A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
The New Normal: When Full-Time Work Isn't Enough
The face of financial hardship is changing. Meet David - data analyst by day, heavy metal musician by night - who embodies a troubling economic trend that's sweeping across the UK.
David and his wife both work full-time professional jobs. They don't drive, don't have children, and live modestly. Yet they frequently find themselves struggling financially, sometimes unable even to afford The Bread and Butter Thing's affordable food service. How is this possible?
The answer reveals much about our current economic landscape. David's mortgage nearly quadrupled following interest rate increases, consuming an unsustainable portion of their income. He's also been battling credit card debt for eight years, making regular payments that barely reduce the principal. This financial pressure has transformed ordinary pleasures into rare luxuries - meals out reserved only for special occasions, holidays requiring months of careful planning, and spontaneous treats becoming calculated financial decisions.
What's particularly striking is how David's story challenges our assumptions about who needs support in today's economy. His experience isn't unique - across the country, working professionals are finding themselves squeezed by rising costs while wages stagnate. As we discuss in the episode, even determining whether a holiday should be considered a luxury or an essential reveals much about shifting expectations and realities.
David offers thought-provoking perspectives on the underlying causes, pointing to corporate power and tax avoidance by the ultra-wealthy rather than simply blaming government policies. His observations raise important questions about economic fairness and sustainability in a system where doing everything "right" no longer guarantees financial security.
Join us for this eye-opening conversation that might change how you think about the changing face of financial struggle in modern Britain. Has your definition of "luxury" shifted in recent years? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
Hello, welcome to the pod with Mark and Vic, and we've got a new member of the team that I thought we should introduce at the beginning. Nina, why don't you introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hi, I'm Nina. I am originally from London, as you might be able to hear from my voice, specifically at Essex, but I've lived in Manchester.
Speaker 1:Oh, Essex, whoop, whoop yes.
Speaker 2:I've lived in Manchester for about 10 years now. I moved up here in 2016. I've been working at the BBC for eight and a half years, but I needed a challenge, I needed a change, and the bread and butter thing is that challenge and change and I'm really excited to be part of the team as their new social media multimedia storyteller.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, and we can't wait to see what you can do.
Speaker 2:No pressure.
Speaker 1:So this is where we share a slice of life of somebody involved in bread and butter and hear about how they connect with us.
Speaker 3:And this week we're chatting to David Shall. We have a listen.
Speaker 4:Yes, in more ways than one. My name's David Ogden. I live in Little Halton with my wife and my cat, four, two, one and a bit years old. I'm a full-time worker works as a data analyst at the moment working on a contract for the Ministry of Justice.
Speaker 1:What does a data analyst do?
Speaker 4:Works with a lot of spreadsheets, emails a lot, fills spreadsheets in.
Speaker 1:You're a numbers nerd.
Speaker 4:Yes, I try to be.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're working full-time. Is it 37, 40 hours a week?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, full-time. I work from home, so I'm lucky in that regard because our office is based in Warrington, so it's about a two and a half hour commute for me to get there because I don't drive. Does your other half work? Yeah, my wife Kirsty, she works, she works in payroll she works, uh, full-time.
Speaker 1:She works from the office mostly, so I'm gonna ask you a weird one then. So how have you come across bread and butter and why do you need bread and butter? Because you guys sound like you're kind of full time rocking on.
Speaker 4:You should be okay, right yeah, yeah, well so I came across it because of my mum and dad. My mum and dad introduced us to it. They're both in their 60s. My dad's registered as disabled. My mum's his full-time carer.
Speaker 3:They struggle for money quite seriously.
Speaker 4:To be fair, like you say, we are both full-time working and we're not the worst off people you would ever meet by no stretch of the imagination I wouldn't try and put that across but we both have fairly reasonable jobs. But it's still difficult to be fair. We don't have kids, we don't drive, we don't splash our money around or anything like that, but on a month-to-month basis, yeah, we do still find ourselves struggling from time to time, so, for us, we mainly use the service as as a crutch. Really, this month, for example, I mean, it came to us receiving the notification for the service this week, and we're too scared to afford that. Wow, and that's saying something.
