when you reach breaking point

Rainy-Days

Well this whole thread resonates with me. I am down to part work through an issue with the discs in the bottom of my spine. If I gave up work I cannot claim any benefits yet my fuel costs to and from work are pretty much the same as if I worked full time!

We don't have children, but we do have two dogs (a labrador and spaniel) and two horses. Yes they are an expense but we own our own field so that is a bonus. I am seeing and hearing of horses being dumped because people cannot afford to keep them any longer. It simply breaks my heart.

This year I would have gone to the Next sale to buy clothes for DH and I but that did not happen simply because we don't have the extra money to spare. I buy pretty much all of our clothes in sales - always have - but this year there is pretty much zilch. I have been in the loft and sorted out stuff for car booting and I will sell some stuff on Ebay but thats about it.
I got some birthday money this year and my only treat was to buy some pottery that I collect for my dresser. There wil be no holiday this year for us. Normally we go away for about a week to either Cornwall or Northumberland.

I think for many of us the S&!t has already hit the fan and we are just plodding on through as best we can. Our saving grace is that we have a nice home that needs only as and when maintenance to it. Aldi and Lidl have always been used by us, but we are even now finding that we are cutting back even further and every week something has gone up in price. I am using Iceland allot more as well now. My horse feed won't really kick in until October time, but I do put money aside for that each month, so that there is not a huge outlay. We take the horse box down to the field at harvesting and buy the hay and straw off the farmer there as we can get it for £1.50 a bale as opposed to £3.00 delivered.

Money is such a worry I think for all of us in some way or another on OS we are like on a merry go round; we keep going round and round making ends meet and all the time we want to stop, get off and smell the roses in life just for a while!

PipneyJane

Mrs_Boo_Boo wrote: »

Was only thinking the same about the price of petrol and the mileage amount paid at work.It has been the same since I started in 2003 and according to the unions was ok as long as petrol didn't go over £1 a litre. Well it's way past that!!!! Also commuting 34 miles a day means over £200 a month petrol plus 75p a day to cross the bridge then £21.36 a month to union/professional body and insurance. Then £70 odd to be registered to practice. It soon adds up.

The HMRC tax-free mileage rate last year went up to 45p/mile for the first 10,000 miles. Prior to that, it had been at 40p for what seemed like forever. Because I deliberately bought a small, fuel efficient car, I used to love having to drive to places for work because I used to make a huge profit on my mileage - something like 85% was profit. Now, it's less than 70%. (Bought my car after the fuel protests of 2000 - remember those? Petrol hit 84p. Now days, I dream of paying 84p for diesel - so my biggest priority was fuel efficency.)

COOLTRIKERCHICK

We are ok at the moment, but i do worry and my thoughts allways carry me away..

I have allways dreamed of having a smallholding, and in march we managed to buy one in auction, after getting out of debt we managed to save alot, and we also borrowed alot... but since march i have really noticed things getting tougher...

After sorting out our finances for the bills etc... its my grocery money that is taking a bashing.... and even when we had to have our old doberman put to sleep ( he cost us just under £20 per week on food etc) I thought this would ease our food budget, but its not....

This year we have bought 4 young turkeys to grow on for christmas...they were only £4 each...so we will only prob save a little bit there...

It really does seem as though there is no end in sight... but didnt the bank of england guy say that it will take 10 years or so to see any noticeable signs of true recovery? ( he did say this a year or so ago)

The last time i was really up to our eyeballs in debt and REALLY struggling... mr t were excepting money off coupons, even if you didnt buy the product.... and they had the R&R policy so we ate for practically free....

just seen this
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/darling-urges-osborne-act-now-060945476.html

PipneyJane

Grouchy wrote: »

I am an avid follower (but non poster) in OS and find it useful and encouraging that others are trying to live as much as possible ethically and within their means and I try to live that way by choice, I've found lots of ideas on here that I've tried to put into practice.
As I'm a new poster on OS please forgive the instrusion and me being a bit opinionated, but when I saw this statement i thought I had to put in my tuppence LOL

The government encourages us at every opportunity to spend spend spend money to boost the economy, but consumer spending is the absolute worst and weakest way to build an economy. Our governments have shut down or sold off our manufacutiring industries which are the REAL source of economic growth and stability. What we have ended up with is an economy dependent on consumer spending and finance, which is bonkers and a rollercoaster we all have to put up with.
My approach is to live within my means and don't get sucked into buying a lot of tosh. I don't spend because governments/supermarkets/electric companies encourage me to. And I don't feel guilty, I feel like I'm being responsible.

Yes, I agree with others that times are extremely tough and even when you are being as sensible and practical as possible things seem to be getting more and more expensive and budgets tighter. At least I feel OS is on the right track and an adult approach to looking after yourself and family.

Anyway, again apologies for sticking my oar in, it was well intentioned and of course just my small take on things .:)

Don't apologise. Took the words right out of my brain - and stated them far better than I could.

Sorry, rant alert.

