So what is a practical and liveable wage

[rafezetter]

FWIW My son's main job is part-time £8.00/hr, he is in the process of buying a three bedroom mid terrace in decent nick for £55K. If we lived anywhere else it robably wouldn't be affordable. There's an upside to living in an ex pit-village.

Christ - in bristol you can't even buy crappy static mobile home for that! I looked recently at places and the cheapest and I mean a run down PoS house in a rubbish (dangerously notorious) area was close to 100k.

I can live on £7 pr hour, 44hrs a week, but I'm not going out often, have a car or a significant other. Rent is £325 pm + bills so £400 pm give or take.

 

[devonwoody]

To Spin Doctor, I wish you the best and hope things come good for you both.

UK is a wonderful place to live and I hope you find and succeed at this venture.

My gran always said, "money does not make you happy"

 

[Grahamshed]

I wonder if woodworkers can truthfully say that money DOES grow on trees ?

 

[Benchwayze]

Money doesn't always make us happy, but it usually makes being miserable much more bearable.

 

[Lons]

As it happens I'm in complete agreement; one of my oppo's at work is always in debt and complaining of having no money while turning up to work in new stretchy cycling gear. He earns the same as me which is a very good wage for the area, but his wife would rather spend all morning in bed and the afternoons watching Jezzer. As I've pointed out to him on several occasions if she got a part time job they would instantly go from having just enough to having some spare cash. But it's all a waste of time, he will be/feel skint all his life because he can't just accept that getting out of a [self dug] hole requires a bit of hardship along the way, but at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel. FWIW my better half works, we don't have debts, and as a result can now afford treats like extra holidays etc.

Re. Statler and Waldorf, once Jacob's spring is wound, a thread usually turns into an 'entertainment' of little relevance to the OP, and I am always put in mind of two grumpy old men arguing about nothing in particular. No real offence intended.

+1 =D>

I have a mate who lives hand to mouth. hasn't had a proper job for donkeys years, does casual work for cash so even though not claiming benefits he's not paying tax etc. His wife works part time and gets some sort of credits for the youngest of his 3 kids still under school age.
He's always moaning about lack of money to buy what he considers "essentials".
Strange how he manages to smoke heavily, go out regularly for meals or gets take-a-ways, has superfast infinity 2 broadband, a high spec PC and quick to get the latest gadgets.
He's a capable guy who talks a good line and he could easily have succeeded at his own little handyman business but clearly not willing to put in the effort or save the cash to start up. What a waste!

And man... you would argue black's white I reckon...

:lol: :lol: What a surprise. He's playing his usual games and sitting in a corner smirking. :wink:
Reminds me of the kids game of knocking on a door then run like hell and hide. Or my school mates party trick of "dropping one" in a supermarket and quietly scarpering leaving the other shoppers to look suspiciously at each other.

The fact is if you're living beyond your income you are in trouble. The only things you can do are seek a better job, or look at how you are spending your hard-earned. If you can't do either then vote for the other guy. For what good it will do.

Spot on with that John!

Bob

 

[Benchwayze]

Our kid's game was to tie a long piece of thread to a door-knocker, and from a safe-distance, give the thread a few tugs. We'd hold the thread tight, so that when the door opened it would break the thread of course. That meant we could stand there in the street like the little angels we were, and have quiet snigger! Little things please ............ :twisted:

Sometimes though, there would be quite a bit of thread hanging from the knocker, and that was when we had to scarper! :mrgreen:

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Piece of dog cowpat wrapped in newspaper placed on concrete doorstep. Light newspaper, ring bell, run, house owner opens door, see's burning paper, stamp stamp stamp!

Kids....

 

[Benchwayze]

Trouble is Bob, you could do that one only once per household! Mind you.. I think once would be enough. :lol:

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My grandfather told me he used to (before ww1) lean an empty 45gall water butt against someone's front door, fill it up then knock on the door.
:lol: If he did it in the village I grew up in he'd have done it only once.
My cousin used to smear dog cowpat on Suffolk latches, then place a large rose thorn in it pointed towards the user. They then got a thorn in the thumb and stuck the thumb in their mouth...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

All this, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with the OP.

 

[joethedrummer]

Just a bit of advice, Mate,, stay in Oz,,given by someone who had part of his family emigrate about five years ago, and seen their lives "blossom" since they arrived in Melbourne.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Yup. My sis has been in NZ for 27yrs . How I wish I were there.

 

[joethedrummer]

Yup. My sis has been in NZ for 27yrs . How I wish I were there.

To have that feeling , You must have visited a few times in 27 years . I was in Rotorua a few weeks back to see a buddy who went over in 1975,

 

[SpinDoctor]

Piece of dog cowpat wrapped in newspaper placed on concrete doorstep. Light newspaper, ring bell, run, house owner opens door, see's burning paper, stamp stamp stamp!

Kids....

My wife always says all conversations lead to poo. (Insert holding nose smilie here)

 

[SpinDoctor]

Just a bit of advice, Mate,, stay in Oz,,given by someone who had part of his family emigrate about five years ago, and seen their lives "blossom" since they arrived in Melbourne.

Been there got the t shirt and don't want to go back. Most common gripe immigrants have is, it's a great country too bad it's full of aussies. Lets just say the apple never fell far from the tree.

 

[DennisCA]

I make about €2k a month and my fiance does the same (well right now on benefits due to having had children, twins), we make do quite well I think, I can afford a rather expensive hobby and now I am also building a house and garage on a 2350m2 piece of land, but I don't care stuff like going on vacations and I don't like eating out, I like cooking, stuff like that means I spend very little money on restaurants and the like, and I contribute hardly anything to the "service economy".

We're in rural Finland and costs of living and such are lower I gather which also helps, I could not live in Helsinki on that kind of money due to housing costs. Land where we bought it for our house was 4.30 euros / m2, pros of huge sparsely populated countries.


I dunno if anyone would be interesting seeing house building in Finland and what it entails vs building stuff in the UK (got no idea how you do things), I've kept a photo blog of it and written down stuff as it happened.

 

[RogerS]

....
I dunno if anyone would be interesting seeing house building in Finland and what it entails vs building stuff in the UK (got no idea how you do things), I've kept a photo blog of it and written down stuff as it happened.

I'd be very interested. I've been to Finland a fair few times on business and have a good friend in Helsinki.

 

[bertikus_maximus]

A bit out of touch since I now have a well paid job and mortgage but I lived on a postgraduate stipend 3 years ago in Cardiff. The stipend was approx £16,000 PA. My rented accommodation was about £440 pm at the time (I imagine this will be much higher now although I lived in Cathays, which is a truly terrible place to live imo).

I managed to get by on this and had enough money to able to travel to Northampton to see my long term partner or back to the Cotswolds to see my parents at the weekends.

However, I certainly wouldn't have been able to maintain a woodworking hobby on this 'salary'! It was the case of it just about went far enough, with a bit left over: it's probably worth pointing out that I don't smoke nor drink much, and didn't need to commute to work via car (I could walk).

Hope this helps!

 

[whiskywill]

(I imagine this will be much higher now although I lived in Cathays, which is a truly terrible place to live imo).

Hey you! My grandmother came from Cathays. What has Gloucester got apart from deep puddles?:evil:

 

[SpinDoctor]

Thx all for the replies. Good news is I'm not going to be making £7/hour. Will start at around £12 and ease my way into the job and see where it goes.