I have asked my friend if it is okay for me to ask for advice on her behalf.
Basically, my friend is 50, single and living in a rented property. She has brought up 3 DC on her own.
She works very hard in a minimum wage job, and has worked for the same employer for the last 15 years. She works full time.
When the DC were young, she received child tax credit, working tax credit, housing benefit and council tax benefit. Her ex has never paid maintenance, although she has fought hard for it for years to no avail.
As each child left full time non advanced education, the 2 older children have been fortunate enough to find employment, and the youngest has just left full time non advanced education, and is looking for work.
When the older children were living at home, and were working, they contributed to the bills, but now they have left, and her youngest is not yet in work, my friend finds that she is only entitled to £1.50 a week of working tax credit.
She still receives housing benefit, so pays £81 per week towards her rent.
So she has net pay of £216 per week, gets £1.50 wtc and after paying her rent and council tax (pays council tax in full) is left with £111.50. Her travel costs to and from work are approxiametely £50 a week.
This leaves my friend with £61.50 to pay everything else with. She is completely dreading the new council tax bills due out shortly, as she gets no help at all with council tax.
Her youngest has just begun to claim JSA but has been told his claim will take 6 weeks to process, and it has only been 2 weeks since he submitted his claim.
When he gets JSA, he has offered to pay as much as he can, although my friend isn't sure how much to ask him for, since he will need some of the money he gets to help him look for work. He is happy to contribute I might add.
My friend lives in the back of beyond, no public transport (not much else either) so relies on her car to get to and from work.
Can she get any more financial help?
She is very proud, but is very desperate, and does not want to give up her job if at all possible.
She has already cut down on the majority of her outgoings, so her outgoings are her gas/electric - £80 a month, her water bill - £25 a month, mobile phone - £5 a month PAYG, (no landline because she can't afford it.), car insurance - £28 per month, car tax, MOT worked out monthly is - £21.25, then her luxuries as she calls them, her tv licence - £37.62 a quarter and her window cleaner - £6 every 4 weeks.
This leaves her with just over £20 a week for food. There is no money for repairs if anything goes wrong, and no money for replacing anything.
She is currently looking for a part time job to run alongside her full time job, but have any of you got any other advice.
She is getting quite down and is permanently exhausted. I think this is due to her circumstances partly. I explained that things would look better when her son got his JSA and then a job hopefully, but she is worried about when if he decides to leave home. She says there is no hope for her, and she will spend the rest of her days lining the pockets of the rich whilst barely scraping a living.
I can assure you she is usually upbeat and positive, but the grind of week in, week out poverty is understandably bringing her down. 
Any advice?
AIBU?
AIBU to think there must be more help for my friend than she is getting?
spongebobandpatrick · 05/03/2013 17:40
Heysoulsister, my friend and her son are not just happy to wait, I have no idea where you got that idea from. It takes approx 6 weeks to process a claim for JSA.
How would you expect him to get a job with £0 income. He will need money for bus fare, stamps, a dongle so he can browse the internet for jobs, as well as pounding the streets handing out his cv. All of those cv's he is going to post will need printing, which he will go to the library to do, but the library charge.
Unfortunately, she cannot rent a room out because she downsized to a 2 bed property 4 years ago when both her older children left home. Now there is one room for her and one for her youngest son.
It is rubbish isn't it?
She has sold a few items on facebook sales groups, and her place is looking more and more sparse.
I didn't realise she would pay so much extra tax on another job. I don't think she realised that either.
I think the thought of there being no light at the end of the tunnel is what is making her depressed at the moment.
She has no luxuries, what I would class as luxuries anyway. She doesn't drink at all, doesn't have a social life, doesn't have any hobbies, nothing but basic food and basic cleaning stuff, the cheapest of the cheap.
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Thanks for all of the advice.
She says she is trying to move, but rents closer to the town are even more expensive, so she's not sure how much better off she would be, but she has applied to move and is on the exchange list.
catlady1, she receives housing benefit because her rent is £106 a week. Housing benefit pays £25 a week towards her rent. If they didn't, she would have no money for food or other essentials.
Paying all of her rent would leave her with less than nothing to live on for food and other essentials actually.
She is in a HA flat, yes.
I don't think she can retrain with no money. If she was on means tested benefits, she would get some help towards the cost of college I'm assuming, but for people who work full time and are on a low wage, there appears to be virtually no help, hence asking on here.
She just feels in a no win situation.
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