1 mortgage, 2 babies, 3 years to be MF, 4 goodness sake!- weezl's diary

Floxxie

Well after having a quick look at what is considered the poverty line; I can declare that we are way below it and I guess a lot of people are.


http://www.cpag.org.uk/povertyfacts/index.htm

The poverty line used here is 60% of the median UK income after housing costs have been paid. Below this amount, a household is described as living in income poverty. The poverty line is adjusted to take into account how expenditure needs differ between types of households.
UK poverty line for a range of households, 2007/08


UK poverty line for a range of households, 2007/08 Household type

Poverty line: Household income, £ per week

Single person

£115

Couple

£199

Lone parent with two children (aged 5 and 14)

£239

Couple with two children (aged 5 and 14)

£322

moneytalking

Hi Weezl - This is my first post on MSE but have been lurking on this thread for a little while (and reading back through '50p/day')
I have found your challenges inspirational, your posts thought provoking to read and I too am hoping you write a book... thanks from a new mortgage-free wannabe

THRIFTY_GIRL

weezl74 wrote: »

Hey fire fox I went looking for you else where earlier, I asked for your advice/consultation on Mark's thread on old-style

:eek: eek no I'm not ready! Hiya TG

Welcome back Weezl.....not enough time to look on all the boards:p Enjoy the next few weeks before the little bundle arrives!!

In_Search_Of_Me

Just catching up on the day and forgot to add part one of the two parter in case weezl got cold revolutionary feet!! I reacon this could be the start of a Weezaloution!!!!!:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

weezl74 wrote: »

Mortgage now at £64,800, when I met MSE in Oct 2007 it was £123,600 :j


I've been still being frugal, just a lot of it is very grocery challengish, and I sometimes feel that too much of that on a MFW board might be a bit off topic. But then I know I can't start a new diary/challenge on Old-style cos they all go on 'how much have you saved' now. And since Nykmedia's challenge is there, it seems a bit wrong to be there too, cos that challenge is fab and I don't want to detract! I'm torn!

In brief I'll describe what I'm up to....

I'm still very fascinated by the idea of subsistence living. I read quite a bit about it IRL. It is a very untrendy topic in Britain and the USA since approx the 50s.

This is because wartime austerity prompted the governments to ask questions about how cheaply you could feed a family without incurring any long term health detriments.

A lot of expert time and money went into this.

My personal belief (controversy warning) is that if we in the UK had continued to be thoughtful at a top leadership/governmental about the meaning of subsistence then our overseas aid would not have been so immorally and embarrassingly ill-thought through in the 80s for example with Ethiopia.

I'm aware these are strong words.

I shall try to justify them.

Bob geldof and Bono raised multi millions of pounds to 'feed the world' in 1985 :j:j:j Amazing achievement.

And what did we do?

We dropped food parcels from the sky by helicopter onto farmland in ethiopia. AFAIK we did this at a time when crucial sowing and irrigation for the next years crops definitely needed to be done-more than ever before.

The ethiopian farmers had 2 choices. To listen for the sounds of planes all day, knowing that of the 50 families near you whose children were dying only one parcel would drop and spend your whole day waiting waiting and running for even a rumour of a whisper of a plane. But maybe you'd be lucky, it'd land on your farm, and your family would live.

Or you could carry on sowing and irrigating while they died.

Unsurprisingly, no-one farmed.

And the next year the famine was worse than the year that sir Bob and Sir Bono had inspired us all to dig deep. But our government could not easily explain this to us, and Sirs Bob and Bono could no longer inspire us to dig deep because we now had compassion fatigue....

pauses for some breakfast- Kester is hungry (ironic given what I'm posting about!) back in a min xxx

Fire_Fox

Floxxie wrote: »

Well after having a quick look at what is considered the poverty line; I can declare that we are way below it and I guess a lot of people are.
http://www.cpag.org.uk/povertyfacts/index.htm

The poverty line used here is 60% of the median UK income after housing costs have been paid. Below this amount, a household is described as living in income poverty. The poverty line is adjusted to take into account how expenditure needs differ between types of households.
UK poverty line for a range of households, 2007/08

UK poverty line for a range of households, 2007/08 Household type

Poverty line: Household income, £ per week

Single person

£115

Thank you for this, explains why I am scratching my head over how on earth it is possible to survive living alone on Jobseekers Allowance. I already know I will be comfortably in the 'fuel poverty' bracket ... luckily I have some savings, but not everyone in my shoes is so fortunate.

