Allotments 4 All

I can (just about) remember the days when chicken was too expensive to have except as a Christmas treat. I'd say we were better off.

Fed up with bloody chicken >:( steak would be nice for a change. ;D

Steak at 3/6 a pound was just way out of reach when my father's takehome was £17.10.00 a week. At least, I think that was the takehome, he didn't actually specify whether it was before or after tax.

I'm not going to knock all those that are on benefits, as some are purely unemployable. It is the fault of the state that they encourage the work shy.

But when I was working for the local authority, some of the people out of work were better off than I was. It was hard to earn £1000 a month after deductions, but some of these people were on £1200 plus all the free rent and extra benefits I could not claim as I was earning a few pounds too much. I did at one time think about joining them.

As for holidays they have periods that they do not have to sign on so they can go away. I have a relative who is coming up to fifty and his last full time job was a milk monitor at school. He goes on holiday, has a decent car, rent free house in the country and spends a lot of time in his local pub. Where is the incentive to get a job, he would be worse off.

I still say you can be better off if you work harder, in the past things have got so hard I have held down 3 jobs at a time, then when things were better I carried on with the jobs to get a few luxuries. Naturally it is no good burning yourself out. So 3 months hard graft, then a month off.

Due to knowing hard times I am still thrifty up to a point.  Most of my pay comes at the end of a contract so I have big highs and low lows, we have to be very careful at times. but I am not going to save it for ever, (there are no pockets in a shroud)

I have a pension in place, it will not give me a good standard of living, but bugger it, the state can look after me, I've paid my dues.

Dad worked full time 'when I were a lass' and my sis and I never went without, but we could never afford holidays abroad and normally went home to Devon to stay at Grans for a couple of weeks.  Then as we got older, mum and dad splashed out and brought a tent so we went camping for 2 weeks in the summer - that was it.  I didn't go abroad on holiday until I worked and was 19, and that was to Amsterdam to go visit the bulb festival and fields.  For a few years I managed a couple of good holidays a year, but mum and dad didn't take housekeeping from us, we had to have a pension and a regular amount going into a savings account instead.  Once I had my first mortgage, holidays abroad stopped.  My darling and I had 2 weeks in Greece the year I fell pregnant with daughter number one, but that was out of season and cheap.  Now my darling works full time, and earns a good salary, but with stepdaughter, and our 2, like KT says, there is usually a lot of month left after the money has all gone.  We go to France in the summer which we have to scrape around for all year.  I now work semi full time - only school hours  :) - which is really helping, but still we couldn't afford a 'flash' holiday.  There are families at school who have lots of really fancy hols every year - Africa, Florida, India as well as lots of breaks to Disney Paris and the like.  All I can assume is they spend a lot of money on credit cards - something we don't own, or they have a lower/cheaper standard of living to us.  Stepdaughter costs us the same price as some peoples mortgage every month which is painful.

My darling and I have such exciting times to come....we have no pension, no savings, no nothing, only these 4 walls..................wanted, family sized cardboard box!

Both me & the old woman work full time, both non smoker's very really go out for a drink, allways pay the bills on time and at the end of the month sit there and think where did it all go? :'( On the essentials in life Gas bill, Electrick bill Water rates Poll tax, and (if like me who as to have a car to go to work in) the price of a gallon of petrol, that's where! or should i say the taxes we pay on sed luxury's light, warmth, water having ya bin (2bins now)emptied and driving to work . >:(


     Cardboard box EJ ...... luxury ....me and mine will have to live in lake in an old Co-op bag ...if wi lucky ;)

Quote from: Yellow Petals on January 14, 2007, 20:42:16

Quote from: wahaj on January 14, 2007, 20:21:11

hmm....i guess in that sense you have to be careful really. if you don't know exactly what's going on, you can't really judge people because they SEEM to be more wealthy that you. if they're on benefits, there must be a reason. i've applied for different types of benefits twice and i know the questions they aks, they checks they do, the people they talk to before the give you money. and even then they keep on reviewing your situation.

i know it seems like there are a lot of people on benefits when they shouldn't be....but you shouldn't always judge a book by it's cover in that sense.

On the contrary, Waj.  I've got no problem with peeps on benefits.  I myself claimed maternity benefits back when I had my son.  What I do have a problem with is people who are quite capable of working that a) claim the dole because they're too lazy to get off their a*ses and work and b) claim benefit but also do cash in hand jobs which leaves them pretty much rolling in it and I do begrudge those people that money and those luxuries because it's coming out of the pockets of mugs like me who are paying for it. 

