Family cant afford Christmas

FBaby

The issue of how a family, or individuals prioritise their income is going to be vastly different regardless of the size of their income, however, people will always assume that whatever luxury they have will be in addition to all the other things they themselves have rather than a sacrifice.

Some people spend their disposable income on going out every week-ends, or a large weekly food shopping, and then feel sorry for themselves that they can't afford the nice holiday their friend go to, but it might very well be that that friend doesn't drink or go out at all, and spend 1/2 on their food shop so that they can put the money aside for a nice hols.

It's the same with people on benefits. The problem is that some people think they should have it all (proportionally to their income) and constantly compare themselves to others and as a result feel sorry for themselves thinking they are more hard done by than those in similar income bracket.

martinbuckley

curty510 wrote: »

just dont work and claim multiple benefits. In the 5 years we have been in this village we have not known them to work, they drink a lot, both smoke

Someone I knew about 10 years ago was planning to spend part of his redundancy on an off-licence situated in a poorer area of a large-ish town. His rationale was "Folk on benefits will always have money for booze & cigs". He is still in business, doing very well.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Person_one wrote: »

You say it worked out ok for you on benefits, but I'm sure you've posted on here on the past about how difficult it was at times?

Don't forget that benefits have not risen in line with the cost of living for a very long time, and that rents in many places are rocketing out of control so that people are having to 'top up' greater and greater amounts over and above their housing benefit.

People on benefits can't win really, so many people will be ready to criticise them if they have 'spare' money to spend on £100 of Christmas presents and lots of the same people are happy to criticise them if they don't!

The hardest thing was getting them sorted out in the first place and my innate distrust of relying upon other people to get the money paid - when it was all sorted out and the money was coming in regularly, it wasn't particularly bad (other than my fearing the money would suddenly stop without warning) and that was how and why I took steps to ensure that there was breathing space in the event of a problem with payments.


I hated it because of the lack of control compared to working. Unless a business is going under, which I know happens, but there's often clues to that in the months beforehand, you generally know that you will be paid at the end of the month - with benefits, the first time you know anything about it is when there's no money in your account and, unlike work, where you would then go in and find out exactly what's going on, you're faced with the no man's land of trying to get through to a number, being disconnected, told any number of stories, passed from pillar to post, hung up on and various other things, all at your own expense.

The effect of that is why, despite things being much, much more difficult financially without benefits, I still prefer to be working than claiming. And I still make sure I'm ahead with the bills, just in case something happens again - if I had lost my job on 30th November without warning, we would have been able to manage for quite some time - I'd estimate about 2/3 months. It wasn't like that a couple of years ago, true (mainly because it had been going on for a long time and we had worked our way through the contents of the cupboards), and any help we were offered and received was amazing and I'll always be grateful for it, but I did not ask anybody for anything, least of all cash for non essentials.



Posts like these just emphasise how essential it is to anticipate and prepare for problems in advance - it's possible to do so, whether receiving benefits or not. And how 'but we've got children' doesn't wash with everybody, so it's even more important to plan, rather than just react to events when they happen.

springdreams

Person_one wrote: »

You say it worked out ok for you on benefits, but I'm sure you've posted on here on the past about how difficult it was at times?

Don't forget that benefits have not risen in line with the cost of living for a very long time, and that rents in many places are rocketing out of control so that people are having to 'top up' greater and greater amounts over and above their housing benefit.

People on benefits can't win really, so many people will be ready to criticise them if they have 'spare' money to spend on £100 of Christmas presents and lots of the same people are happy to criticise them if they don't!

Wages haven't gone up either for very many .... so it is not just those on benefits who are worse off. And it would definitely not be well received to give those on benefits more money whilst those who are out working are not getting more money .... especially since the only way to do this would be to increase the amount of tax those who are working would have to pay to fund the increased payments to those on benefits.

d70cw6

Poor people sicken me.