Memory_Girl

Floxxie wrote: »

Well after having a quick look at what is considered the poverty line; I can declare that we are way below it and I guess a lot of people are.


http://www.cpag.org.uk/povertyfacts/index.htm

The poverty line used here is 60% of the median UK income after housing costs have been paid. Below this amount, a household is described as living in income poverty. The poverty line is adjusted to take into account how expenditure needs differ between types of households.
UK poverty line for a range of households, 2007/08



UK poverty line for a range of households, 2007/08 Household type

Poverty line: Household income, £ per week

Single person

£115

Couple

£199

Lone parent with two children (aged 5 and 14)

£239

Couple with two children (aged 5 and 14)

£322

OMG!!! Well that explains the weekly juggle to keep our heads above water.

But it is just a juggle - although a full time job to do so. Still I'm a great believer in cutting your cloth so to speak - and already this year I have salted away 3/1000 of my mortgage.(I've divided my mortgage into 1000 x £125 and am chipping away at each brick at a time)

Please for an easy Feb and I aim to save more.

Love the post Weezl - always do.

Memorygirl

mark55man

Hey weezl - just to add my support to your opinions - provoking reading.

My friend says "give a man to fish and you feed him for a day - teach a man to fish and you condemn him to fishing for the rest of his life"

(PS - thanks for fighting my corner on my thread while I was out gallivanting yesterday evening after being stuck in front of the rugby all afternoon :T - have added some words of my own - but a bit late)

IlonaRN

Floxxie wrote: »

Well after having a quick look at what is considered the poverty line; I can declare that we are way below it and I guess a lot of people are.


http://www.cpag.org.uk/povertyfacts/index.htm

The poverty line used here is 60% of the median UK income after housing costs have been paid. Below this amount, a household is described as living in income poverty. The poverty line is adjusted to take into account how expenditure needs differ between types of households.
UK poverty line for a range of households, 2007/08


UK poverty line for a range of households, 2007/08 Household type

Poverty line: Household income, £ per week

Single person

£115

Couple

£199

Lone parent with two children (aged 5 and 14)

£239

Couple with two children (aged 5 and 14)

£322

Wow! Do you know if the housing costs include heating and electricity? Because if so, I'm really not that far above it, and I thought I have a reasonably well-paid job! Admittedly, I pay far too much for my rented flat, but I still thought I was doing ok, and not almost scraping the poverty line.

I think the definition of poverty is all wrong. Obviously it keeps getting higher with rising wages, and I can see that while relatively people might feel worse off if they can't buy the latest mobile phone or a big tv, in reality I could live without either of these if I had to (and actually, I do, as these items aren't my priority!).

Welshlassie

Wow!

I've just spent the last week or so reading your thread. A truly inspirational person. I'm still trying to get DH fully on board with the whole MSE thing, and as he's the stay at home dad and cook, makes it quite difficult to implement by myself. I'm going to show him your post and new thread to see if I can get him more on board. I'd already told him about your 50p challenge but without reading it he decided you can't have any meat in your diet and it would be full of lentils and pulses, which he doesn't particularly like.

I think your amnazing and will be following your threads closely.

Sian_the_Green

weezl74 wrote: »

So I’ve been asking for volunteer recipe testers and so far 15 lovely MSEers have stepped up to the plate. And I’m more grateful than I can say. Thanks:A. I hope there are more who might spare the time and the cash to test a frugal recipe. Let me know if you do.

Wow, those were some great posts weezl, I think you hit the nail on the materialistic head.
I would like to volunteer too! I love cooking new things and as long as I don't have to roast a pig's head I am on board!