Speaker 4:So it's just been one of those months, I suppose, though, where, you know, a few things have cropped up yeah, yeah, you're on the wire we're coming right up to payday, so that's kind of why, like I say, we're not on the bread line, and I wouldn't like to try and put that across I didn't expect to talk to you, david, and you tell me that you both got full-time jobs.
Speaker 1:I'd like to think you're not on the national living wage, you're.
Speaker 4:You're on a bit more than that uh, not hugely more, to be fair, it's. It's not much more above the uh national living wage, it's not you know it's a.
Speaker 1:It's a modest income. Tell me about day-to-day then, so you sound like you're pretty frugal yeah, so it's been better in the past.
Speaker 4:obviously everybody knows, fully aware of you like we had this cost of living crisis and we had quite a big increase on our mortgage because we own the house. So again, you know, I don't want to be sort of saying, oh, woe me, because I'm in a pretty lucky position to own my own house and stuff like that as well. So with some additional borrowing that we had to get to do some work on the house because the kitchen that we had was almost inhabitable. So with some work we had to get, with that, the mortgage nearly quadrupled.
Speaker 1:So it's the mortgage that's crippling you more than anything at the moment, is it?
Speaker 4:Yes, pretty much yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, these are the difficult choices, right, that everybody faces. So there was a piece by the Office for National Statistics that was basically saying that one in 10 households don't have any savings. Feels like a low statistic that to me, because I don't think I talk to anybody that's got anything behind them and it doesn't sound like you guys do no, I mean I'd agree with you.
Speaker 4:Historically I wasn't particularly good with money as I was growing up, what have you. So you know I didn't put myself in a good position to have any savings. But I mean we'd love to be able to put money away but, like I say, at the moment it's just not possible. And I know some friends that I know have got savings and things like that. But yeah, I mean it's just savings have never been something that I've really been able to amass like. It's always just been a case of pay the bills, maybe enjoy yourself sometime.
Speaker 4:I don't think I've ever really earned enough to the point where I can put enough money away. That will amount to anything serious, without something else getting in the way of it.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you're doing absolutely the right thing from a frugal perspective, because you're not putting it on the never-never for this week either. So many times I hear people saying well, I'll just put it on the credit card and not think about it, which is just another debt and yet more interest and a bit of a doom spiral.
Speaker 4:Yes, well, that's something I've been guilty of in the past, to be fair. Yeah, I did find myself at one point with two credit cards pretty much maxed out. It's probably been about eight years. I've been working on trying to get them down. There's some progress being made. That's exactly the situation I got myself into. Just find it. Today it's £20, £30 a year. Before you know it, it spirals out of control.
Speaker 1:Like you said, Do you think it's just too easy to get credit cards in debt nowadays?
Speaker 4:Yeah, when I was younger I wasn't as wise and there was a lot more carefree. It's the sort of thing that you don't think is ever really going to cause you any issues or anything like that. But, yeah, it's so, so easy just to find yourself in debt, like through credit cards, because, I mean, I'm still bombarded with letters and emails from credit card companies.
Speaker 1:So you've been working on getting that debt down for the past eight years.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so it's been bits and bats, you know, here and there it's barely moved. You know you make payments every month and the balance barely even moves. So you've got to find yourself in a good spot before you can really start chipping away. That's what I've found, at least, anyway okay, let's talk about day-to-day.
Speaker 1:Then.
Speaker 4:What do you think nowadays, you would say, is something that's like a luxury, that going back pre-covid or pre-cost of living would have just been an everyday thing um, I'd say things like meals out and things like that, holidays as well, obviously, like me and my wife, we absolutely love both of those things, and the eating out particularly has just been stripped back hugely. It's usually only special occasions now birthdays, anniversaries, that sort of thing. So holidays we still do our best to put away a little bit every month and then we'll aim for something at some point in the future. We're looking a way that we don't have kids so we can go away outside the school holidays as well. But yeah, I mean, or you know, anything like that, it's, it's just become, you know, it's just become, you know it's not unattainable but less and less realistic to sort of save towards Even down to things like, you know, going out for a few beers.
