The Illusion of Wealth

If you are poor or have been in the past then you will already know everything I am going to say here.  This post is for the benefit of people who "think" they have money and have never experienced what it is to be poor.

Wealth is an illusion and one of the easiest to pull off.  Making your life look more successful or more comfortable than it is, in itself is an art form.

If you have money you will believe that you should live "within your means" because you are deluded into this belief that you should deny yourself what you want because you haven't "earned it" and need to save for it.  The reality is this is a dead end, you can spend your life saving, be my guest but you will never become rich through saving money it doesn't work like that.  If you want to become rich you need to spend your money, in particular you need to spend it in things that will give you a return - investments.  You won't become rich by simply putting every penny in a bank and if you think you can then you are in for a bad time.

If you don't have much money then there is one thing that will become apparent very quickly - it is not possible to live within your means.  Now there will be people that argue with me here and quite frankly I don't care what you think because I know this to be true from experience, not just my own but the experience of countless others, from all income levels.  The fact is if you have to work to be able to live, then you will never be able to live within your means, you will always have to resort to using financial services to help you through life.  You'll need a loan for a big purchase, you'll need a mortgage to buy your house, you'll need a credit card to budget you outgoings and pay for things while you wait for your pay-check to come in.

Personal debt in the UK levels over 1.4 trillion pounds. [£1,400,000,000,000]

That averages £21,212 per person given the UK's population of 66 million people.  We live in debt.

If you are poor then you will know all about the options you have to buy things you don't have the money for, the various pathways to credit that exist.  And if you are poor then you will use them.  Your "neighbour with a 42 inch TV" will not have paid for it outright they will be using credit to get it, and with catalogues offering a £1,000 TV for less than £10 a week with an initial 12 month payment holiday I would hardly consider that TV to be any indication of their wealth.

This is the problem with this country and perceived wealth, if you "think" you have any degree of wealth you immediately begin to judge other people by your own standards and think that people are living life in the lap of luxury at your expense.   I have often seen people say "people on benefits are better off than people in work" - that's bullshit and you know it so shut the fuck up, if you actually believed it you'd quit your job and live the high life.  You don't believe it though you just want to complain and you want to be smiled upon by those above you for victimising those below you.

This childish shit was meant to stop when we left school and started behaving like adults but it seems that some people didn't get the message.

With the level of animosity in this country towards those on benefits I actually want this country to crumble, if it means that people actually learn some humility then I am willing to accept the austerity to achieve it.  Unemployment in the UK is continuing to rise if you look at the real unemployment counts rather than the ones the papers cite which only account for those who have been unemployed for less than 6 months.  The long term unemployed figure in the UK is continuing to rise.  There has not been significant investment and there has not been enough done to provide a viable economic future.  So bring on the triple dip recession I embrace it with open arms, bring on 25% unemployment levels like those in Spain, bring the UK back into the 1980s.

The number of young people aged 16-24 without a job rose to 993,000 over the last three months, taking the youth unemployment rate to 21.2%.  In a month and a half I will turn 25 and drop out of these figures, as will thousands of others.  I owe Student Loans Company £30,000+ in debt that's from before the fees increased, had I studied today I would owe £50,000+ by now.  I have not been able to get a graduate job since graduating University.  I graduated 4 years ago and I have applied for over 1,200 jobs since then, of these applications less than 1% even bothered to reply, both of their own accord and to enquiries made in follow-up.  There are millions of people in this country who need to experience what it is to be unemployed and claim benefits because there are millions of people who really have no idea what it is really like and I think it's time you found out.