population of oz compared to here? The way things are going, not many people are going to be living to 67. With expensive food and energy prices, private health care looks like it's coming if we like it or not.
Censuswide surveyed 2,010 UK adults between May 10-13
I believe the census was on behalf of compare the market
I believe the general polling that talks about people have no savings the question is enough savings to cover a month. So a lot of people might be dipping into their under 1 months of savings.
That's what happens when you squeeze ordinary people's share of the national wealth.
State workers are MASSIVELY poorer than they were 14 years ago. That's 18% of the population with their disposable income slashed. Which of course means they aren't spending in the wider economy.
And, by paying shit wages to nurses, civil servants, police etc. they normalise low wages across the wider economy. If these previously well respected professions are paid buttons, why would corporations do any different? They don't even have to have competitive wages to lure workers.
>And, by paying shit wages to nurses, civil servants, police etc. they normalise low wages across the wider economy.
This is such an under-appreciated point in this country. Public employees by and large set a kind of baseline for skilled professional workers. We seem to have really lost sight of this much to our detriment.
Just googled average savings UK and got this.
How much on average do people have in savings? As of January 2024, a survey from Finder has revealed that the average UK adult has £11,185 in savings. Despite this about 46% of people have £1000 or less in savings and 25% have £200 or less.
Surely this can't be right?
The wonders of using averages to paint a picture. A small number of people have a high amount of savings, which is bringing the average up.
The real picture is more grim, as you are describing and points towards the massive wealth inequality problem we have.
It's quite easy to accumulate savings if you do not have market-rate housing costs.
Plenty of people have either paid off their mortgage, or have a mortgage which hasn't risen much over the past decade because they moved into a lower-LTV bracket when remortgaging.
Then there are people who live with their family, who do not charge them any monetary housing costs but instead expect payment in kind (i.e. cooking, cleaning, DIY, maintenance).
And then there are people who made big savings by being able to work-from-home post-pandemic: they no longer have any significant transport costs. They probably cook every meal themselves so are no longer dependent on eating out or takeaways. And they are no longer so tired so can do alot of the domestic cleaning, maintenance or gardening themselves rather than paying someone else to do it for them.
Almost 50% but it won’t stop John the clown posting on Reddit that he’s got 70k a month salary and hasn’t had to dip into savings yet so it “clearly isn’t everyone struggling”.
Yes, well done John.
I'm on £95k and it's been really difficult to manage. A few years ago I was on £80k and went on QuestionTime to tell the government and shadow ministers present just how hard done by people at my level are. Some socialist even started claiming that £80k was a top 5% salary!
Easy enough to find the survey: https://www.finance-monthly.com/2024/01/the-average-savings-based-on-your-age/
If you want to throw in assets then it's only going to skew the results even more because the older you are the more likely you are to own property. If you're under 40 you're going to be subsidising boomer pensions for the next few decades until the country starts printing money.
My savings have stopped , IV not had to dip yet but IV been unable to grow then , I try every month but it just keeps coming back out , feels like everything has gone up 50% other than my wages
And some would still advocate for higher taxes on the middle class. Unless you’re earning an insignificant amount under the tax threshold or are really good at money laundering there is absolutely no reason to live and work in this country anymore.
Yup, feel like giving up saving due to the fact it's a matter of putting away any "fun money" leaving me at home more than I'd like.
As much as it helps justify the outrageous rent increases I've had in the past 24 months, I've found myself staying home, spending the remaining bits of money on unhealthy habits to make the stay at home nights bareable. (Which I'm now trying my best to change)
Find myself hitting the point where I'm budgeting for 5 week months because money just disappears it seems. Genuinely feels like just saving a deposit to get out of the rental rat race as a single person is going to cost me my sanity, just so I'm not paying half my wage to pay for someone else's.
Renting isnt affordable neither is mortgage. what else is affordable? not even being in poverty is affordable now a days. its almost like they want us to die but even then we cannot die as its illegal. if hell is real, i strongly believe Earth is the hell and government are the 9 circles of hell.
Genuinely considering becoming a vagabond. Don’t want to be part of this shit culture or society anymore. What the fuck are the government taking all my money for? Where is it going?
I’m enraged, this country is shit, the people in charge are shit. I’m not proud to be British in the slightest. Fucking hate this place.
Sorry I just had to vent.