Speaker 4:I save myself from my band practice. That's my social time, that's my luxury for the week. Basically I get together with some friends and write some music, but yeah, I mean, I'm not down the pub every day or anything like that. I stopped smoking and you know I've tried to make all these cutbacks and things like that Good cutbacks obviously. But yeah, there's a lot of the small little pleasures in life that basically just sort of put on hold or put to one side.
Speaker 1:Okay, you mentioned the band, so let's talk about the band.
Speaker 4:So it's like a heavy rock, heavy metal band and there's five of us. The band's name's Old Painless and we're currently recording our first album.
Speaker 1:Presumably people could start looking for Old Painless on Spotify and Apple Music and places.
Speaker 4:So our demo is actually up on there at the moment. It's up on spotify and apple music, all of those sort of things.
Speaker 1:Well, so that's how you pass your time. That's like a nice thing for you, but why is it that two successful working people that own their own home can't even afford to go out for dinner once a week? It's not what we should be seeing no, it's uh, it's not fair.
Speaker 4:Basically, I grew up in like a very, very working class household. My mum had two jobs. My dad worked all the hours he possibly could. It was just like a spark electrician no one died worked really, really hard to give us the best life we possibly could. And I'll say something else now which will make me sound even further away from this conversation, as I might already have done. But I was lucky enough to go to a private school. I got put through on a scholarship, so I had a very, very, very privileged upbringing. But I remember, you know, growing up we were able to go on holidays and to go abroad and things like that. Like I just don't see anywhere near as much of that anymore, not just with me, but like with friends and things like that. People are just getting by and surviving. Now it's not living, it's just up, work, home, sleep and rinse, repeat.
Speaker 4:I'm with you because I don't understand how this could possibly compute, because you, with that scholarship, should be a classic socially mobile success story I genuinely don't see how, at some point in the future, this country ends up like it was post-war like that might sound overly dramatic, but with the rise in you know impoverished families and things like that nowadays, like you see it everywhere, families using food banks and you know food redistribution services like yourselves, I mean, we never get our time. You know working class people. It's like it just blows my mind. I don't understand how this is like a sustainable sort of platform that we're all working on together. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:it's just yeah, it feels like a growing tension.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it really does, it really does.
Speaker 1:I like to ask people what they think could change. Then. What do you think's got to change?
Speaker 4:I'm quite cynical when it comes to these sort of matters. I'll be dead up front, but I think massive corporations probably have more power than most governments now I mean the bankroll most of them We've got so many multimillionaires multibillionaires who pay the smallest amount of tax humanly possible and it's just allowed to carry on.
Speaker 4:So for me, that tax avoidance is one of the things that really grates my gears. So I think that's where it starts. Really, you've got to start from the top of the earnings list in order to help balance things out. These energy companies bosses and banks bosses walking out with millions, millions in a single year as bonuses and people are struggling to eat that just doesn't make sense to me at all old painless.
Speaker 3:God, I love old painless. Oh yes, you've lost me there for a minute. How could I have forgotten that was some hardcore music.
Speaker 1:Do you know what? It was old school rock and I felt it and loved it.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm going to show my age now, because it reminded me of the Scuzz channel. Remember that.
Speaker 1:Nice yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Nina's shaking her head. Nina, do not embarrass me. You've got to know about Scuzz.
Speaker 2:It rings a bell somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, but I'm not sure exactly where.
Speaker 1:Probably better so this is a bit of a trend for us at the moment. So nina david, working works for the ministry of justice as a contractor, a data analyst, should be on a decent wage and his wife's in the payroll department full time, and yet they had trouble with their mortgage nearly quadrupling. So that's how easy it is for people to end up on the breadline, and we just keep seeing more and more working families ending up in this state of play.
