Living on £53 a week?

paulineb_2

I pay the water part of the council tax and I get housing benefit. I pay about £22 a month and I also paid that when I was on JSA. Im also in Scotland, the council tax part gets covered, the water charge doesnt.

I think Tv licences can work in a few ways, there are schemes where you pay for this years and next years at the same time.

But I agree, when the proverbial hits the fan you have to find ways to economise.

You can get internet for less than £20 a month and mobile phones for a tenner a month if people really needed to hold onto their mobile.

And yes food, when you are skint, you find ways of cutting food costs down dramatically without starving.

19lottie82

I think the main problem here is not that people can't live on £53 / £71 a week, I think that they can BUT difficulties arise when people are in employment and have financial commitments / debts that they just can't meet when they lose their jobs.

piglet25

I am on contract for the mobiles, the phone/tv package and the insurances would all carry a cancellation charge. I know that the mobile company and Virgin wouldn't be happy if I cancelled the DD's so I would start getting late payment charges etc. The gas/elec is the cheapest available at the minute, and I am thinking of having the pre pay meters in so I can see what I actually use as I am sure they are doing me over - freezing half the time so definately not over using it!
The car I would need for other reasons, so I couldn't not have it but the running costs would be less as I would have to make less trips. The food couldn't really get cut back by a big amount as the cost of eating has gone up so much, I am a veggie so that doesn't include any meat or fish either :O

adindas

19lottie82 wrote: »

IN terms of being able to live on £53 / £71 a week, First off, a car is not essential. Most people don't need one. Sure it makes their life more convenient, but it's not essential. I use mine to get to work, and I'm glad for it, BUT if I had to I could get a bus and a train. If I wasn't working, I definitely wouldn't need one.

Neither is a TV (license) or Broadband.

Haircuts can usually be done yourself or by a friend. Or local colleges offer cuts by students for a few pounds.

I think I could live on JSA, it wouldn't be nice, but I could do it. (If I didnt' have any debt, or other financial commitments that is)

£71 per week = £307 pcm

£60 pcm on utilities

£108 pcm on groceries

£5 pcm on content insurance

£20 pcm for a gym membership (not essential but pretty cheap and would keep me sane, i'd imagine)

£20 a month for un walkable journeys for interviews etc

£8 a month for mobile phone (essential for job seeking)

£10 a month towards clothes (primark / charity shops are ideal for essential)

leaves £66 for other costs

Given that accommodation is sorted, a lot of foreign students from developing countries in this country are living with lower than £53 a week. Do not believe it, let see ...

Some full time students from developing countries in this country get around £700 a month of stipend from their governments. From this amount around £550 is spent for accommodation. So £150 left for other things, divided by 30 is just around £5 a day or £35 a week. It is much lower than £53 is not it ??

They are students and need to concentrate full time work extremely hard in order to earn their degrees.

Why should the people who do not work (and in some cases do not want to work as they do not want to take menial jobs), just spend time the whole day in their home by doing nothing particularly useful, be paid £53 a month ?? Most importantly it is also taken from people who just earn a minimum wage and thus also struggle to meet their own needs ...

There are not enough job ? Well, was it the case ?.
- There were a few BBC documentaries shown a few people have been given a chance to do menial jobs after only a few days they quit. The money they will get from working with minimum wage is just a little more or some cases same or even less than they will get from benefit (so hence do not need to work)
- There are a lot of foreign nationals, EU nationals in particular are doing menial jobs in the UK. Should the home workforces who are currently on benefits sincerely wanted to take those jobs, reliable, the jobs would have been given to them.

The benefit system in this country just make some people lazy, benefit dependable, make this country less competitive in the international arena.

BitterAndTwisted

Actually Piglet, I'm a non-meat-eating person, in work and don 't spend anything like £250 a month on food. That's a ridiculous amount for one person and could be cut to about £15-£20 a week quite easily. You just have to want to/need to.

BitterAndTwisted

adindas wrote: »

There are not enough job ? Well, it is the case ?.
- There were a few BBC documentaries shown a few people have been given a chance to do menial jobs after a few days they give up. The money they will get from working with minimum wage is just a little more or some cases same or even less than they will get from benefit (so hence do not need to work)

The benefit system in this country just make some people lazy depends on benefit, make this country less competitive in the international arena.

Erm. OK. I take a minimum-wage job and I end up having even less a week once I have paid my fares to get to it. That doesn't make me not any longer be a benefit-scrounger: that makes me stupid.

Any way, I bored to the back-teeth of all the benefit-bashing propaganda which goes on in the newspapers, so I most definitely don't want any more of it on this forum, ta.

RevolvingDoor

rock_queen wrote: »

£71 or £53 a week doesn't go very far with constant fuel and food price rise.

Exactly! I don't know how anyone lives on that amount of money a week without having help from family or friends, especially people without children.

piglet25

Even if my food bill went down to £80 a month I still couldn't live on £53 a week so its all a bit academic really BitterandTwisted.

bodmil

marisco wrote: »

I think it would be extremely difficult to live on that amount...... Then the costs of running a car, something most need to get to their place of work.

Surely if they had a place of work to go to they're unlikely to be living on £52 a week?

RAS

The majority of people in the UK who receive benefits (exclude Child Benefit) are in work. In many places in the UK an under 21 living in a shared house and earning NMW working 40 hours a week is entitled to a small amount of benefit help.

The issue is not benefit scroungers as much as low wage subsidies to multi-national companies.