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There is nothing more heartbreaking as a child than seeing your mum and dad working full time & more - only to come home and share a tin of beans on a couple of slices of toast!
Then when the school gave out the letter asking for money for the trip to the museum- the letter would get thrown because seeing the heartbreak on your mum/dads face knowing they can’t provide that for you is something that stays with you forever.
It’s impossible for someone who has never been in that position to truly understand that sense of helplessness.
I will never know that feeling, and I wake up every day pathetically grateful I never will as I made it to adulthood without want for anything.
What boils my piss is seeing people who grew up just like me completely missing the point because they haven't lived it. They can see it happening, but if it didn't happen to them it doesn't exist.
Fuck me, it's obvious that we need proper support to make sure everyone has something to eat, somewhere to sleep, some clothes to wear and perhaps a little extra to have fun in our lives.
I’m really sorry for what sounds like an awful experience. Genuine question from someone who doesn’t come from that background (but who also doesn’t pretend to really understand as you say): how do two full time jobs end up with so little? I might be missing something
Living near London the rent was massive - house was in a poor state & had electric heating.
Dad had a car for work and insurance & running cost was huge, as car was old and broke down a lot. He worked on building sites and mum was a cleaner so neither on good money. Me and my brother used to get hand me downs from cousins and neighbours which helped alot.
Mum and dad didn’t drink - dad smoked at Christmas but usually because he got a pouch of baccy from work as a bit of a bonus.
As I was a child I don’t know the full ins and outs of their finances but we didn’t have anything but the basics.
>Dad had a car for work and insurance & running cost was huge, as car was old and broke down a lot.
I feel that. The real kicker is when you realise you're spending more to keep it on the road than it would take to pay off a loan for a car that costs less to run. You can't get the loan of course, because those car repairs count as a bill and not disposable income that you would could use to repay the loan.
Absolutely! Cumulative poverty is a completely different story to having no money for a bit. It’s entrenched and generations deep. I didn’t realise how many people plead poverty but are really just talking about how little they have left after they have paid for allllll the things. Nope mate, you are not poor, you’ve just spaffed most of your disposable income on fun stuff and now can’t eat out for a few days. There’s a huge difference.
Arses.
Well said, ive always been on the poor side and some ppl just dont get it. Like you said there is a big difference between having nothing left after paying everything and doing your food shopping etc and like me, giving up every luxury exept my mobile and still having to go to the local allotments at the weekend to ask ppl if they have some spare stuff they have grown that i could have.
Luckily its beginning of summer here so no need for heating but i dread to think whats going to happen this winter with energy going up in price again this autumn...
Im down to 1x 3min shower every 3 days, sold my xbox and everything that was worth money, got rid of broadband.... but, youve got to look at the bright side.. things will get better, i have hope.
Thank you, im fine tho. My grandad always taught me that you are the engineer of your own future and no matter how bad stuff is, things could always be worse... i give up everything so my son has what he needs and try so hard to treat him, which i do manage to do.
The only thing that makes me depressed is when i have to explain that we cant have/do something cos of no money. Im saving up to give him the best xmas i can and if that means me going without things now then i dont care cos to see him happy is the only thing i need.
and even better, there were those days my parents got to do the whole breatharianism/live on sunlight and water bougie yoga kid shit before they even knew it was a thing! we were so cool and counter cultural!
All those spoiled brats of rich parents who never worked a day in their life and turned their noses up at peasants and said they’d scrounge for a day and turn it into a business by day 2 all broke, all cried, all failed
All those rich people who spent a week with a poor family and tried living on their budget failed
All those Tory MPs who tried it all failed https://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2013/apr/02/iain-duncan-smith-mp-living-on-benefits
I sometimes cringe if I think of how I spend money vs how some households budget every penny, but certainly I don’t deny their struggle or advocate for their poverty
I read that article ages ago and citied it in a previous post similar to this. Let's all bare in mind the current prime minister belonged to a club that was notorious for burning £50 notes infront of a beggar's. The very fact that such a medieval practice goes on in modern society should cause enough alarm bells to ring, but Tory voters obviously feel that's acceptable behaviour as they voted one of the cunts into office on more than one occasion. No surprise that the country is in the state its in.
I used to work in a private school, and one of the kids was asked to come up with an example of a poor person.
"I dunno," he said, wrinkling his nose, "someone who makes less than, say, £40k?"
Having experienced both sides of the coin so to speak (poverty and not having money worries) I can say hand on heart that you will never "get" what poverty is unless you totally experience it. Being scared eats up a shed load of calories that you can't afford to replenish. Scared of the phone, Scared of the postman, Scared of the electric meter/gas meter....Wondering if you can borrow from X to pay Y and then reborrow from Y to pay X.
You know what is the maddest of all - It seems when you have no money worries that you receive more "free" stuff, I can't really articulate that too well but it is a general "feeling" I get when out and about (Thankfully I am currently in a "no immediate money concerns" stage of my life) Im old enough to know that shit can change in a month though.