Speaker 2:I think it's really sad and that's what I'm sort of hearing on the podcast is that more and more people are having to turn to charities, like the bread and butter thing, to find support when they shouldn't need to.
Speaker 1:Recently we were having a conversation as well about whether it was Hayley at Citizens Advice was mentioning. This Is a holiday, a oneweek holiday for a working family, a luxury.
Speaker 3:I did my research on this because you know, I'm a nerd, yes, nerd.
Speaker 1:And what did your nerdy research give you?
Speaker 3:Well, I was thinking about inflation, because that's quite topical at the minute too, and I went to look at the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, to see what the basket of goods that's taken into account would include.
Speaker 3:And it includes a holiday to Spain. So I'd say, if the government are including it in that it's an essential and everyone should have it. We also took it a step further and did a straw poll in the office, because you know we've got a chatty bunch in the office and it was met with a lot of very heartfelt debate about how, particularly our members that are juggling lots and very busy just to survive in life, if they weren't able to get a few days away out of the rat race to clear their mind and just get some sanctuary, whether that be in the UK or abroad, then people felt like that that was a lot and that everybody should have the ability to get away from the daily grind and have a bit of a break. And I've not seen the office light up at that debate. It was almost as bad as chocolate in the fridge or chocolate not in the fridge in terms of engagement.
Speaker 1:Just to be clear. The second one's not a debate. It's chocolate always in the fridge.
Speaker 3:I'm glad we agree, Nina.
Speaker 2:I'm completely on the same page as you with the chocolate in the fridge.
Speaker 1:However, there's an interesting debate to be had potentially Nina, on socials about that. Is a holiday for a working family, a luxury?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. The sad thing is that actually it's sometimes cheaper to go abroad than to have a holiday in this country, so a staycation, as some people like to call it, can be more expensive. And people are finding even travel in this country so ridiculously expensive that going abroad shows you just where we're going wrong sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really tricky. So David was talking about holidays, but also just even them, scaling it back and just like you know, just having a meal out or just having a takeaway. They've really got to plan for it and really got to be able to kind of justify it. You know, working and earning an income almost gives you the ability to be impulsive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and that's gone and that's fun. Right to be impulsive and say, should we just go out and get a pizza? And that's a lovely thing. But it's, like you know, compare and contrast that to do. You know what, if we just tighten our belt for the next two weeks, we could probably go out for a pizza in a fortnight. Yeah, there's something about the underlying mood and the emotional engagement in that.
Speaker 2:To say I've got a plan for everything that I do, that makes it hard I think that's why it's important to remember that, as we say a lot that our members can cook, because they're trying to come up with ways that they can treat themselves in the kitchen at home, so they're making their own fakeaways because they can't afford their own takeaway, you know. So they I think people are a lot more experimental with what they make at home in order to feel like they're getting that treat yeah, vic's a bit of a fakeaway, queen.
Speaker 3:I love a fakeaway. Oh, what's your favorite? Oh, there's too many. Nina, we've got the whole podcast in itself. We could maybe find someone that could give me a run for money as a fakeaway member Sounds like a good challenge.
Speaker 1:Challenge accepted.
Speaker 2:And I will happily taste the results. Oh, nice.
Speaker 3:I see what you did there, that's, you know, really giving of you, nina.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the other thing with David that I think is really important we mention is that there seems to be like a real sea change in terms of just other prices in the world as well. You know, we talk a lot about general cost of living or the cost of food. But look at him and his mortgage situation and look at how at one point that house cost him X and now it's almost outpriced him. But it's still the same house in the same area. There's no extra like, oh, I've got an extra bedroom or another garage or anything posh like that. It's exactly the same and that's the economy that's done that to him. And it's not just David with a mortgage, it's people with rent, because the landlords are passing that on right to the tenants with a mortgage. It's people with rent because the landlords are passing that on right to the to the tenants. Just shows how one part of your life could be the tipping point for your overall budget, and I don't think we've been in that position until the last couple of years before.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. I've seen it too many times. Being that nerdy accountant with decades behind me, I remember, when you know my mortgage, what I got when I was 18, then we had the crash out of the exchange monetary fund. Whatever it was, my mortgage went up to 15% one night. It just went so shockingly bad.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think a lot of people have forgotten. Because interest rates have normalized so low, you know, and we were trickling around nicely around one and two percent for so long. Nowadays people have gone on kind of interest only mortgages that are fairly cheap. It's a proper shock suddenly when the mortgage rate jumps because david, david did it. He come to the end of one of these fixed deals on his mortgage for five years or whatever it is, and his mortgage quadrupled. It's just like your rent, isn't it? It's just like whatever it is.