Savings? People still have savings? Wiped all mine out and I did have a fair bit! Fucking tories I hate them! As for that wet lettuce won’t use her name she should crawl under a rock and die.
I've been living on my savings since October last year. I initially didn't claim any benefits, because I thought I'd get a job fairly quickly (I'm a software developer). I am currently claiming the only benefit I can claim - JSA of £90 a week, paid fortnightly. Because I have savings, I'm not eligible for any other help, and pay full rent and council tax.
By design. It isn't coincidence that the government can find a way to lower inflation the month before their General Election.
Reality is that too much money was given out during COVID, and they want it back. Your savings that you built up over COVID weren't savings. They were stacks of borrowed cash that has been taken back by a lack of action on energy prices.
To be fair, this is all I want to do; dip into savings for a monthly amount until I die. I certainly do not want to paying for the cost of living out of indentured servitude from a wank stain owner employer
I am one of those people.
I work full-time and I’m a semi-pro musician. I was getting by a few years ago but not now - things have gone up so much that my savings have been obliterated.
This is all part of the plan. Make everything so expensive and restrict pay rises to the point that people are forced to dip into their savings. They hate the fact that people have all this money sitting around, instead of it being in their company accounts.
Reminder that we pay the government taxes partly to either not let things get this bad or to do something about it - they haven't really been up to a whole lot have they.
Well the government have got another month to finish plundering the cupboard until they're turfed out.
I’m surprised not many people are calling out sunak on his “trade deal” to India that involves his wife’s company.
Infosys - I agree it stinks of nepotism and I don’t care how they dress it up. We are being robbed.
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Nepotism: > the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives, friends, or associates, especially by giving them jobs. On his wife: >She is the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, a founder of the Indian multinational IT company Infosys, and Sudha Murty. She holds a 0.93 per cent stake in Infosys along with shares in several other British businesses. On why I think so >Rishi Sunak's wife's firm Infosys received 50% boost in public sector invoices in 2023 https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/akshata-murty-infosys-contracts/
lots of people have been but media arent.
Why do you need a "trade deal" for it though? Couldn't you just strong arm the Health Secretary into accepting whatever Infosys' is to run the NHS' systems? That way you don't need to worry about stuff like what farmers, fishers, whisky distillers, retailers etc on both sides want.
Because a trade deal embeds it into UK law and international law. That way when you are no longer in power your successors can't change it.
Parliament is dissolving today, as of tomorrow we’ll no longer have any MPs so there’s not much the government can do seeing as there won’t be one in a couple of hours. edit: Oops, it’s already dissolved. Happened a minute after midnight today.
I'm sure they're signing supply contracts to their friends/families companies as we speak. *So you'll supply us with....8 loafs of bread. How much will that be? 2 mil? Let's make that a monthly contract for the next 80 years, that should see 3 generations of my family looked after.*
I actually read this in Sunak’s smug voice
Got my dates wrong, parliament already dissolved a minute after midnight today, meaning any contracts they’re signing won’t be government ones. Well apart from the IOU’s labours signing and will enact once they get in.
Then Labour will have 10 years of using our money to fill it back up so that the Tories can get back in and do it all again.
In ten years time the country will be broke from trying to pay off millions of boomers cashing out their impossibly cushy pensions. By the time the Tories get back into power we'll be back to a barter economy and getting paid in food.
Lowest state pension will increase by annually is 2.5% BOE target inflation is 2% So even if everything is working perfectly and there are no issues, pensions will still rise. And remember, they're paid for by taxing current working people. It's just not sustainable to have pensions increase in real terms indefinitely
Oh well, I'm sure the answer is to tax what's left of the middle class into oblivion so we'll be a nation of serfs and feudal lords.
I think NI needs to be abolished and income tax reformed to compensate. A lot of benefits for richer pensioners need to be withdrawn as well. Because those that are on *just* a state pension are in poverty, it's not generous if that's all you have.
What I always find fun is looking on past stats and the kinds of conditions these same boomers were happy to inflict on the generation(s) before them. Pensioner poverty was the norm, OAPs were one of the biggest users of the very few food banks we had, whole charities set up to support folks who could barely afford to keep their homes warm and would simply freeze to death in their thousands every winter. Now its the boomers turn, a solid quarter of them and rising are millionaires, they get a raft of benefits on top of generous pensions that no one under the age of 50 has a hope in hell of getting for themselves. They have enjoyed ***such*** an easy existence by any reasonable comparison, yet they seem the absolute worst bunch for *endless* complaining about how they had it so hard and are so absolutely deserving of all this good stuff that comes their way.