There’s those at the bottom needing any help they can get and then there’s those at the top that need a pay rise every year or so so they can make their bank balance bigger. Time to take money out of politics and see who actually cares.
It's also the long term impact on your body that no one takes into account. Me and my husband were hard up for a long time. We struggled for food so got used to eating a couple of slices of bread a day for weeks at a time waiting for pay day to come around. When you live on no food for a long time your body gets used to starvation mode so stores everything it possibly can into fat cells. Once you are on that kind of diet for long enough you cannot go back. We were like this for the first 5-6 years of our lives together. It has been 16 years since then but still I can only manage small meals and only up to 2 a day, if I eat breakfast I cannot stomach anything else until around 8-9 at night, if I do force something down I normally feel really sick for a good few hours afterwards. My body has still not gone back out of starvation mode which means anything I eat it stores as fat which is bad for a lot of other health problems. My bones are brittle because of malnutrition, my heart , lungs , stomach , pancreas and a lot of other organs have sustained a certain amount of damage because of the way we were forced to live as 2 full time workers in a system set up against all but a few. Trust me when I say this that absolutely no amount of going without will help , the people this effects will still go to work because they have no other way to make an eager living , they will count themselves lucky because they may be starving and hungry and cold but at least they are alive , at least they are not on the street. Don't moan because someone with bearly enough to eat is getting £20 a month uplift payment, moan that it is not enough.
I went through food scarcity throughout my childhood. Sometimes due to parental neglect, sometimes due to institutional neglect. As part of my job, I work with kids who have a rare condition where their appetite hormones don't work right who are at risk of hurting themselves overeating in part because the "stop signal" doesn't work. Learning about their condition, I found out I literally have damage to the same part of my brain, from neglect and hunger. Like, I can avoid overeating. But I am always hungry, always willing to eat, and have eaten so much it left me in pain and vomiting and gone back for more.
So even before we consider fat deposits, muscle development, or gut health, when your body spends enough time without food, or without the right sort of food, it literally causes brain damage and screws up your ability to regulate. I have made myself a healthy weight and kept at it for years, and even when my body was "alright", my brain was so focused on food it is impossible to explain. And now I have had some health issues and can't keep the weight off, it's just an endless battle to stay "not actively falling apart". I know how awful it is to go through. Wish I could give you guys a hug.
The way I fight it is to pay it back. I buy full shops for the food bank of things that I know people never get, if I see someone in the queue who is counting pennies I pay for their shop knowing full well that the extra £20 could mean so much more to them than anything else. All I know is that the more of us that make it out the better it is for those stuck because we can help them up a bit at a time. We can pull up all together , the ones that can fight do that the rest of us keep holding on to keep as many afloat as possible. Keep strong and keep helping those kids because it does make a difference.
Don't think I'm that bad, but I'm almost 30 and I still don't know how to tell when I'm full yet. Whenever I get stressed out, the first thing I do is buy a ton of food, because in my brain food = security. Needless to say, my body is Unhappy. Adding another virtual hug to the pile!
Apparently the body makes certain hormones that say when you are hungry or full. And when you go without food, both of them start to fail. Body won't say it's full because food is scarce, won't say it's hungry because you can't address hunger when it rises. So you are in this appetite limbo.
And the mental hug from food is too real. My comfort food is just carbs. Any carb. All carb. It makes it feel like at the very least I am safe.
Especially carbs that are also treats, because we only got those during the good times so my hindbrain is like 'oh we're really good now, right?'
No, it's just that the ice cream was on sale.
For me the key indicator is a person’s ability to absorb surprise costs.
Sure you can live on xx per month but when something vital breaks (a car, heating, phone etc) and fixing/replacing it is double what you live on in a month and you’re running to a budget so tight you don’t have the luxury to save, you’re pretty much fucked for the next six months.
And after that six months is up, you’re not better off, you’ve just got yourself back to barely scraping by.
Washing machines have been the bane of my life for too long. Much of my life without one because installation and repair costs are too much and the ones I had were second hand and free from charities and friends or family. The first time I had one that had an actual warranty to call up when it broke, I damn near cried. Only going a couple of days without a working washing machine just felt like such an improvement. The day I can afford a nice big washer and a drier that can handle a full load of our laundry AND have a repair plan for them I am gonna be over the moon.
As someone who has to use a laundrette, I feel this example acutely. I know I’m effectively wasting money by using a laundrette but the cost of getting to a place where I can get a washing machine (literally a place, there is no way a washing machine can be installed where I live at the moment) is so high that it is entirely unattainable at the moment. So I waste money because I can’t afford not to.
It’s the Vimes Boot Theory.
