Some of you are vultures

a11waysindebt

Walter_J wrote: »

we all charge in the region of £200 per day. And get it, even in a recession. I'm fully booked with work until September next year.

It is quite obviously what we are worth - otherwise people wouldn't pay it!

I certanly wouldnt pay it:eek:

fiveyearplan

PS the BG engineer is getting £98 for however long it takes - could be 20 minutes. I'm happy to pay it because I would rather have hot water and heating in my home. If I wasn't happy to pay then I'd learn to do it myself but my time and interests are more valuable than to learn a skill that I'm not interested in but can pay someone else to do. I'd rather spend my time doing something I enjoy.

caveman38

I would like to put things straight, so that this post stops getting personal. After all it is Xmas. Walter just asked how the threads got on to the wages of tradesmen. Although the OP was criticising the way people were celebrating the HPC, she allowed it to become personal and introduced her own plight. Her husband being a contractor plumber / gas fitter now being unemployed due to the downturn in the housing sector.
Many other aspects of her life introduced arguments as to why she should have been better prepared and others felt she had wasted money on her daughters education.
I now feel that it perhaps got a bit nasty and perhaps got sucked into that side of the argument myself.
In my own defence, I would just like to clarify that.
I now realise that perhaps figures quoted by myself and others re. tradesmens wages may not be national and people are upset if we infer that the high wages that are earned in certain areas fail to give sympathy to those that are struggling in other ones.
All I can say in summary - without being sarcastic. I think the figures quoted on http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/best-paid-jobs are pure fantasy.
Again I appreciate other may agree with them.
Where I live in the London boroughs, I know of.
London cabbies that earn £50K and not £13K, my denist who must earn £90K and not £31K, replacement window fitters who earn £80K and plumbers / gas fitters who earn £80K.
These are facts and I have not made them up to substantiate my argument. Perhaps theses guys are not on so much now, I don't know and perhaps similar tradesmen earn far less nationwide to arrive at an average salary to bear out the figures of that site.
I don't want to continue arguing about them and as such we will have agree to disagree.
In addition, I was not calling tradesmen criminals (if I recall, that is what I was accused of). I merely stated that many / most tradesmen welcomed cash in hand. We all benefit from it and I would be surprised if all of us whether householders or tradesmen had not been party to it at some time.
So, lets all be happy. I earn a good screw, and don't begrudge other one. We all know what we all know.

tesuhoha

wageslave wrote: »

I am a single parent. This time ten years ago all I had to my name was a small child and a black bag filled with our clothes.
We spent two years in a grotty rented house which no amount of bleach ever got really clean. I watered the milk, stole toilet rolls from work and saved every bloody penny I could get my hands on.
I bought an unmodernised house in a decent street and overpaid the mortgage every month. We made do with a 70's kitchen and the previous owners hideous carpets.
I didn't borrow. It took me a year to save for a new front door.
The brat and I did without whilst the whole world seemed to have money to burn.
Do I have sympathy for those who have ran themselves into debt to finance a lifestyle they neither needed nor could afford?
The quick answer is no.

I'm sorry you have had a tough life. I had left this thread but thought you deserved a reply.

I am not whinging about my lot although it may have seemed so. My husband has got a job now, not so well paid because of the times we are living in but I am very happy he's got it and very very grateful. We do go without as I too want to be debtfree and save for everything, but it takes a long time to pay off debt. No one regrets more than me the mistakes we have made. However, I'm not sorry for myself and don't expect anyone else to be.

My OP was about the plight of people losing their homes, not all of them have been foolish. They have just been unfortunate enough to lose their job and everyone is vulnerable in that way nowadays.

I got upset yesterday because of some of the nasty comments of people on this board, not because of my circumstances, but I suppose that just goes to illustrate my OP because they are just these are the people I am talking about, the ones who like to kick someone when they are down.

lynzpower

I agree with you Tes.

My personal concern ( and this is not directed to you at all) is that-

Hang on a minute the UK is in the poo-poo
We KNOW that this is a global problem
We KNOW that the banks have been trading in invisible money
we KNOW lenders act very unscupulously- eg I cant get a credit card ( tried 3 companies) any more as I told the truth when I said that I would pay off all in full every month and have significant savings. Yet we know others with poor credit histories and owe more than they make in a year are offered more than I am ( who saves 75% of salary pcm)

Why oh why are we all trying to blame the little guy? Yes of course people over borrowed BUT CANT YOU SEE THIS WAS WHAT THE GOVERNMENT ORCHASTRATED!?! The government wants every child to go to university and get used to 5 fugure debt before theyve had a full time job. The government WANTS unsustainable lending which is why the gov has bailed the banks to get them lending madly again!!

Why are we all turning inwards and kicking the weaker guy? As opposed to kicking off at those supposed to- and employed to with our money!! we point fingers at those who have worked hard, supporting thier families, and doing whatever they can to be independent from the state?!!?

