Do TJ’s figures include all those that earn vast amounts but pay themselves through legal tax avoidance schemes?
How much would these skew the figures?

really? figures?

Will this satisfy you TJ?

“The majority of working-age couples with dependent children had
at least one parent in employment (94 per cent) and over two-thirds had both parents in employment (68 per cent).
…
Couples with dependent children were less likely to be dual earners than working-age couples without dependent children (68 per cent compared with 72 per cent”

Source: ”Families and work”, Annette Walling, Office for National Statistics (July 2005) [PDF]

So yes, the vast majority of working-age couple households will have both adults working. Hence even a good single income household is at a significant disadvantage.

Just became you do not “feel” wealthy does not mean you are not.

Well, lets see – what made us feel “not wealthy”

– kids clothes – largely charity shop or hand me downs from families with older kids
– kids toys, agian a reasonable proportion from the charity shop
-holidays – uk, camping
– Food – prob spend per month on 4 what many spend on 1 or 2. even last year there were a couple of months were I was trying to do food on £1 per day
– Going out,eg pub, cinema – couple time per year??

OK, our lifestyle choice was to put mrs rkk01 through a teaching degree. An investment, if you like – which should pay off if we both keep in employment.

BUT, we had to pay for every **** single thing* for mrs rkk01 to do her degree – including childcare while she was studying (500pm for 4 yrs with noincome to offset against) Ohh and yes, all the other mature students on her course got that paid for by the state, then got the “cashback” from the childminders they were in cahootz with… 👿

So in terms of “Reality Check”, if you got your head out of your rear end you might recognise that “reality” comes in different flavours

To re-quote NZcol, again..

Most of the examples given on here are normal people living normal lives, earning respectable incomes but finding that the balance of costs vs income make certain elements hard to balance. Your dismissal of this as being due to their lifestyle choice shows you up as the narcissistic bufoon that I suspect you wish to be. Yoru life is not representative of the world, people have babies, people have normal 9-5 jobs that they are clinging onto by the skin of their teeth with no pensions and no salary uplift in years while the cost of living increases. Your arguments are, frankly, rude and disrepectful.

* edited to get the emphasis right

What changes are happening to child benefit?

And this is while you were earning over £42 000 pa? So taking home well over £2000 per month?

RIKK -0 Its not me that is being rude and disrespectful. really – get a grip

Its the people earning sums most folk will never see and claiming to be poor that is rude and disrespectful

TJ – I changed jobs whilst mrs rkk01 was part the way through her degree – that should have taken me over the 40% thresholdd. However, my previous employer had been taxing me at 40% even when on 35k. Took it up with the tax office, but never got anything back.

Even so, where do you think 2k pm goes with one earner and a 500-600pm childcare bill + motgage + council tax + household bills + car costs etc

Its the people earning sums most folk will never see and claiming to be poor that is rude and disrespectful

Did people on that sort of money claim to be poor?

Did people on that sort of money claim to be poor?

No. Just “not wealthy”