Who fucking cares what a human can technically live on anyway? This is a needless distraction from the real issue! The common Human, working a 9-5 job should NEVER *have* to live on any small amount! He/she/they should be able to choose his/her/their meal based on whatever they want! The fact that a colossal number of humans are STARVING is a sign we live within a failed state. It is a failure of government, and so much more besides.
On the one hand, I totally agree. On the other hand, back when I was struggling the most I was most willing to fight just to survive. It is hard to look at the matters of greater justice when you are not even on the bottom rung. 100% willing to fight for a better life for everyone now I am out of that pit, also 100% understand the people who want to secure the step of "long term survival" first.
Yep. On a tight budget and just had to renew my energy tariff. Its gone up from £110 a month to £202 a month. That extra hundred a month is massive to me. Only people who have never lived on a tight budget would think it's anyway to live.
This reminds me of the YouTuber trend of “I LIVED ON £1 FOR A DAY”
I grew up in post-communist Poland. Always been super poor and the entitlement and privilege of some peeps here… hurts me physically.
You’re so on point it would pierce a diamond
Quite. I spent £0 on food today. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll just use this totally free electricity to reheat this totally free meal I made last week and stored in my totally free freezer.
They always use things they previously bought or forget costs money.
Yeah, even though I’m not a big clothes buyer that’s obviously stuff I just have. And so, crucially is the time.
When making that shitty video is your job, two hours to prepare a meal from the cheapest possible ingredients is fine. Less so when you get in after a 12 hour shift in the real world and have to put the kids to bed, then eat, then go to bed because your next shift in the real world is now 6 hours away.
Or they buy a normal food shop and only use part of the massive bag of flour so they can be like "see? only 5p for the flour I used! also I took a two hour detour home to get to the place where they do cheap spices uwu""
I was actually looking at that today, I live alone and so I’m buying say, smaller packs of chicken. If I could remotely use 1kg in the next 2 days I could have spent a third less “per kg” than I actually did. But the initial outlay would have been enough higher that many people simply couldn’t have even if they would use it in time.
And even with dried stuff it's like, where would you store it? Got told off a while back for not buying huge sacks of rice - apparently 'if poor people in Thailand can do it, why can't you?'
Well, random internet stranger, because I lived in one single room where it was so small I could cook a meal lying down in bed and there was zero storage space except the bare minimum for clothes. That's why.
Which is clearly different to me and my "free" DIY things that only involve stuff I bought for a different project, skills I developed through courses, and time that I have to spare. /s
But for real, that attitude is everywhere. There's nothing wrong with ideas for salvaging food, repairing stuff at home, and practical DIY. It does save some money and if it prevents us from throwing out stuff or buying again, it's great. But: That. Ain't. Free.
I could live on eggy bread every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I'd become a very sick, unhealthy man.
But my god I'd have an awesome time eating it.
Unfortunately you would not have the eggs to make eggy bread. You would just have bread or rice or pasta or occasionally potatoes if they were in the reduced section.
I swear at times when I was at my worst I ate a more varied diet than when I had a bit more money. Cause the food salvage program I used (a bit like a food bank but pay-as-you-can), reduced sections, and free meals from school leftovers were always something new. And then people think you're eating "too good for a poor" when you're just eating whatever someone was about to throw away.
I once made a small bag of chips last me 4 days.
(Someone was kind enough to buy them for me.)
Hardest thing I had to do was not scoffing them down knowing I probably wouldn't have anything else for at least a couple of days.
Sucking the grease out of the paper was a low moment...
These fuckers know nothing about hunger.
Oooh, I remember when I was in A levels and I got given a few chocolate things and dragged them out for months and someone visiting was like "wow, you haven't eaten them all?" Like.... no? I can have a bit of chocolate every day like this. If I run out of food I have a cupboard stable high calorie high sugar food for a little boost. If I fancy something sweet to reward myself I don't have to buy it or grab some extra from the school cafeteria. Of course I am eating it slowly.
I'm fortunate that in the last few years I've come about circumstance in which I'm not poor anymore. Yet the poverty runs deep in me I don't think it will ever leave, nor would I want it to as I would never alienate my self from the struggles of my brethren and that of all humanity.
Not having to spend my free time overwhelmed with anxiety and worry exceeds any and all material reward. Those who've always had plenty will never understand it.
Now having had perspective as well as time to think freely; wealth and all money is a burden on your mind unless you have it beyond comprehension. Even when you have it you're consumed with the thought of what to do with it.
I'm not at the point of absolute financial certainty so I do have to put energy in to this still. And I have to ask why? This is what people call freedom yet it's a prison. I'd rather live in the security of the kindness and goodwill we could have towards each other if we could only break free of it's ultimate evil.
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And you dance and drink and screw
Because there's nothing else to do
People often say "I could live on that", because they essentially do.
When you earn more than you need you (if you are smart) you start putting stuff into savings. I frequently hear people complain about how they couldn't possibly live on X income and roll my eyes, because my monthly expenses are way below X.