The issue is the government has sold off so many assets eg council houses that problems are extremely expensive to solve. Now we have to pay market rate to property owners to house those in need of social housing which eats a lot of money. See water companies, post office, rail and train builders etc. For the short gain of a bit of revenue from the sale we now pay far more for worse services. The long term fix is to reverse the asset loss
The second issue is that Cameron & Osbourne's Austerity cuts to departments were enacted so quickly and So severely, that there was no nuance to the cuts. This left departments either running severely inefficiently or not functioning whatsoever and they had to hire Independent contractors to ensure the departments could deliver on what they were supposed to deliver. so Ironically Austerity made the running of government departments less cost efficient than before. we are giving an ever increasing proportion of our salaries to the government in taxes for an ever decreasing quality of services.
I also think taxation needs to be looked at. We used to have a working class, middle class etc. Now we have the class of people that generate the majority of their income from work and the class that generates their income from owning assets. The second group is massively under taxed
> We used to have a working class, middle class etc. >Now we have the class of people that generate the majority of their income from work and the class that generates their income from owning assets. No we actually always had that, we just pretended we didnt
>The long term fix is to reverse the asset loss Only for the Tories to come back and say (re)nationalisation was too expensive and sell it all off again.
Well yes. But that's democracy, and maybe the boomers will have stopped voting by then...for some reason
It's election time, couldn't care less about anything else as soon as it was announced.
It was depressing watching that raft of inquiries going on last year. You got the very distinct impression none of the Tory ministers actually understand what the role of their various jobs actually was and seemed somewhat taken aback and defensive about the concept of them being expected to do something/anything that wasn't just making banal PR statements to a TV camera.
I think you'll find this government view taxes as a means of pillaging the country or handing out juicy contracts to their incompetent mates.
We pay the government taxes because they take it from us before we've been paid. They do it to control inflation. They don't need the money, they can make as much of it as they need to. We do all the work, they don't do anything. When they spend money it is to allow us to help one another. If they didn't tax us, we wouldn't need money.
Taxes with our money that's losing value by the hour.
> Reminder that we pay the government taxes partly to either not let things get this bad or to do something about it - they haven't really been up to a whole lot have they. Isn't the problem with inflation in the first place was people had too much money? It was covid stimulus, furlough, moratoriums, and everyone just had to much and now it is the waiting game for that tide to slowly come down.
Doesn't surprise me, been doing the same. Hopefully my interview on Tuesday goes well.
Good luck! Being prepared is important, but for what it's worth, self-care is the most important thing the day before and morning of! Make sure you get enough rest, eat enough food, drink enough water, so you're physically sharp as can be. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you all this, but thought I'd just send some support and positivity your way, random stranger!
Thanks! It's public sector and I was there last week for another position. So I know what I did wrong that time lol. Bloody stupid question format, not getting a better understanding of a terribly written question and then answering wrongly because of that lol. For some reason the same day they send interviews out they also take down the job notice and all the supporting stuff so I'm trying to get hold of that now. Would be useful since I've applied all over. Need to get that waybackmachine extension to stop this. Positivity is always useful to spread about. Have a good one 👍
In our public sector interviews we do STAR. Situation, Task, Action, Resolution. Because we score on a 1-4 scale it's important that you squeeze every point out of it to get the role.
Yeh I had feedback after and they basically said that one question failed it for me. Would have been good if the question made more sense to begin with. After I'd asked them to repeat it once I ended up rambling through it since I had no idea what they were after. When explained I had a very good example to use but asking what the hell they were on about in the interview didn't seem like a good idea atthe time. Ah well this pays more anyway.
I hate this framing, I really think it's almost discriminatory becuse it assumes your mind works a certain way and puts basically more marks on *how* you say something than *what* you're actually describing having done.
Looking at civil service it's like you become a robot to get a role. Council is bad enough for this nonsense.
Sounds like they don't make it easy haha! All the best :)
I got a new job! Going from really flexible boss 2 days wfh to supervising 8 staff at my old paygrade, all for the princely sum of 800 quid more a year! NHS! Mixed feelings
Rooting for you (or however you spell that word in this context).
