>If I'm being charitable, I had the advantage that I could move my belongings etc in to my parents' house if I wanted to. They're pretty poor, probably in the bottom 20% in the UK, so that's not some fantastic privilege.
Just to clarify, this suggests that your parents earn total around 16000 a year, pre-tax [0]. Perhaps your guess was accurate, and they really do - but I also find that the average person is normally wildly off in their estimates of the UK wealth distribution. A few thousands more a year would already place them in the top 50%.
Less than that, though this is more than ten years ago.
My parents are seperated, both lived in social housing at that time.
In 2022 they earn approximately 16k between them. Think minimum wage 20 hours a week, that's the ballpark.
I looked at the table of individual taxpayers income. For the relevant years, my mother's income was actually probably closer to the bottom 10% :)
There is a skew here in that you need to pay tax to be included in the table at all, though, hence 2018-19 having 1% set at 12,100 because that's the income tax threshold.
The percentage doesn't really matter though, basically what I'm saying is that like, it's useful to have a place to dump your belongings. That can be a parent, friend, whatever. It's a social capital thing more than it is a monetary thing unless you own tons of stuff and are unwilling to part with it.
Just to clarify, this suggests that your parents earn total around 16000 a year, pre-tax [0]. Perhaps your guess was accurate, and they really do - but I also find that the average person is normally wildly off in their estimates of the UK wealth distribution. A few thousands more a year would already place them in the top 50%.
[0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-f...