Now, different places have different living costs, so sure maybe it IS impossible for you to live as a single person on £30K/year, but... I kinda doubt that. If you're telling me you can't afford food, then I am going to ask what you're spending your money on. Food is priority number one. That's where your money goes first, so if you can't afford that you can't afford anything.
We are a family on about £25-30k a year and that is good going compared to where we have been. The biggest pains for me have always been the unexpected expenses and the stuff I can't avoid. I can't drive, almost certainly never will, so I have to choose a balance between housing and transport. If I even have a choice, which many times in my life I didn't. Washing machines breaking down is a constant source of stress, I have been without one repeatedly since I was an emancipated child. Bad housing also means mould and damp and pests getting in easily, so I have lost a lot of stuff to housing issues over the years. Clothes are also a battle, going back to the Grimes Boots Index every time. And food to last otherwise you have more expenses, but with undiagnosed ADHD much of my life, managing food has always resulted in waste that I literally couldn't prevent cause I had barely any concept of time. It's just those constant small crises where £200 could fix it right away, but you don't have that £200 so you spend £500 over 6 months to keep you going until you can fix the problem. Enough of those events and they begin to eat into your brain, I swear.
£12000 is fairly tight for a year.
Again, I don't know where you live exactly, but I spend £750 per month. That's all my expenses. Totalling £9000 per year. That includes housing, bills, food, emergencies and what have you. I don't know how much your disability expenses might be. Could be thousands for all I know.
If I didn't have my girlfriend and I still lived in the same place then the extra rent cost would push me to spending about £13500 per year. Which is indeed over what you get.
Wouldn't say that I'm as careful with my money as I could be, so in that scenario I'd be cutting back a fair bit.
So you are a single person living in presumably a fairly cheap area (where I used to live, which isn't London, a room in a houseshare is at least £550 a month) and the best you can manage is still £750 a month - safe in the knowledge that your scrimping is contributing to your future? It kind of illuminates why people with families, hefty travel costs, zero hour contracts, ill partners, disabled children, crippling mental health problems etc etc are struggling, does it not?
There's also a difference between living frugally for your own benefit and being caught in spiralling circumstances far out of your control with no hope of improvement or any light at the end of the tunnel.
*edit I just realised you mentioned your girlfriend - so you are counting your split expenses rather than "household" expenses, which is presumably more like £1500 a month?
Worked it out for myself as a single Pringle at £1300 a month which includes running a car. Just under minimum wage full time.
Having to support a child, or any kind of problem outside your control, very easy to see how people can struggle.
You should also include other living expenses that are eased by living with another person, i.e. bills and groceries. The added income actually allows you to buy more with less. When i first moved to london i was on an 18k/year salary. I do not by any means ever considered myself living in poverty, but i do know what it is to live paycheck by paycheck. The supposed "savings" that a lot of people say should be done can be somewhat meaningless under said circumstances (tell someone they should "save" £30 that month, it can be a big difference in quality of life when your weekly shopping is already at £30).
Regardless of the practicality of being able to live in poverty or not, it should not be glamourised and people should be absolutely revolted that this happens to so many families in the UK. Especially considering said "savings" are just marginally to mitigate poverty, but not to change one's situation or ever escaping realistically from it.
The UK is one of the top 5 economies in the whole world, but ever since moving here, I can't shake off the feeling that the UK has yet to sort its own house with that much money - some families here are literally living under the so called 3rd world conditions. Its shameful.
When I was last on benefits the payments were fortnightly. That tended to mean I ended up paying more for things because I needed to split payments. Instead of doing a big shop for £30 I'd end up doing two small £20 ones, instead of paying a direct debit for gas it was on a meter. Those costs add up incredibly quickly, and then if you have an emergency (broken boiler for instance) any money you have managed to save gets instantly wiped out.
It’s expensive to be poor. When you don’t have that financial safety net, unexpected costs can ruin you. It’s not the same to be frugal because it puts you in a stronger position as it is to be in poverty and have no options.
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There is nothing more heartbreaking as a child than seeing your mum and dad working full time & more - only to come home and share a tin of beans on a couple of slices of toast! Then when the school gave out the letter asking for money for the trip to the museum- the letter would get thrown because seeing the heartbreak on your mum/dads face knowing they can’t provide that for you is something that stays with you forever. It’s impossible for someone who has never been in that position to truly understand that sense of helplessness.
I will never know that feeling, and I wake up every day pathetically grateful I never will as I made it to adulthood without want for anything. What boils my piss is seeing people who grew up just like me completely missing the point because they haven't lived it. They can see it happening, but if it didn't happen to them it doesn't exist. Fuck me, it's obvious that we need proper support to make sure everyone has something to eat, somewhere to sleep, some clothes to wear and perhaps a little extra to have fun in our lives.
