Will you be able to afford a flat if you stop buying avocado toast?

an article by Oliver Burkeman published in the Guardian

Weighing up your spending isn’t simple: should you invest in making your future better or enjoying life right now?


Illustration: Michele Marconi for the Guardian

Back in the 1990s, the American personal finance guru David Bach coined the term “the Latte Factor” (these days, it’s a registered trademark) and a money myth was born. You could retire a millionaire, Bach promised, just by forgoing your daily trip to Starbucks and investing the money instead!

The only problem is, you can’t. In her 2012 book Pound Foolish, Helaine Olen points out that Bach assumed a 365-day-a-year latte habit; added a daily biscotti to increase the cost; rounded up the annual total by a three-figure sum; assumed improbably high investment returns; and ignored inflation and taxes. But the Latte Factor ticked so many boxes, it didn’t seem to matter that these didn’t include the one marked “accurate”. It distracted from systemic problems, made financial security look like a simple matter of self-discipline, and implied that you could get there without sacrificing anything that mattered.

The 2017 version of the Latte Factor is, of course, estate agents berating millennials for spending money on fancy sandwiches or avocado toast, on the grounds that if they saved it, they could afford a flat in a pricey city. Naturally, the maths is also dodgy: by my reckoning, the latest story assumes an £11 sandwich every working day, plus a £100-plus weekly night out. Even if the numbers added up, though, the Sandwich Factor would still be questionable, and not only because it looks like blaming the victims of the housing crisis, but because it’s not always wiser to spend money on making your future better, as opposed to enjoying it now. That’s an individual calculation, based on how much you love sandwiches, or whether you’d be prepared to move to a cheaper part of the country. And it’s easily possible to delay gratification too much – to fall victim to what the psychologist Jack Block called “rigid impulse control”, thereby “spoil[ing] the experience and savourings of life”. Having less fun in your 20s in order to feel more secure in your 50s might be worth it, but it’s far from an indisputable truth.

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Do Personal Budgets Increase the Risk of Abuse? Evidence from English National Data

Mohamed Ismail (Analytical Research Ltd, Woking, Surrey), Kritika Samsi, Shereen Hussein, Martin Stevens, John Woolham and Jill Manthorpe (King's College London, UK) and Fiona Aspinal and Kate Baxter (University of York, UK) published in Journal of Social Policy Volume 46 Issue 2 (April 2017)

Abstract

With the continued implementation of the personalisation policy, Personal Budgets (PBs) have moved to the mainstream in adult social care in England. The relationship between the policy goals of personalisation and safeguarding is contentious. Some have argued that PBs have the potential to empower recipients, while others believe PBs, especially Direct Payments, might increase the risk of abuse.

This paper provides empirical evidence about levels of uptake of PBs and safeguarding referrals in England based on in-depth analysis of national data at aggregate, local council level in England, covering 152 Councils.

This is complemented by analysis of 2,209 individual referral records obtained from three purposively selected study sites. The aim is to explore whether available data could provide evidence of association between the uptake of PBs and safeguarding referrals.

Analysis of the national dataset found no significant relationships between PB uptake and the level and type of alleged abuse. However, analysis of individual-level referral data, from the three selected sites did find some significant associations particularly with financial abuse; and found the main perpetrators of the alleged abuse to be home-care employees.

The findings are discussed within the context of current policy and practice.

Full text (PDF 21pp)

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The false narrative about personal budgets in England: smoke and mirrors?

an article by Colin Slasberg (independent consultant, Harlow, UK) and Peter Beresford (University of Essex, Colchester and Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK) published in Disability & Society

Abstract

Successive governments have supported ‘personal budgets’ as the route to transforming social care.

However, this article outlines how the evidence has been constructed in a way that creates a narrative about personal budgets which is misleading. It is a narrative that continues to dominate the national strategy.

The consequence is that the care system remains set in a dysfunctional, two-tier state. For the bottom tier, comprising over 90%, we argue there has not been, nor will there be under the current strategy, any transformation.

Full text (HTML)

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Can personal budgets really deliver better outcome for all at no cost? Reviewing the evidence, costs and quality

an article by Colin Slasberg (Independent Consultant), Peter Beresford (Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK) and Peter Schofield (King’s College, London, UK) published in Disability & Society Volume 27 Issue 7 (December 2012)

Abstract

Political recognition of the parlous state of English social care and the urgent need for radical reform led to calls for new policy approaches that address the two key problems it faced: inadequate funding and poor quality and inappropriate provision.

The New Labour government was convinced that it had found a way of dealing with these two competing problems and it embarked on a policy, which has subsequently gained cross-party support.

The centre-piece was the concept of a personal budget, and was introduced with a belief that there would be major cost savings while improving service user satisfaction. This article will critically explore the evidence for whether the strategy is fulfilling that promise.

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