Friend earns as much as me on benefits

I don't believe she is getting £6000 a month. Also very sad that you would want your neices/nephews to be living in poverty.

It would annoy me that she is planning a further child and expecting the state to fund it

I can believe this. I was a low earner young kids, partner left. I received £1000 towards my rent (south east), £900 in universal credit. £900 from work and then a £800 payment for child maintenance which is never counted as earnings. I am no better off now I work full time. I was pleasantly surprised at the time. I expected to be in poverty. All of that was tax free.

What? How?

It's Mumsnet, you cannot have a discussion about this without being accused of benefit bashing or fibbing I'm afraid Op.

On the slim chance this isn't a windup (48 and getting IVF, yeah right!), then I'd say she was lying. Unless she's claiming disability benefits for herself and/or her children then there's no way you get that much in benefits.

When the children turn 3 they expect you to look for work and prove it. Endless meetings and planning with the threat of sanctions always in the air.

Also, once you have £6k in savings they take money off your universal credit. £16k and benefits are stopped.

Go to the entitled to website and put in your information, you're likely entitled to universal credit top up as a single parent.

Its 16k but you get less if you go over 6

The OP does not know that there are no disabilities.

I am aware of the LHA yes but if it's council/social housing that doesn't apply. Also assuming she's entitled to a 3 bed property for her and 2 kids, the LHA for Glasgow is £223 per week. Edinburgh is £316. But equally places like Ayshire and Dumfries & Galloway are £130 and £115 with lots of other amounts in between those and Edinburgh. So it really depends where she lives. But I don't know why people seem to think renting in Scotland costs pennies. I guess it's cheaper than many other places in the UK but it's still easily enough for this woman to possibly be receiving over £1k in housing element on UC.

The maximum you can have is 16k.

A good start would be regulating business properly to force them to actually pay realistic salaries, instead of permitting them to pay breadline amounts then the Government having to top it up with in-work benefits anyway.

Since the 2008 crash we've had slow growth in productivity, yet next to no growth in salaries. All that money is going somewhere, yet it isn't ending up in the pockets of employees or in the UK Exchequer in the form of tax or general population spend.

👏👏👏

I thought you couldn’t claim universal credit if you’ve got over 6k savings

If OP and friend both have the same amount I can't see how OP would be much better off going through life...
Yes they'll both have rent or mortgage to pay but OP may have to pay for dental treatment/prescriptions/eye tests all of which friend may not have to pay out for.
Friend could also be entitled to up to 100% council tax reduction.
Friend could also get pension credits to contribute to a state pension.

I'm not sure it pays to have or want to buy you're own property or have more than 16k in savings TBF there's a chance that it'll all be taken once in old age if you have to go into care...

In the distant future OP could be sat in a care home having had to hand over her own home and savings to pay for her care with her friend sat opposite her being funded.

Hmm. If there's no disabilities she will have work commitments.
If you're only clearing 2k p/m OP and you private rent then you should claim UC yourself. Highly likely you would be entitled to some help.

She also won't get welfare for her third child (which she won't have because it's practically impossible to have a child at 48) except the child benefit which is only 25 a week for the first child and less than that for subsequent children. She won't get universal credit or child tax credits for the third child. Just saying

3 people living on £2000 is not even that much when counting in the cost of rent, groceries and bills these days. So I don't know where on earth is she getting £8000 for the ivf? If she is spreading the cost over one year, that will leave them £1333 a month to live on.

It's total nonsense. Unless her rent is sky high - which in Scotland it probably won't be

Unless she lives in one of the parts of Scotland that is currently enjoying rent-inflation outstripping that of London, thanks to over-tourism, BTL, and absentee speculative landlords buying everything rendering it impossible for locals to buy property.

It's still true that most of Scotland is relatively affordable, but it's not true of the entire country, and it's changing rapidly as more and more of the aforementioned nonsense spreads into areas it never formerly affected.

You realise rent is capped depending on the average in the local area? So even if you can find some places that are 1k that doesn't mean welfare will pay for all of it?

If you had the same circumstances as your friend who gets £2k in benefits, you too would receive some (a not insignificant sum) benefits even if you had £2k in earnings.

I can believe it, although as others have said not sure how she is not having to work some hours. Also, if she is not successful with her IVF, then at some point her benefits will be greatly reduced when her children turn 18. You see posts on mumsnet where parents have to move etc once their children turn 18 and their benefits are greatly reduced.
I have a friend who has just taken a f/t job and is actually worse off because of the reduction in benefits, having to pay additional travel costs, loss of bursaries and free dental/NHS prescriptions etc. She is thinking of the long term picture and knows that eventually she’ll be better off.

There are many properties in Scotland over £1k a month in rent. It isn't some super cheap country 🤣 But if you have a look at my last post I also realised it could include child benefit and scottish child payment which would be almost £400 every 4 weeks so the friends total UC could be around £1600 which means rent isn't that high.

I was in this position years ago when DS was small - lone parent, had a friend who was a lone parent who had more disposable income than me ie after rent.

I was lucky that I was paying off a mortgage rather than rent, but it does feel unfair. As others have said, working is good for you, good for your kids, you have opportunities to develop your career, increase earnings etc, and I've done these.

But, when you're getting up at 7am to put a wash on, and make lunches and get the kids to school before going to work yourself, and a friend hasn't got these pressuers and has the same - or higher - standard of living without any of the work it can be galling.

It's not necessarily knocking benefit claimants to point out that there can be disincentives to working.

How do you KNOW though? I have a disabled child - he's autistic and we get a substantial DLA every month. Nobody knows we get this, and hardly any of our friends even know he's autistic (just think he's a bit quirky). They don't see the tough stuff, just easy playdates (which we carefully engineer to ensure he can cope, or whisk him away at the first sign of not coping). No doubt all my friends would laugh and say 'of course he's not disabled' if anyone even suggested that we received disability benefits.

These threads are always full of people moaning about those friends of theirs who get loads of benefits but never disclose how much they earn.

It's very simple. If your household income is under a certain amount, and you have dependents, or rent, or disabilities, or your children have disabilities.... etc, then you may be entitled. I've yet to see a like for like comparison of income and circumstances where the person on benefits is genuinely better off.