Speaker 2:That house cost bang yeah, we finally got rent regulations where you know letting agents couldn't charge you loads of letting fees or admin fees and everything. But unfortunately those fees have all just been passed on in rent rises instead. So renters have still not got the benefit of getting rid of those fees.
Speaker 1:No, and you've got the same thing as well, Nina. So you think about David's problem with the interest rate going up? The private landlords had the same problem and they've just passed it on in the rents. So the people in the private rented sector you know there'll be a good chunk of them that have suffered the same way david has so is that like a government decision that was made and it's led to unintended consequences for people?
Speaker 1:yeah, but they all knock on right. Because what happened with the private sector as well, rick is, I'm trying to think which Tory government it was but you remember the buy to let schemes? Yeah, yeah, this is how you actually get a good pension going if you're middle class and you get yourself a little deposit. You find yourself a little house and you put a buy to let mortgage on it so that you can rent it out privately, but then all of these guys got just exposed to interest rates. Yeah, privately, but then all of these guys got just exposed to interest rates. Yeah, and I I guess sometimes people are just not. When I say people, I mean the government don't look at long-term issues, because fundamentally they all base themselves on some basic principles that say buy to let schemes work if you've got a fixed low interest rate and nothing's built into them to fluctuate for these massive spikes in interest yeah, but I guess slight tangent but kind of underlines a point.
Speaker 3:This is why we do our surveys, so we chat to our members to try and understand what their life's like and then think about if the government did that, how would that impact on you to try and stop there being unintended consequences for members yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think there's something about you're gonna say I'm getting on my soapbox again, vic, but maybe I am, I don't know. But there's something about if we only ever have a five-year term of a government and that's all they ever think about that five years how are we ever going to come up with successful long-term policies?
Speaker 3:100, agree, but I'd be on my soapbox bigger if I engage in this. So in a way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, actually just bringing it around then, because you think about David, because what David did when he started talking about this because I was asking him about government etc and he said I think I think government is weak now he definitely felt that it was actually more about the corporates and the billionaires tax dodging that were actually creating a lot of this problem. And the governments were oh gosh, if we tax them, they're going to go away and we won't have any money for the economy.
Speaker 3:Again, another podcast. It feels like we'd need Nick Robinson and Amal Rajan on if we were kind of going to get into the bones of that, which would be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, amal, nick, feel free, we welcome you. In fact, to coin Amal, that would be radical. Oh, I'm getting into radical. So I don't know quite where David landed, but it felt like where David's head was. Another political science thought when things get too hard, that is when you start to see unrest and violence on the streets, and that will be a tell. So it's really interesting how it's not happened much yet. But David was suggesting towards the end of his thinking that he can see that looming because the government's not in a position where it can deal with the big corporates or billionaires, so that that that was food for thought for me is he seeing that in his role?
Speaker 2:is that what you know? That that's fascinating, isn't it?
Speaker 3:I don't know given, given the uh guarantees and non-disclosures and everything that he would have to sign for that yeah I couldn't tell you and he would never, tell me so if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at team tbbt, on instagram, tiktok, twitter, linkedin or online at bread and butter thingorg.
Speaker 1:And if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast or would like to come and be our guest, drop us a line on email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 3:Lastly, we're always open to new members at all of our hubs.
Speaker 2:If you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find your nearest hub on the Become a Member page of the website and please do all those things the podcast asks you to do like, like us, subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your friends and chat about us on social cool, see you next time bye.