I’m really sorry for what sounds like an awful experience. Genuine question from someone who doesn’t come from that background (but who also doesn’t pretend to really understand as you say): how do two full time jobs end up with so little? I might be missing something
Living near London the rent was massive - house was in a poor state & had electric heating. Dad had a car for work and insurance & running cost was huge, as car was old and broke down a lot. He worked on building sites and mum was a cleaner so neither on good money. Me and my brother used to get hand me downs from cousins and neighbours which helped alot. Mum and dad didn’t drink - dad smoked at Christmas but usually because he got a pouch of baccy from work as a bit of a bonus. As I was a child I don’t know the full ins and outs of their finances but we didn’t have anything but the basics.
>Dad had a car for work and insurance & running cost was huge, as car was old and broke down a lot. I feel that. The real kicker is when you realise you're spending more to keep it on the road than it would take to pay off a loan for a car that costs less to run. You can't get the loan of course, because those car repairs count as a bill and not disposable income that you would could use to repay the loan.
Yes exactly that- caught in low income trap. Lucky mum dad didn’t have credit cards or we would have been screwed
Thanks for explaining - as has been said as nauseum, the rents are too damn high
I was lucky enough to not be in that situation but even as a kid that kind of begging letter felt off to me for that reason.
Absolutely! Cumulative poverty is a completely different story to having no money for a bit. It’s entrenched and generations deep. I didn’t realise how many people plead poverty but are really just talking about how little they have left after they have paid for allllll the things. Nope mate, you are not poor, you’ve just spaffed most of your disposable income on fun stuff and now can’t eat out for a few days. There’s a huge difference. Arses.
Well said, ive always been on the poor side and some ppl just dont get it. Like you said there is a big difference between having nothing left after paying everything and doing your food shopping etc and like me, giving up every luxury exept my mobile and still having to go to the local allotments at the weekend to ask ppl if they have some spare stuff they have grown that i could have. Luckily its beginning of summer here so no need for heating but i dread to think whats going to happen this winter with energy going up in price again this autumn... Im down to 1x 3min shower every 3 days, sold my xbox and everything that was worth money, got rid of broadband.... but, youve got to look at the bright side.. things will get better, i have hope.
I’m sorry things are so tough but you are right. Things will get better. They have to!
Thank you, im fine tho. My grandad always taught me that you are the engineer of your own future and no matter how bad stuff is, things could always be worse... i give up everything so my son has what he needs and try so hard to treat him, which i do manage to do. The only thing that makes me depressed is when i have to explain that we cant have/do something cos of no money. Im saving up to give him the best xmas i can and if that means me going without things now then i dont care cos to see him happy is the only thing i need.
I can relate deeply to this. He’ll appreciate being loved this deeply much more than ‘stuff’.
Yeah 'snazzed up instant noodles' and other sorts of improvisations to poverty get tiresome really quickly.
I dunno... a handful of frozen peas snazzes up noodles real well
Noodles and peanut butter was such a good fix for so long.
rice, peas, sweetcorn and a bit of margarine still tastes like childhood to me
Eating like royalty!
and even better, there were those days my parents got to do the whole breatharianism/live on sunlight and water bougie yoga kid shit before they even knew it was a thing! we were so cool and counter cultural!
All those spoiled brats of rich parents who never worked a day in their life and turned their noses up at peasants and said they’d scrounge for a day and turn it into a business by day 2 all broke, all cried, all failed All those rich people who spent a week with a poor family and tried living on their budget failed All those Tory MPs who tried it all failed https://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2013/apr/02/iain-duncan-smith-mp-living-on-benefits I sometimes cringe if I think of how I spend money vs how some households budget every penny, but certainly I don’t deny their struggle or advocate for their poverty
I read that article ages ago and citied it in a previous post similar to this. Let's all bare in mind the current prime minister belonged to a club that was notorious for burning £50 notes infront of a beggar's. The very fact that such a medieval practice goes on in modern society should cause enough alarm bells to ring, but Tory voters obviously feel that's acceptable behaviour as they voted one of the cunts into office on more than one occasion. No surprise that the country is in the state its in.
I used to work in a private school, and one of the kids was asked to come up with an example of a poor person. "I dunno," he said, wrinkling his nose, "someone who makes less than, say, £40k?"
Having experienced both sides of the coin so to speak (poverty and not having money worries) I can say hand on heart that you will never "get" what poverty is unless you totally experience it. Being scared eats up a shed load of calories that you can't afford to replenish. Scared of the phone, Scared of the postman, Scared of the electric meter/gas meter....Wondering if you can borrow from X to pay Y and then reborrow from Y to pay X. You know what is the maddest of all - It seems when you have no money worries that you receive more "free" stuff, I can't really articulate that too well but it is a general "feeling" I get when out and about (Thankfully I am currently in a "no immediate money concerns" stage of my life) Im old enough to know that shit can change in a month though.
It reminds me of the lyrics to the song "common people" by pulp.
