AIBU to claim UC with a 'high' income

Next time the Tories get in and after a few years people start moaning and questioning why anyone would vote Tory...

This is why people vote Tory.

Wow

I think the really sad point is that another government will have to come in and remove all this excess welfare and that will be hard for those in receipt of it. Plus Labour will have destroyed the economy at the same time.

In answer to your question OP i think you should claim what you are entitled to. Prices are high and it will help your family. No prizes for martyrdom.

Well that’s interesting as I just played around with the entitledto.com calculator again: I pretended I earned £68k, owned my own home with a mortgage, and had three kids aged 8,6 and 4 paying £1500 a year for childcare. This did not give me ANY universal credit entitlement. I wonder if you have other factors?? I think it’s really dangerous to whip up wrong information about this sort of thing as it opens the door to people wanting to vote for Reform at the next election.

WTF.

I don't understand it either did you put you were in a mortgaged house? I think what I'm seeing is if you rent you'll get universal credit. I don't understand the system at all. It's not supposed to pay to not work. But clearly that's not true!

But I do have children with disabilities and I still work. Except I’ve just found out I’m better off not working! It shouldn’t be the case that people get more money not working.

If you didn't have children with disabilities though you would be expected to work after they turned age 3 I think.

I’ve just ran our family through the calculator. Both work, combined income of 54K. 1 disabled child at home plus 1 disabled adult child. Entitled to nothing.

Ran the same details except this time said that I didn’t work. And now I’m entitled to £2.4K a month!!! Which is more than I take home from my wages.

Why would anyone work in this economy?

That is a bit galling, I must admit, and I generally don't give a shit about who gets what.

But my take home is now about £1000/mth, DH is paid when he finishes a job but his yearly income is around 5k. We get DLA for DS and DH gets Carers Allowance and that's it. My redundancy payment means we get nothing else.

I can't see us ever being in a situation where we'll have the opportunity for anything approaching this level of savings again, and they're going to get spent, just thankfully a bit slower than if I was on JSA. DH has no pension (or not one worth anything, he paid in for a couple of years before his employer went into administration during COVID.), mine was forecast to be worth a grand total of 1k a year, but that was when my take home was £1650 a month, obviously the amount going in will be less now so it's valid well be less. All this makes me very worried about the future - I don't think I'll be retiring as long as I'm physically able to work, assuming anyone will employ me. I don't know if DS will ever be independent, if he'll ever be able to hold down a job, he's 12 and he can barely refill his water bottle, we still put his socks on him. You just wonder what the point in it all is.

It's is morally and realistically unsustainable. I'm also a lifelong Labour voter but reconsidering my options.

Please let the school know if you are eligible for them. They may ask you to claim as they receive a premium for children on free school meals. You don’t even have to have them, it just releases extra funding.

Are they even bothering about that anymore? I don't even blame the government. Their backbenchers are desperate to trojan horse Andy Burnham or one of the dodgy Hard Left MP's into the PM seat one way or another. Starmer is too weak to call their bluff and ignore them.

The welfare state in this country is ballooning at a rate we cannot afford and Labour seem content to let it continue. And I say this as a frequent Labour voter. The disability system, triple lock and UC all need sorting out.

‘There’s no set level of income where you stop being eligible for Universal Credit - it depends on your situation.’

Everyone should check if they are Entitled.

Labour are insane. They have gone completely the wrong way about balancing the books.

I don’t understand this.

We have a combined income of £54k, 1 child at home who gets high rate DLA. 1 adult child who gets high rate PIP. We can’t get anything. Not entitled to carers allowance because we work, not entitled to UC.

Yet people are getting it on higher incomes? Feel like we would be better off if one of us left work sometimes!

@Katemax82 yes I saw your follow up after I posted.
Your situation makes sense.
I don't see how the OP would be entitled to anything though.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/universal-credit/before-you-apply/check-if-youre-eligible-for-universal-credit/

Claim it. You might as well if you're entitled to it. Just tell your kids to do well at school and hightail it out of here before the shit hits the fan.

I replied earlier but basically it's mostly because we get a lot extra for our disabled kids, our rent is high so the LHA is like £1440. They deduct what my husband earns over £414 at 55p in every pound so after that we are left with about £580
If my husband quit work and claimed carers for one of our sons our award would be about 3800! But it's not in his ethics to not work (as he gets up at 2am to go drive a freight train and come home 14 hours later) I don't work due to one of my autistic sons being very high needs and is very difficult in every sense

I'm a teacher on 42k a year, two disabled children, one who gets DLA, I get approximately £500 a month UC. I rely on it, it allows me to work part time so I can be home for my daughter who is out of school, but when she turns 16 next year if she doesn't get PIP it'll stop, along with her DLA. We would lose 1k a month, I'll manage but petrol to get to work will be tricky, food will have to be reduced massively, (we already never get takeaways or anything fancy, Aldi shop once a week and batch cooking) we won't be able to put the heating on to stay comfortable. No holiday and very reduced outgoings.

On the face of it I earn well, I'm a professional with a good career...but without it life would be much harder than it needs to be. Even if she got PIP, at 19 UC would stop and I'm still housing her and she's very unlikely to get a job or go off to uni. I'll have to work full time and I don't know how we will manage.

The system isn't crazy, it's helping people like me and my daughter. Without it she'd be home every day for 10 hours alone, when she was self harming and in burnout it would have been dangerous to leave her, so I reduced my hours and UC topped my earnings up.

I do extra tutoring in the holidays, for 6 full days of work I earn about £600...which UC takes back through reductions so I'm actually working for 8 hour days plus prepation of about 2 hours for less than £50 a day. But it's something extra so I do it. I'm trying to reduce my benefit burden.

So if you're entitled then you should get it, the way it's worked out is for a reason. I've paid tax and worked since I was 16, 33 years.. I've done my bit and now I need the help, that's what it's for.

Amazing. Go for it why not. I’m going to look on the ‘what am I entitled to’ website too. Yey Labour.