From my perspective, Britain has always been a very inequitable society, and I've often wondered how/why it got that way since, by most economic measures, it is in the top 10 richest economies of the world. When I first arrived in Britain (1989) and worked in the NHS, I was gobsmacked when I realised you had highly qualified professionals - scientist, nurses, physios, etc - working for less than I'd earned as a student nurse in Oz and paying more than double the price for everything. And that was after I'd accounted for exchange rate differences. (I was interested in money management even then.)

While some lower paid jobs have seen pay rises in real terms (nurses and teachers), for most roles, salaries have stagnated or barely risen in the entire time I have been in the UK. That's 23 years. And yet the cost of living keeps rising. And the cost of housing has skyrocketed.

I've always wondered how Joe British-average-salary manages to support himself, buy a home, have a family and live a good life. Don't get me wrong; there are probably just as many rich people in Australia as there are here, but Joe Average gets a better deal. The Aussies pay about as much tax as the Brits do, too.

After a lot of thought and analysis, the biggest difference I can come up with is that British bureaucracy is huge, swallowing such a large proportion of the public purse that the money doesn't get down to the level of the people who actually "do" something productive for the state: the teachers, the soldiers, the hospital staff. There is such a huge duplication of roles, too - if you are unemployed, you go to the job centre to claim JSA, then to the council to claim other benefits. And if your spouse has a job and you have kids, they can go to HMRC to claim tax credits, too. Why not do all this in one place with one person filling out your case work?

Another major contributing factor I can see is that Britain, the country, has a huge, historic debt load. The interest and capital repayments are huge, swallowing up a considerable amount of the tax-take. Some of the debt is a hangover from the War - the Lend-Lease debt to the Americans has only recently been completely repaid. (Shocking, I know.) The balance is because the Government hasn't been Old Style, they haven't lived within their means or set aside money for a rainy day. (Where did the North Sea Oil Levy money go? Or the privatisation money? Into the general tax pot. The Norwegians, recognising it as a bounty, put their North Sea Oil Levy money into a sovereign wealth fund and invested it for the future of their country.)

At this point, I do have to admit to a certain amount of sympathy with what the current Government is trying to do, forcing government departments to balance their books and attempting to live within its means. However, that should have been done during the so-called boom times from 1996 to 2007, when there were tax receipts a-plenty.

OK, rant over.

LameWolf

cyclingyorkie wrote: »

I have to put the heating on in winter - DD1 is an ME sufferer and the cold makes her joint pain so much worse. she has fluffy socks and slippers and layers up, but she gets so cold..... it doesn't help that she is a size 8 with no 'natural insulation'!

Yep - similar here. I have lupus, and it's made me too sick/disabled to work, and I've got to stay reasonably warm in winter. I get fed up with the emails from the leccy company offering ways to reduce our power useage - we've already done all of those that we can! I refuse to have one of those power use meters, because I know I'd feel guilty about even switching on a light if I did.

Thankfully, my DH is working at present (albeit he has to drive over 60 miles a day).

I'm another who has always saved for what I want/need; if we can't afford to pay for it, we simply do without it. Sorry, but I'm totally debt-phobic.

lol Maybe I should just hope that the lupus carts me off before the money runs out......:cool:

OrkneyStar

Fruball wrote: »

Yep. It's getting pretty dire and I am really starting to worry tbh. At some point I can see riots and anarchy over it.

People in other countries wouldn't tolerate it.

We have an excellent standard of living compared to many 'other countries', things are tough yes, but compare ourselves to the rest of the world and we will soon see what we actually have and stop wanting so much.
This is not directed at you in particular, in general to everyone including me!, just your last sentence there sort of raised that issue back up to the fore for me!

Grouchy

PipneyJane, well that's an interesting view. I agree with lots and have a different view on a few points.
I'm not sure I'm totally convinced by the huge bureacracy argument, but it may well play a part.

Britain has always been a class ridden country unlike any other and people have done their best within this. What has got worse though, is that statistics show that the gap between the well off and the average working person has got a lot wider over the last 20-30 years (despite governments promising the opposite!!!), making the ordinary citizen that much worse off and much more vulnerable to any problems in the economy. The majority of of the wealth of this country is held by 5-8 percent of the people in priviledged positions.

In addition to that successive governments have transformed a successful varied and broadbased economy based on industry and manufacturing to an economy reliant on fiance and consumerism, which is not only insane but unsustainable and a rollercoaster of vulnerability.

What makes this even worse is that our industry, transportation, utilities, have either been destroyed or have been sold to foreign interests, so the profits go abroad. Look at any sector of the economy to see how sold off things are, for instance, EDF is French, Scottish Power is Spanish, E ON is German, most of our water companies are foreign owned, our airport operators are mainly Spanish and Middle East owned as are our ports, most of our transport system like rail is foreign owned (my local netowkr is owned by German/Australian companies). Of course another major problem is once you have a narrow economy you cannot afford for either finanace or consumerism to falter. So governments use taxpayers money to subsidise rubbish incompetent failing banks and to bully people into spending more than they can afford on things they don't need, all in the name of supporting the economy. The result though it, companies get more profits while people end up living on plastic and getting in trouble.

