Finding it hard not to resent friend on benefits

I used to work 12 hour days and now I work part time. I can tell you the less I work the less I want to work. Yes I’ve got older but I really do think it’s a mindset. We have generations of people now who wouldn’t be able to cope with full time working. It’s hard, particularly if you don’t enjoy it and it involves hard graft. We are out of condition now as a society. I don’t think you’ll ever get the terminally unemployed back to employment.

This is it. In some places the average wages are below what it costs to rent an average flat. And home ownership is a vanishing prospect. It's not just people on benefits who are unable to afford housing costs. The housing crisis is really a supply and affordability crisis.

Yes. If you present as homeless while pregnant or with a baby you would probably end up in temporary accommodation for a long time. If you joined the housing register while pregnant or with a baby you might get some priority for overcrowding, but you might not if the Council says your living room could be used as a bedroom, and your level of priority would likely be pretty low unless you are e.g. sharing facilities with another household.

I admit that I do worry about my young adult children. They are at university and they hope to find jobs and work full-time. I worry that over the next decade, they and their peers will be taxed to the hilt in order to pay for all the different benefits and elderly care. It feels like an impossible situation.

Millions aren't choosing to live off benefits, they have no choice as the cost of living, housing especially, is so high that their wages do not cover it.

A single person over the age of 25 on UC gets £400.14 per month. Once you've taken off all your bills that doesn't leave a lot for food and holidays! The housing element often doesn't cover the whole of the rent either so that also needs to come out of the standard allowance. Your council tax is reduced but many areas do not cover all of it. I had to pay £60/month council tax when I was on UC.

@Keirawr "The benefits system is not only abused by millions ...". Evidence?

This.

Yeah so little that millions are choosing to live off these benefits. These argument about benefits being very little to live just is t supported by facts.

Only 40% are working and most will be choosing to work part time to maximise their benefits. Whole 60% have made it their full time mission to just live off benefits. Not a great picture, is it.

It’s benefits which keep wages low, rather than low wages requiring benefits. If wages were not subsidized with benefits, employers would have to pay the going rate. And wages would be what they should be.

The benefits system is not only abused by millions, it’s also the worst type of incentivization for employers to pay the right amount.

It should be cut deep and hard.

Op, you should do a benefits calculator, I think you'd be surprised at how little people get. I'm sure your friend also thinks you buy things she can't afford like getting your hair and nails done. You just have different priorities.

New mums end up in B&Bs and hostels for years now.
Gone are the days that turning up pregnant to your local council office meant you got a flat by the time the baby was born.
Times have changed so much.

You may be able to claim, but it doesn’t guarantee a Council house 😳

Your friends are lucky to have you. (Continuing with the off topic deviation!)

But everyone makes risk assessments based on what they know and the information they have at the time. If two people are in generally good health why should they live like they'll die tomorrow and not actually participate in life or enjoy life as a result? I think it would be quite sad to get to 90 years old with plenty of wealth around you and no much wanted family to share it with. Surely you'd just be living with a very different type of regret at that point?

I was devastated by how things had turned out in my life and how it impacted me but I will never, ever regret my child. In fact if I'd never had him and I'd wasted all my fertile years saving for him instead, that would have been a whole other level of grief that would have stuck with me a lifetime.

Prudent is great but you're completely removing human emotion. People are not robots.

Anyone can be ill/disabled at any time. It can happen over night. It could happen 2 days after your "prudent" planning.

What sort of insurance policies exist for husbands leaving and refusing to pay child support?

Well she hardly knew he was going to become ill while she was pregnant did she? They were both working when she conceived

Not planning for how they would cope with one partner ill or disabled, for starters.

That’s the prudent way to plan a family.

Ido you feel hard done to or do you want someone else to have the same stress as you maybe you’re stronger and better able to cope
you want to get a gratitude list going for what’s good in your life and stop making comparisons there will always be people who have “more “ than us “financially/emotionally in relationships if you try to separate things you do and don’t have power over life on the surface is not fair but we can choose to be happy it’s wise not to inventory someone else’s life we can’t know what struggles they are going through I would try to concentrate on what I can do to improve the lives of my nearest and dearest
you should let this resentment go -I doubt if anyone else will be loosing sleep over it!

And why would the OPs friend not have structure to their day. Whether it's a work day or dealing with the kids. Does that mean a SAHM has not got any structure to their day either?
A relative of mine is currently not working and on UC. SHES GOT A 4 week old baby and 2 year old and a husband that is undergoing treatment for cancer and isn't well enough to work.

Where's her poor choices ( she was pregnant before his diagnosis)

And again I will say that you cannot plan for every eventuality. I had thousands saved before I tried to have my ds to cover my mat leave and anything ds might need and saved something every month while i was on mat leave. Stbxh and I were together for a long time before then- working to get to a position where we felt stable enough to try for a child, both of us climbing a career ladder to do so. I had waited until later in life to have a child so I was doing it with the right person who my family and friends all loved who seemed completely hard working and dependable. You can imagine what a horrible shock it was to discover his affair given how completely out of character it was. Which is why I stayed and we did counselling and he cut all ties and I put in all the emotional work until I realised he was still at it. He then lost his job and now contributes very little to ds while I pay everything and am left holding the baby. Sometimes you can do everything as you are supposed to - all the prudent planning, taking responsiblity, delayed gratification and it still goes to shit. Or your partner dies. Or you end up losing your jobs and can't get another one. No-one is realistically in a position to have 18 years worth of child related costs in the bank before trying to procreate - for most people their fertility would have ended before reaching that stage. And that's before we even touch on the fallibility of birth control or coercive control/intimate partner rape etc or how much fertility treatments can cost. Your thinking is extremely black and white and it doesn't work in the real world. What it would do is punish people - namely children- who are in vulnerable positions.

It's interesting that you reference the challenge of being in an abusive relationship while simultaneously suggesting that single mothers should get less support therefore making it harder for women with children to leave domestic violence relationships.

As for those saying bringing kids up on your own is hard, yes I am not disputing that, but that does not mean they deserve more more money than 2 working parents, or evan 1 working parent. All kids need the same financial support

utterly bonkers. The person being discussed WORKS! I mean, you are suggesting that single people cannot earn as much as 2 people. Why? What is your logic? We all earn what we earn, some more than others. A single parent earning, say, £100k shouldn’t have as much money as 2 parents earning minimum wage?

all kids don’t need the same financial support. My child with a disability costs me more than the two who don’t have a disability. I live in a cheap area, so my children don’t cost as much as those in London, where rents and mortgages are way more than the rest of the country. Think. Just think.

Yup.

OP has not said what her friend gets in UC. But she also works so some of that money in her own pot will be her own earned cash.
40% of people in UC are in work. She is one of them, and you can't say they are not allowed to go on holiday etc. How they spend their money is up to them... and from what OP is saying, her friend is good at budgeting, always buys second hand clothing, does not have a car etc.

If someone on benefits is able to save, or have some nice things, that does not mean they are claiming too much. Or are you saying that any left over money after bills etc should go back to the DWP?

It’s not too late. Do it if you think it’s that easy.