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It's not possible to live on the living wage!

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revisesociology
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The national 'living wage' in the UK is currently (for 2022-23) £10.42.

If one works a solid 40 hours per week, that's 8 hours of actual paid work a day for five weeks of the year that gives a monthly wage of:

£10.42 * 40 * 52.3 /12 = £1816 a month.

After tax and National Insurance contributions that would mean you'd take home £1560 a month.

Which would be fine, except for this:

A perfectly reasonable budget sheet...

I started working out a REASONABLE budget sheet for a single person who lives alone, and owns a car, nothing special, hardly REACH goals for a life, and look:

Screenshot 2023-10-16 at 19.10.06.png

Note that I've been VERY tight on many of these - the car costs, for example, are actually £1000 a year BELOW the national average spend, and utilities are pushing it given the cost of heating a house.

Appliances at £50 a month are for high expenditure items that wear out.... washing machines/ fridges/ computers/ televisions/ even phones if yer on a SIM only contract. That's VERY tight.

And look, I've got as far a the basics and there's only £50 left a month for, well EVERYTHING ELSE.

And as to mortgage/ rent.... that £600 wouldn't even get you a room in a shared house in the South East, let alone a place of your own.

Not that it matters....

Because the above income is based on working for 52 weeks a year, so you wouldn't have time to spend that £600 you might be able to save up in a year on a holiday, assuming you have a good year and you don't fancy a night out and no unintended expenditures arise as they never/ always do.

Surely we need to raise the tax threshold....?

I have to ask WHY we start taxing people at £12.5K when even take home pay of 20% more than that ISN'T enough to actually live on?

It's just bonkers!

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