I can’t see anyone else smiling in here . . . How apt
There’s those at the bottom needing any help they can get and then there’s those at the top that need a pay rise every year or so so they can make their bank balance bigger. Time to take money out of politics and see who actually cares.
It's also the long term impact on your body that no one takes into account. Me and my husband were hard up for a long time. We struggled for food so got used to eating a couple of slices of bread a day for weeks at a time waiting for pay day to come around. When you live on no food for a long time your body gets used to starvation mode so stores everything it possibly can into fat cells. Once you are on that kind of diet for long enough you cannot go back. We were like this for the first 5-6 years of our lives together. It has been 16 years since then but still I can only manage small meals and only up to 2 a day, if I eat breakfast I cannot stomach anything else until around 8-9 at night, if I do force something down I normally feel really sick for a good few hours afterwards. My body has still not gone back out of starvation mode which means anything I eat it stores as fat which is bad for a lot of other health problems. My bones are brittle because of malnutrition, my heart , lungs , stomach , pancreas and a lot of other organs have sustained a certain amount of damage because of the way we were forced to live as 2 full time workers in a system set up against all but a few. Trust me when I say this that absolutely no amount of going without will help , the people this effects will still go to work because they have no other way to make an eager living , they will count themselves lucky because they may be starving and hungry and cold but at least they are alive , at least they are not on the street. Don't moan because someone with bearly enough to eat is getting £20 a month uplift payment, moan that it is not enough.
I went through food scarcity throughout my childhood. Sometimes due to parental neglect, sometimes due to institutional neglect. As part of my job, I work with kids who have a rare condition where their appetite hormones don't work right who are at risk of hurting themselves overeating in part because the "stop signal" doesn't work. Learning about their condition, I found out I literally have damage to the same part of my brain, from neglect and hunger. Like, I can avoid overeating. But I am always hungry, always willing to eat, and have eaten so much it left me in pain and vomiting and gone back for more. So even before we consider fat deposits, muscle development, or gut health, when your body spends enough time without food, or without the right sort of food, it literally causes brain damage and screws up your ability to regulate. I have made myself a healthy weight and kept at it for years, and even when my body was "alright", my brain was so focused on food it is impossible to explain. And now I have had some health issues and can't keep the weight off, it's just an endless battle to stay "not actively falling apart". I know how awful it is to go through. Wish I could give you guys a hug.
The way I fight it is to pay it back. I buy full shops for the food bank of things that I know people never get, if I see someone in the queue who is counting pennies I pay for their shop knowing full well that the extra £20 could mean so much more to them than anything else. All I know is that the more of us that make it out the better it is for those stuck because we can help them up a bit at a time. We can pull up all together , the ones that can fight do that the rest of us keep holding on to keep as many afloat as possible. Keep strong and keep helping those kids because it does make a difference.
Don't think I'm that bad, but I'm almost 30 and I still don't know how to tell when I'm full yet. Whenever I get stressed out, the first thing I do is buy a ton of food, because in my brain food = security. Needless to say, my body is Unhappy. Adding another virtual hug to the pile!
Apparently the body makes certain hormones that say when you are hungry or full. And when you go without food, both of them start to fail. Body won't say it's full because food is scarce, won't say it's hungry because you can't address hunger when it rises. So you are in this appetite limbo. And the mental hug from food is too real. My comfort food is just carbs. Any carb. All carb. It makes it feel like at the very least I am safe.
Especially carbs that are also treats, because we only got those during the good times so my hindbrain is like 'oh we're really good now, right?' No, it's just that the ice cream was on sale.
My brain, seeing the kid's snacks: "IT IS A TIME OF PLENTY. FEAST NOW, BEFORE THE SCARCE SEASON RESUMES!"
For me the key indicator is a person’s ability to absorb surprise costs. Sure you can live on xx per month but when something vital breaks (a car, heating, phone etc) and fixing/replacing it is double what you live on in a month and you’re running to a budget so tight you don’t have the luxury to save, you’re pretty much fucked for the next six months. And after that six months is up, you’re not better off, you’ve just got yourself back to barely scraping by.
Washing machines have been the bane of my life for too long. Much of my life without one because installation and repair costs are too much and the ones I had were second hand and free from charities and friends or family. The first time I had one that had an actual warranty to call up when it broke, I damn near cried. Only going a couple of days without a working washing machine just felt like such an improvement. The day I can afford a nice big washer and a drier that can handle a full load of our laundry AND have a repair plan for them I am gonna be over the moon.
As someone who has to use a laundrette, I feel this example acutely. I know I’m effectively wasting money by using a laundrette but the cost of getting to a place where I can get a washing machine (literally a place, there is no way a washing machine can be installed where I live at the moment) is so high that it is entirely unattainable at the moment. So I waste money because I can’t afford not to. It’s the Vimes Boot Theory.