Cheers still trying to find the job spec unfortunately which is making preparing for it harder
Same, friend. After setting up money for my rent and the food to a virtual pot, I have barely anything left each week for myself. I also got an interview on Thursday, it has to go well. :( Wish you luck with yours.
I've got no income at all, so its savings disappearing Good luck to you too!.
I'm so sorry. Keep positive for your interview.
Good luck to you both!
Everything is crossed for you. I hope it goes well !
Good luck!!
Hey friend, how did your interview go?
Thanks for asking! Just finished up half hour ago. Seemed to go well and we even went over the hour allocated. Not sure that was from me rambling on too long or being detailed. Definitely seemed to be positive body language feedback when I mentioned certain points very specific to that team versus a generalist in the same industry. Absolutely none of the questions I expected came up but there we are lol. Should find out soon, this week I think. Swear job hunting is worse than any job I've had and I've done dish pit for extremely busy places solo. Always full of dread for the bloody things then the job itself is way easier than the interview, at least since I tried to increase my earnings above dish pit wages.
DEAR UK CITIZENS. Your government thanks you for your payments. Don't let that credit score dip! WHO THE FUCK HAVE SAVINGS
"Almost half of people are dipping into their savings" Then there those that aren't dipping in to Savings, like me. So, lots of people have savings, if that answers your question.
There's also those that couldn't afford to have savings to dip into in the first place
Exactly. I'm curious to know how that number has grown.
does my coppers mug count as savings?
Lots of people do.
I don't have any savings because everything costs so much I can't afford to save! Thanks Rishi
People I know laugh and call it credit card week...cause their whole pay check is gone after 3 weeks...lately its credit card fortnight.
I don't have savings. I can't even afford to pay into my pension due to the net financial risk that'll put me in with regards to rent + utilities, not to mention essentials. I imagine that latter point is going to crop up in the news sooner or later as a wider issue.
If you can’t afford to pay into your pension, you can afford not to even less This is why the Gov should make opt in mandatory.
Out of starve tomorrow vs starve at ~67, most people will choose the latter
Yeah, and that’s why the young are getting their financial arseholes gaped… to fund a generation of Boomers who thought the same and now want taxpayers to bail them out of their own stupidity. Australia has the correct model. A high mandatory contribution from worker and employer. Guess which country won’t have a pension crisis in 20 years time, and who will. You shouldn’t have a choice. I view it like a mandatory economic seatbelt.
The boomers also voted to keep their parents generation poor when they were pensioners, so the boomers paid even less tax. They made the very deliberate political and moral choice of making the generation who fought in the war poor when they were old. Their own parents. Then the boomers decided to make their own children and grandchildren poor to make them comfortable.
Again, it’s pension crisis in 20 years time versus cost of living crisis now. It’s a lovely sentiment to force people to put more into their pension but you clearly have no idea how many people are *literally* living on or below the breadline today.
That’s not always possible for people at certain times of life (eg when kids are little). What there needs to be is ways of people having flexibility in pension saving and more knowledge about how it works. Perhaps information on ‘if you can’t do it now, here’s how to do it later’.
People never do it later though. It’s always can kicking. People shouldn’t have a choice with the forecasted demographic issues we have. It is always possible, because many countries make it mandatory and don’t have any issues.
That’s what state pension is supposed to be for. Whether it’s there or not in the future who knows but at the moment that’s how it’s supposed to work and what people are paying for. Private pension (or employer pension if you are employed rather than self employed) is a separate thing. I do think there should be better options.
No, it isnt. The state pension is meant to be a base line safety net to make sure you don’t starve to death. It’s meant to supplement your own private investments you’ve made over you 30-50 years of working by putting a little bit of today into a big tomorrow. Why are you so willing to hike taxes on your kids and grandkids down the line so you don’t have to give up a poxy 5% of gross pay, which won’t even be 5% because you get tax relief back on ot.
Yes. That’s right. The mandatory state pension is the tax that people pay for to ensure they’ve got the basics for when they are older. It’s not meant to supplement a private pension. Otherwise it would be means tested. Private pensions supplement state pension. I pay a lot more than 5% tax. As people go through life their costs change. Sometimes they can afford to save extra and sometimes they can’t. The system needs to be flexible for that.
excuse me?