If anything is going to make this recession harder than it needs to be its the great british public who instead of laying blame at the step who should be taking responsibility we point the finger at those who have fallen on hard times in a situation orchastrated by the government.

tesuhoha

caveman38 wrote: »

I would like to put things straight, so that this post stops getting personal. After all it is Xmas. Walter just asked how the threads got on to the wages of tradesmen. Although the OP was criticising the way people were celebrating the HPC, she allowed it to become personal and introduced her own plight. Her husband being a contractor plumber / gas fitter now being unemployed due to the downturn in the housing sector.
Many other aspects of her life introduced arguments as to why she should have been better prepared and others felt she had wasted money on her daughters education.
I now feel that it perhaps got a bit nasty and perhaps got sucked into that side of the argument myself.
In my own defence, I would just like to clarify that.
I now realise that perhaps figures quoted by myself and others re. tradesmens wages may not be national and people are upset if we infer that the high wages that are earned in certain areas fail to give sympathy to those that are struggling in other ones.
All I can say in summary - without being sarcastic. I think the figures quoted on http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/best-paid-jobs are pure fantasy.
Again I appreciate other may agree with them.
Where I live in the London boroughs, I know of.
London cabbies that earn £50K and not £13K, my denist who must earn £90K and not £31K, replacement window fitters who earn £80K and plumbers / gas fitters who earn £80K.
These are facts and I have not made them up to substantiate my argument. Perhaps theses guys are not on so much now, I don't know and perhaps similar tradesmen earn far less nationwide to arrive at an average salary to bear out the figures of that site.
I don't want to continue arguing about them and as such we will have agree to disagree.
In addition, I was not calling tradesmen criminals (if I recall, that is what I was accused of). I merely stated that many / most tradesmen welcomed cash in hand. We all benefit from it and I would be surprised if all of us whether householders or tradesmen had not been party to it at some time.
So, lets all be happy. I earn a good screw, and don't begrudge other one. We all know what we all know.

Thank you. I am so annoyed because I was going to show you some of the plumbing jobs advertised in this area and the wages they are offering but the blessed site is down. To prove this.

http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/JCP/Customers/Searchforajob/ijb.aspx

tesuhoha

lynzpower wrote: »

I agree with you Tes.

My personal concern ( and this is not directed to you at all) is that-

Hang on a minute the UK is in the poo-poo
We KNOW that this is a global problem
We KNOW that the banks have been trading in invisible money
we KNOW lenders act very unscupulously- eg I cant get a credit card ( tried 3 companies) any more as I told the truth when I said that I would pay off all in full every month and have significant savings. Yet we know others with poor credit histories and owe more than they make in a year are offered more than I am ( who saves 75% of salary pcm)

Why oh why are we all trying to blame the little guy? Yes of course people over borrowed BUT CANT YOU SEE THIS WAS WHAT THE GOVERNMENT ORCHASTRATED!?! The government wants every child to go to university and get used to 5 fugure debt before theyve had a full time job. The government WANTS unsustainable lending which is why the gov has bailed the banks to get them lending madly again!!

Why are we all turning inwards and kicking the weaker guy? As opposed to kicking off at those supposed to- and employed to with our money!! we point fingers at those who have worked hard, supporting thier families, and doing whatever they can to be independent from the state?!!?

If anything is going to make this recession harder than it needs to be its the great british public who instead of laying blame at the step who should be taking responsibility we point the finger at those who have fallen on hard times in a situation orchastrated by the government.

Best post on this thread, Lynz.

Regarding the credit card, you are just the type of person the cc companies don't like, those that pay it off each month. We have no problems getting credit cards because we can't do that.

mewbie_2

tesuhoha wrote: »

You really are very upset about this, aren't you? I am sorry if I have offended you.

You think that's me being upset? No, that's just trying to pull the topics together. Don't know much about vultures or plumbers so it was the best I could come up. It's like people who whistle irritating pointless 'tunes', except I type them.

If everyone who offended me apologised we'd be here a very long time. Likewise if I apologised to everyone I've offended.

You'll know when I'm really upset. On those occasions I bring out the sad smiley.

lynzpower

Why oh why are we all trying to blame the little guy? Yes of course people over borrowed BUT CANT YOU SEE THIS WAS WHAT THE GOVERNMENT ORCHASTRATED!?! The government wants every child to go to university and get used to 5 fugure debt before theyve had a full time job. The government WANTS unsustainable lending which is why the gov has bailed the banks to get them lending madly again!!

Also to add onto this is expansion of the term "overborrowed"

Im sure many of us who have borrowed did not believe it to be unsustainable.

Some of us would have borrowed what they believed to be sensibly at the time.

eg "Its cheaper for me to build an extension for my growing family than it is to move house" Those who have borrowed on 0% cards to keep thier money in the bank - yet find themselves racked up once thier job goes.

This government has told us repeatedly that this economy is stable - there is/was no bubble and they have created the end of boom and bust.

We are preaching to the converted a lot here, and we should all do well to remember this. Most of the people who use this site WANT to be better with money nad realised they may well hae made poor decisions ( I was certainly one of them) AND WANT TO PUT IT RIGHT.

Can we please stop slating each other for trying to be better moneysavers for heavens sake!

neas

Walter_J wrote: »

I'm not quite sure how his thread got itself concerned with trademens' earnings, but here goes...

A good tradesman doesn't earn more than an engineer because he's got a higher intellect, or even because he works harder.

He gets paid more than an engineer because that's what he's able to charge!

In a free market economy everyone's financial worth is set by that market. It's simple supply and demand.

I'm a tradesman. I've also got a teaching degree. I chose to be a carpenter rather than a teacher because it allows me a far better quality of life and I am my own boss. I know many other university educated tradesmen who have taken the same decision.

And yes, we all charge in the region of £200 per day. And get it, even in a recession. I'm fully booked with work until September next year.

It is quite obviously what we are worth - otherwise people wouldn't pay it!

Edited to add: I'm posting this at 5.15 on a Satuday morning because I want to be at work by 6.30. A tradesman's day (and week) tends to be a bit longer than a pen-pusher's...

And this my friend, was exactly my point... at which point does a country stop being powerful or even competitive...

when it encourages the bright sparks of its population to down tools and become builders. Without innovation we'd still be in caves right now...