Because we have such a fragile economy, long term decent paying full time employment is become more scarce and the jobs of today tend to be more contract part time work in retail and consumer industries. The choice has become narrower.

It seems all very depressing indeed and I have friends/family I am concerned about. I am in a good position at the moment but have friends and family who have been sensible and responsible and some are teetering on the edge a bit. My response has always been to refuse to be a part of this merry go round of shopping and buying tat and getting into debt and hope for the best.

Sorry, very ranty for me so apologies, especially on a lovely Sunday morning. I'm off to calm down with a cuppa in the garden before I blow a gasket.

gallygirl

Mrs_Boo_Boo wrote: »

Was only thinking the same about the price of petrol and the mileage amount paid at work.It has been the same since I started in 2003 and according to the unions was ok as long as petrol didn't go over £1 a litre. Well it's way past that!!!!

PipneyJane wrote: »

The HMRC tax-free mileage rate last year went up to 45p/mile for the first 10,000 miles. Prior to that, it had been at 40p for what seemed like forever. Because I deliberately bought a small, fuel efficient car, I used to love having to drive to places for work because I used to make a huge profit on my mileage - something like 85% was profit. Now, it's less than 70%. (Bought my car after the fuel protests of 2000 - remember those? Petrol hit 84p. Now days, I dream of paying 84p for diesel - so my biggest priority was fuel efficency.)

Mrs BB did you know you can claim the difference between the rate paid by work and the 45p allowable by IR? You will need to fill in a self-assessment form, not sure how many years you could go back but would be a nice rebate!

Rainy-Days

PipneyJane wrote: »

Another major contributing factor I can see is that Britain, the country, has a huge, historic debt load. The interest and capital repayments are huge, swallowing up a considerable amount of the tax-take. Some of the debt is a hangover from the War - the Lend-Lease debt to the Americans has only recently been completely repaid. (Shocking, I know.) The balance is because the Government hasn't been Old Style, they haven't lived within their means or set aside money for a rainy day. (Where did the North Sea Oil Levy money go?

I believe that the war debt was finally repaid in 2006, but without getting into the political hotbed of debate I will say this:-

When the Labour government came into power in 1997, they inherited a largely good balance sheet. Allot of debt had been repaid and we had a very healthy economy that was finally just getting going again after years of pain. Remember Gordon Brown saying the "days of boom and bust are over". Well, even I knew he was wrong. What infuriated me the most about that man was that he sold off our substantial (and they were vast) gold reserves for basically bargain knock down prices. He refused to listen to good economic advice that to sell those gold reserves was folly. He went ahead and flogged the lot. Those gold reserves, had they not been sold, would have gone some good way to paying down allot of the debt that this current administration has inherited. Even more so, when the coalition came to power a note was left at H M Treasury by the previous incumbent which said words to the effect of sorry there is no money left. The true scale of debt that we as a country have now was hidden, the spend, spend, spend was truly appalling.

Now what we have is payback - and boy are we all paying for it. The man on the street is truly sickened by reading in the newspaper stories of asylum seekers who are being housed in multi million pound homes in London and given benefits while the rest of us are paying for it through working our guts out. Those who actually do need the benefits money are being told to go back to work while those that claim asylum are living the life of Riley. It makes me mad - really mad. :mad: They are economic migrants, I would guess, and nothing less.

Unless, and until, the balance of power is addressed to those who work and who take responsible fiscal steps, then there will never be equality. It seems that for those that do work and act responsibly are punished for doing the right thing. Those who live off trust funds and wealth pay no National Insurance contributions and hive off their vast sums in off shore bank accounts, so the rest of us pay for them.

lostinrates

susiejq wrote: »

Hubby hasn't had a pay rise in 10yrs and as a sub contractor work is variable and payment often slow. I haven't had a pay rise in 3 yrs. Our daughter has just had her Uni offer and will be going in September. Her loan doesn't cover her accommmodation and she won't get a grant so we will have to pay her a weekly amount to live on. I just don't know how we are going to manage to meet the bills and eat and help her as well. She has been saving from her little part time job and knows the value of every penny she has (she's known us be really poor for many years until I got a decent job). Like all of you I can't see where we can possibly make the savings. Our allotment was a disaster this year with anything that did grow being eaten by slugs but most things not growing at all. Last year I knocked £20 a week of the food bill with what we grew but not this year. She says she wants to get a job but I know how hard she will work to get her degree and don't really want her working until she knows what she's taken on in terms of studying. We really want to retire in two years time (hubby is 64 now) but that dream is becoming more and more remote as we would need to pay off the mortgage first.
Good luck to everyone who is trying to live on less and less money and any ideas on how to do it would be gratefully received.

I was the first year of (much lower ) fee payers, and while i know its unpopuAr I am not wholey opposed to paying a contribution. While being an undergrad CAN be hard work, for many its not that hard put side of exam time, and, IMO, easier than many graduate careers and life balancing are. What i would say is that i know those of us who paid and worked (as opposed to those who did not pay for various reasons and not always hardship but how finances had been arranged, or whose parents paid) definetly got more out of university life than those who did not.

I wish your daughter the best success and enjoyment come September!