Can't you understand why, though, with the cost of greed going up, childcare is a joke. What's the population of oz compared to here? The way things are going, not many people are going to be living to 67. With expensive food and energy prices, private health care looks like it's coming if we like it or not.
I thought less than half of people had any savings. Is this half of everyone, i.e. everyone who has savings, or half of those who have savings?
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Censuswide surveyed 2,010 UK adults between May 10-13 I believe the census was on behalf of compare the market I believe the general polling that talks about people have no savings the question is enough savings to cover a month. So a lot of people might be dipping into their under 1 months of savings.
That's what happens when you squeeze ordinary people's share of the national wealth. State workers are MASSIVELY poorer than they were 14 years ago. That's 18% of the population with their disposable income slashed. Which of course means they aren't spending in the wider economy. And, by paying shit wages to nurses, civil servants, police etc. they normalise low wages across the wider economy. If these previously well respected professions are paid buttons, why would corporations do any different? They don't even have to have competitive wages to lure workers.
>And, by paying shit wages to nurses, civil servants, police etc. they normalise low wages across the wider economy. This is such an under-appreciated point in this country. Public employees by and large set a kind of baseline for skilled professional workers. We seem to have really lost sight of this much to our detriment.
All my income plus savings goes into food, rent and daycare.
What is this thing "savings" they speak of. Heard about it, never seen it
Just googled average savings UK and got this. How much on average do people have in savings? As of January 2024, a survey from Finder has revealed that the average UK adult has £11,185 in savings. Despite this about 46% of people have £1000 or less in savings and 25% have £200 or less. Surely this can't be right?
The wonders of using averages to paint a picture. A small number of people have a high amount of savings, which is bringing the average up. The real picture is more grim, as you are describing and points towards the massive wealth inequality problem we have.
It's quite easy to accumulate savings if you do not have market-rate housing costs. Plenty of people have either paid off their mortgage, or have a mortgage which hasn't risen much over the past decade because they moved into a lower-LTV bracket when remortgaging. Then there are people who live with their family, who do not charge them any monetary housing costs but instead expect payment in kind (i.e. cooking, cleaning, DIY, maintenance). And then there are people who made big savings by being able to work-from-home post-pandemic: they no longer have any significant transport costs. They probably cook every meal themselves so are no longer dependent on eating out or takeaways. And they are no longer so tired so can do alot of the domestic cleaning, maintenance or gardening themselves rather than paying someone else to do it for them.
You think that’s too high or too low?
Too high 🤣
If there are ten people and nine of them have no savings and the other has a million, the average is 100k.
I must be spending too much time on /r/UKPersonalFinance
Almost 50% but it won’t stop John the clown posting on Reddit that he’s got 70k a month salary and hasn’t had to dip into savings yet so it “clearly isn’t everyone struggling”. Yes, well done John.
I'm on £95k and it's been really difficult to manage. A few years ago I was on £80k and went on QuestionTime to tell the government and shadow ministers present just how hard done by people at my level are. Some socialist even started claiming that £80k was a top 5% salary!
Are you ok?
What savings?? I’m literally living paycheck to paycheck and even the overtime I do just about covers my costs
You posted a PC build 2 months ago, can't be that bad.
Yup and guess what? That’s sold now and moneys spent on essentials
So is the paycheck to paycheck thing recent, as in only happened in the last 2 months?
Yup, wife’s out of work due to health issues and with a kid to feed and raise and being the only bread earner, you always put your family first
7 days ago you were talking about car modifications ...
Are we working to live or just working to survive?
Convenient. Edit : bro is going through replying to loads of my old comments, when he’s got a kid to look after lolol
Finance monthly has averages per age group at: Under 25 £3,636 25-34 £3,748 35-44 £5,714 45-54 £9,402 55-73 £18,245 Above 74 £36,940
This is total bollocks. Average of what exactly? People don’t go around announcing their savings balance.
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Easy enough to find the survey: https://www.finance-monthly.com/2024/01/the-average-savings-based-on-your-age/ If you want to throw in assets then it's only going to skew the results even more because the older you are the more likely you are to own property. If you're under 40 you're going to be subsidising boomer pensions for the next few decades until the country starts printing money.
Nice if I could dip into savings and not credit card
“You guys are saving?” Im living on the breadline. Welp another 55 hour week incoming. Joke of a country.