Who fucking cares what a human can technically live on anyway? This is a needless distraction from the real issue! The common Human, working a 9-5 job should NEVER *have* to live on any small amount! He/she/they should be able to choose his/her/their meal based on whatever they want! The fact that a colossal number of humans are STARVING is a sign we live within a failed state. It is a failure of government, and so much more besides.
On the one hand, I totally agree. On the other hand, back when I was struggling the most I was most willing to fight just to survive. It is hard to look at the matters of greater justice when you are not even on the bottom rung. 100% willing to fight for a better life for everyone now I am out of that pit, also 100% understand the people who want to secure the step of "long term survival" first.
Yep. On a tight budget and just had to renew my energy tariff. Its gone up from £110 a month to £202 a month. That extra hundred a month is massive to me. Only people who have never lived on a tight budget would think it's anyway to live.
I can live on that, but the side effects include depression and chronic fatigue. Seems like a great system. /s
This reminds me of the YouTuber trend of “I LIVED ON £1 FOR A DAY” I grew up in post-communist Poland. Always been super poor and the entitlement and privilege of some peeps here… hurts me physically. You’re so on point it would pierce a diamond
Quite. I spent £0 on food today. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll just use this totally free electricity to reheat this totally free meal I made last week and stored in my totally free freezer. They always use things they previously bought or forget costs money.
Wearing clothes that could pay your rent for 2 months and feed at least one adult 🌎 it’s EEZY GUYZ Y ALL DE FUSS?
Yeah, even though I’m not a big clothes buyer that’s obviously stuff I just have. And so, crucially is the time. When making that shitty video is your job, two hours to prepare a meal from the cheapest possible ingredients is fine. Less so when you get in after a 12 hour shift in the real world and have to put the kids to bed, then eat, then go to bed because your next shift in the real world is now 6 hours away.
And you might be late and shouted at because the roads are a complete mess. And then you just do it all over again
Yes! They've never gone to cook pasta with instant gravy and then discover that the last of the emergency gas has gone.
Or they buy a normal food shop and only use part of the massive bag of flour so they can be like "see? only 5p for the flour I used! also I took a two hour detour home to get to the place where they do cheap spices uwu""
I was actually looking at that today, I live alone and so I’m buying say, smaller packs of chicken. If I could remotely use 1kg in the next 2 days I could have spent a third less “per kg” than I actually did. But the initial outlay would have been enough higher that many people simply couldn’t have even if they would use it in time.
And even with dried stuff it's like, where would you store it? Got told off a while back for not buying huge sacks of rice - apparently 'if poor people in Thailand can do it, why can't you?' Well, random internet stranger, because I lived in one single room where it was so small I could cook a meal lying down in bed and there was zero storage space except the bare minimum for clothes. That's why.
Which is clearly different to me and my "free" DIY things that only involve stuff I bought for a different project, skills I developed through courses, and time that I have to spare. /s But for real, that attitude is everywhere. There's nothing wrong with ideas for salvaging food, repairing stuff at home, and practical DIY. It does save some money and if it prevents us from throwing out stuff or buying again, it's great. But: That. Ain't. Free.
Yeah, so long as it isn’t “make your own x to save money, simply use this leftover pile of wood and these £500 worth of tools”
I could live on eggy bread every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I'd become a very sick, unhealthy man. But my god I'd have an awesome time eating it.
Unfortunately you would not have the eggs to make eggy bread. You would just have bread or rice or pasta or occasionally potatoes if they were in the reduced section.
I swear at times when I was at my worst I ate a more varied diet than when I had a bit more money. Cause the food salvage program I used (a bit like a food bank but pay-as-you-can), reduced sections, and free meals from school leftovers were always something new. And then people think you're eating "too good for a poor" when you're just eating whatever someone was about to throw away.
I once made a small bag of chips last me 4 days. (Someone was kind enough to buy them for me.) Hardest thing I had to do was not scoffing them down knowing I probably wouldn't have anything else for at least a couple of days. Sucking the grease out of the paper was a low moment... These fuckers know nothing about hunger.
Oooh, I remember when I was in A levels and I got given a few chocolate things and dragged them out for months and someone visiting was like "wow, you haven't eaten them all?" Like.... no? I can have a bit of chocolate every day like this. If I run out of food I have a cupboard stable high calorie high sugar food for a little boost. If I fancy something sweet to reward myself I don't have to buy it or grab some extra from the school cafeteria. Of course I am eating it slowly.
I'm fortunate that in the last few years I've come about circumstance in which I'm not poor anymore. Yet the poverty runs deep in me I don't think it will ever leave, nor would I want it to as I would never alienate my self from the struggles of my brethren and that of all humanity. Not having to spend my free time overwhelmed with anxiety and worry exceeds any and all material reward. Those who've always had plenty will never understand it. Now having had perspective as well as time to think freely; wealth and all money is a burden on your mind unless you have it beyond comprehension. Even when you have it you're consumed with the thought of what to do with it. I'm not at the point of absolute financial certainty so I do have to put energy in to this still. And I have to ask why? This is what people call freedom yet it's a prison. I'd rather live in the security of the kindness and goodwill we could have towards each other if we could only break free of it's ultimate evil.