<jumping off soapbox and exhaling>  ;D

Can only shake my head at one who is so little minded.................... Benefits here
but your way of thinking will be under A.................I never chose my lifestyle....my lifestyle
chose me.................I have a daughter who needs round the clock care and watching
I had to give up a good job to do it............no sky....................no hols................no car
here................ but before you spout oral diarrhea..........think...and as Wahaj said..........
never judge a book by its cover

Quote from: jaggythistle on January 15, 2007, 12:38:43

Can only shake my head at one who is so little minded.................... Benefits here
but your way of thinking will be under A.................I never chose my lifestyle....my lifestyle
chose me.................I have a daughter who needs round the clock care and watching
I had to give up a good job to do it............no sky....................no hols................no car
here................ but before you spout oral diarrhea..........think...and as Wahaj said..........
never judge a book by its cover
[/quote]

Quote from: Yellow Petals on January 14, 2007, 22:50:29
Tsk.  To clarify, I was not talking about people who need, have or deserve to claim

Guess you must have missed this part or were you just choosing to be selective before your inane ramble?

Thats exactly how I am froglegs, once the bills are paid and the weekly shop done there seems to be nothing left. Like you we do not go out drinking, we are both non smokers and do not have any credit cards to pay of. Mine you I do suppose I spoil the grandchildren here and there.

It's amazing how much the outgoings add up to.  Neither my husband or I smoke, we have a bottle of wine on weekends and our one luxury (apart from the car and the tv!) is our movie passes which cost us £10 each a month but we did fall in to the trap of credit cards and a loan to buy our much needed car so that was quite a sum to pay back (the car loan is now finished) but we are now in the throws (sp?) of paying off every debt to the last penny asap and being real penny pinchers as we're saving desperately to move to Canada in (we hope) three years.  My husband has just given himself a pay rise and when I eventually get off of my sick leave I will be putting in loads of overtime to try and boost our finances a bit this year.

I don't know about others but it seems the more money that comes in, there always seems to be something that takes it up so we never really feel any better off lol 

Most replies seem to agree that for those of us who work, and live modestly within our income, there seems to be not much reward, and little left over for luxuries, and I could quite understand that argument...

...until I looked at my receipts from the last couple of weeks shopping at Woolies and Wilkos...

Room for another in your cardboard box, EJ?

;D ;D ;D

From this, I'm wishing Richard and his wife a wonderful, well-earned and well-deserved holiday this year and hope that it's the best ever so far, and YP?  What a goal to aim at!  8)

Not sure if we are better off nowadays, on speaking to my grandparents they feel they had it better. My partner and I both work but still cannot get on that d**n slippy property ladder so are renting poky little flat with our 2 little girls (hence the lottie for some outdoor living). We don't have credit really as we feel we'll never get ahead if we're always paying credit card bills, so have small overdraft to cover direct debits that always go on wrong day and are just saving like mad for a deposit for house. Rent rates are astronomical down here in the sunny south and it's proving very hard to get ahead. We don't have hols bar a bit of camping in the summer. As for benefit cheats- there will always be people who play the system but what happens to those people when they get old? No home, no savings, no half decent pension- maybe in the end they pay the price for a lifetime of laziness.

We're not comparing like with like - for ourselves - are we?

Earning 10/- a day as a fighter pilot in 1939 - & having a car - does not equate with our current 8 grandchildren situation?

I see that we bought our house in the best cost/income year. Lucky us.

And holidays abroad? Who ever needed them until the agents took over?

If it was not for a Service (& State) pension, we would be struggling.

Just sent you a PM Alishka do not know if they are working but it was just to say thank you for your kind remarks.

My pleasure :-[ :)

I'll second that KT... "always too much month left at the end of the money"
For the first time since the boys came along I have A0 Paid off all my creditcards and B) not gone overdrawn.... I assume it is just a temporary abberation and normal penury will be resumed as soon as possible!
;D

Thinking of gadgets & things - yes, they're a 'must' these days, despite their cost, & I think that they may have absorbed much of the money that should have gone into savings. But I don't think that they necessariy give a 'better' way of life? In the olden days, we did so much by hand that we actually had money to put into savings.

Benefits? It's not all the 'cheating'. Before my Wife had her knee done, She was on Attendance Allowance - by order of the District Nurse. After the op, I asked them to terminate it. After some to-ing & from-ing they agreed to reduce it. It took months more to have them appreciate that WE DID NOT NEED IT!!
Jolly nice it was, but bureaucracy is as much to blame as the corrupt? I read that immigrants are doing quite well??

Quote from: tim on January 17, 2007, 09:02:16


I read that immigrants are doing quite well??

:-\ Tim, I think that some people, throughout our society, appear to 'do' better than others, but I wouldn't target a particular group without facts.

Beaurocracy, tho, and blanket allowances? Child benefit's not means tested in any way, is it? And the winter heating allowance too? I think that these are two areas that immediately come to mind where resources could be better targetted.

Immigrants have a pretty hard time despite the propaganda in the press. I married one and you wouldn't believe what we went through before she was properly settled.