My savings have stopped , IV not had to dip yet but IV been unable to grow then , I try every month but it just keeps coming back out , feels like everything has gone up 50% other than my wages
And some would still advocate for higher taxes on the middle class. Unless you’re earning an insignificant amount under the tax threshold or are really good at money laundering there is absolutely no reason to live and work in this country anymore.
Yup, feel like giving up saving due to the fact it's a matter of putting away any "fun money" leaving me at home more than I'd like. As much as it helps justify the outrageous rent increases I've had in the past 24 months, I've found myself staying home, spending the remaining bits of money on unhealthy habits to make the stay at home nights bareable. (Which I'm now trying my best to change) Find myself hitting the point where I'm budgeting for 5 week months because money just disappears it seems. Genuinely feels like just saving a deposit to get out of the rental rat race as a single person is going to cost me my sanity, just so I'm not paying half my wage to pay for someone else's.
i hear u, I'm in a similar situation it's crazy
Yeah and the rest don't have any savings, we're just ending each month deeper and deeper into our overdrafts.
Renting isnt affordable neither is mortgage. what else is affordable? not even being in poverty is affordable now a days. its almost like they want us to die but even then we cannot die as its illegal. if hell is real, i strongly believe Earth is the hell and government are the 9 circles of hell.
remember to pay for your funeral.
I won't be paying for my funeral, I'll be dead.
burn me to crisp or donate my body away.
The price tag on someone to exist in the UK is insane... The price to live is even worse.
Meanwhile this is going on while people work sacrifice 40 hours a week for a hell of a lot less: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/s/QnlYkT7xzy
Hahaha, what savings? The pandemic sank that ship a while ago.
Last month I took out £286.40, paid back £125.51; this month I have taken out £58.32
And the other half has no savings and is going into debt instead.
Hello from the other half that have no savings and are dipping into unsustainable debt to survive. 🙋♂️
You can't dip into savings if you don't have savings to dip into.
Genuinely considering becoming a vagabond. Don’t want to be part of this shit culture or society anymore. What the fuck are the government taking all my money for? Where is it going? I’m enraged, this country is shit, the people in charge are shit. I’m not proud to be British in the slightest. Fucking hate this place. Sorry I just had to vent.
Very true and very sad. I help people encash their retirement savings, 2/3 of the time it's cost of living
Savings? People still have savings? Wiped all mine out and I did have a fair bit! Fucking tories I hate them! As for that wet lettuce won’t use her name she should crawl under a rock and die.
Isn’t this literally the point of raising interest rates?
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Jokes on you, i dont even have savings! Credit card goes rip
I've been living on my savings since October last year. I initially didn't claim any benefits, because I thought I'd get a job fairly quickly (I'm a software developer). I am currently claiming the only benefit I can claim - JSA of £90 a week, paid fortnightly. Because I have savings, I'm not eligible for any other help, and pay full rent and council tax.
Things are harder in tech than they were but there are plenty of dev jobs out there - even if you have to take a junior position.
By design. It isn't coincidence that the government can find a way to lower inflation the month before their General Election. Reality is that too much money was given out during COVID, and they want it back. Your savings that you built up over COVID weren't savings. They were stacks of borrowed cash that has been taken back by a lack of action on energy prices.
To be fair, this is all I want to do; dip into savings for a monthly amount until I die. I certainly do not want to paying for the cost of living out of indentured servitude from a wank stain owner employer
Savings.. yes, I remember that.. long time ago now. ☹️
I am one of those people. I work full-time and I’m a semi-pro musician. I was getting by a few years ago but not now - things have gone up so much that my savings have been obliterated.
You mean those who are lucky enough to even have savings.
Savings???? What is this thing that is mentioned “SAVINGS”……. I’ve gotta try this new thing anyone know where to start grabbing this new phenomenon
Other half just picking through their neighbours garbage for dinner.
The main thing is their still is tax breaks for rich Tory’s to become even richer - let the working class call to food banks ☹️
Yes, for the last year this has been me. Only just recently started to stop doing it.
Thosexwho have any left.Many living from.payday to payday Some in continuos overdraft
This is all part of the plan. Make everything so expensive and restrict pay rises to the point that people are forced to dip into their savings. They hate the fact that people have all this money sitting around, instead of it being in their company accounts.
Based on other reports I'm surprised that 50% of people have savings to dip into.