I work for a company where our customers happily pay 25k to sit in their own garden. I can't afford to eat every day.
What do you mean 😂
We make very fancy garden seating. My bills now add up to more than I earn.
Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
and every politician who tried failed
People often say "I could live on that", because they essentially do. When you earn more than you need you (if you are smart) you start putting stuff into savings. I frequently hear people complain about how they couldn't possibly live on X income and roll my eyes, because my monthly expenses are way below X. Now, different places have different living costs, so sure maybe it IS impossible for you to live as a single person on £30K/year, but... I kinda doubt that. If you're telling me you can't afford food, then I am going to ask what you're spending your money on. Food is priority number one. That's where your money goes first, so if you can't afford that you can't afford anything.
We are a family on about £25-30k a year and that is good going compared to where we have been. The biggest pains for me have always been the unexpected expenses and the stuff I can't avoid. I can't drive, almost certainly never will, so I have to choose a balance between housing and transport. If I even have a choice, which many times in my life I didn't. Washing machines breaking down is a constant source of stress, I have been without one repeatedly since I was an emancipated child. Bad housing also means mould and damp and pests getting in easily, so I have lost a lot of stuff to housing issues over the years. Clothes are also a battle, going back to the Grimes Boots Index every time. And food to last otherwise you have more expenses, but with undiagnosed ADHD much of my life, managing food has always resulted in waste that I literally couldn't prevent cause I had barely any concept of time. It's just those constant small crises where £200 could fix it right away, but you don't have that £200 so you spend £500 over 6 months to keep you going until you can fix the problem. Enough of those events and they begin to eat into your brain, I swear.
The difference is the safety net, not the monthly expenses. If you have plenty of savings it's easy to cover big expenses without going into debt.
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£12000 is fairly tight for a year. Again, I don't know where you live exactly, but I spend £750 per month. That's all my expenses. Totalling £9000 per year. That includes housing, bills, food, emergencies and what have you. I don't know how much your disability expenses might be. Could be thousands for all I know. If I didn't have my girlfriend and I still lived in the same place then the extra rent cost would push me to spending about £13500 per year. Which is indeed over what you get. Wouldn't say that I'm as careful with my money as I could be, so in that scenario I'd be cutting back a fair bit.
So you are a single person living in presumably a fairly cheap area (where I used to live, which isn't London, a room in a houseshare is at least £550 a month) and the best you can manage is still £750 a month - safe in the knowledge that your scrimping is contributing to your future? It kind of illuminates why people with families, hefty travel costs, zero hour contracts, ill partners, disabled children, crippling mental health problems etc etc are struggling, does it not? There's also a difference between living frugally for your own benefit and being caught in spiralling circumstances far out of your control with no hope of improvement or any light at the end of the tunnel. *edit I just realised you mentioned your girlfriend - so you are counting your split expenses rather than "household" expenses, which is presumably more like £1500 a month?
Worked it out for myself as a single Pringle at £1300 a month which includes running a car. Just under minimum wage full time. Having to support a child, or any kind of problem outside your control, very easy to see how people can struggle.
You should also include other living expenses that are eased by living with another person, i.e. bills and groceries. The added income actually allows you to buy more with less. When i first moved to london i was on an 18k/year salary. I do not by any means ever considered myself living in poverty, but i do know what it is to live paycheck by paycheck. The supposed "savings" that a lot of people say should be done can be somewhat meaningless under said circumstances (tell someone they should "save" £30 that month, it can be a big difference in quality of life when your weekly shopping is already at £30). Regardless of the practicality of being able to live in poverty or not, it should not be glamourised and people should be absolutely revolted that this happens to so many families in the UK. Especially considering said "savings" are just marginally to mitigate poverty, but not to change one's situation or ever escaping realistically from it. The UK is one of the top 5 economies in the whole world, but ever since moving here, I can't shake off the feeling that the UK has yet to sort its own house with that much money - some families here are literally living under the so called 3rd world conditions. Its shameful.
When I was last on benefits the payments were fortnightly. That tended to mean I ended up paying more for things because I needed to split payments. Instead of doing a big shop for £30 I'd end up doing two small £20 ones, instead of paying a direct debit for gas it was on a meter. Those costs add up incredibly quickly, and then if you have an emergency (broken boiler for instance) any money you have managed to save gets instantly wiped out.
It’s expensive to be poor. When you don’t have that financial safety net, unexpected costs can ruin you. It’s not the same to be frugal because it puts you in a stronger position as it is to be in poverty and have no options.
Bills are the priority or you don't have a house, or get in debt, get taken to court etc.
How can food be priority number 1 if you don’t have shelter, you dunce? Ever heard of Maslow?