Too Many Cuts...come join the #Frothers and have your say

Yes, Kate. We need more examples of "average" situations.

Will write up a ranty blog post about wages vs cost of living.

Gallic
Yes, that would be handy. £200 for each child.

Again. I paid ?250 for both children

3 bed house would be more like 700minimum here and i'm not even in the south east. if you had two kids in childcare, 1200. that's near 2 grand to pay out after tax every month before you've even eaten or paid your council tax (and god forbid you were dumb enough to do a degree and still be paying your student loans).

i'm willing to share my details - i'm a disabled lone child with one child who has jsut started school if that's any use. my grand total is about £14k which includes dla - when they take the dla it will plummet obviously. i managed to get into low cost social housing when i lost my flat or it would be higher as private rents are more.

The article is about free childcare and the difference it would make in tax contributions.

I used to pay ?250 for both children, for 36 hours of childcare. Including lunches.

If a 3 bed house costs minimum £600 and childcare £600 - is that about right? - then no wonder people are having to rely on state assistance.

That is more than some people can earn, and they haven't even bought food or heated their house yet.

I think there needs to be examples of people with two children and one child and examples for lone parents and couples.

We need to make this stuff real to the majority. There will be too many people going "I could never afford to have four children so you are automatically unreasonable". Now I understand people's circumstances change but many people do not understand that and you'll lose them as gallic says.

Incidentally, did you all see this article? www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/dec/11/free-childcare-millions-tax-mums?CMP=twt_gu Bloody brilliant.

here - central england/east midlands sort of borderline full time nursery is aprox. £175pw

I would blame childcare costs more - living in the midlands the housing cost isn't so bad, and having a teen I have no childcare costs either, so I manage ok on what I take home with little top up from tax credits, totalling (earnings, tax credits, the lot) between 18 and 21k ish depending on a good work year or a bad

If I had higher housing costs, children all needing childcare - maybe even one or two with SN needing suitably adapted childcare, the figures would be enormous.

So what do I do when he is 12 and still needs a carer?

Gallic I'll take your small flat and jobs if you can take my boy's autism for your child, deal? it means one or other of you ebing ebaten once a day minimu, not having had a night's sleep in 12 years and both of you ending up on anti depressants through exhaustion. Inviting?

(Hunty Dh should be working 35 hours by then thankfully if the business survives. i will say he is more optimistic than I but we shall see).

oh well they do have a plan - drive everyone out of the SE so it can be their own little enclave sheltered from the realities of a failing, fucked up economy for the rest of us.

In Essex, full time child care is roughly £180 -£200 a week. Want me to PM you some links for local nurseries with fees on?

and the appallingly low wages that bear no relation to the cost of living. teh gap had to be made up by ctc's etc now they're just taking that out without having done ANYTHING to address the reality of that ever increasing gap.

Exactly MmeLindor.

Stupidly inflated house prices because we've all bought into this Tory ideal of owning a hose and garden rather than bolstering tenants' rights to produce stable inexpensive tenancies.

We currently live in Essex but will be moving back north next year, partly to be closer to family but partly so we can afford a decent property.

How much is full time childcare in UK, in SE?

I wrote about this after Osborne's Autumn Statement here

So basically the problem is not the benefits system.

It is the housing and childcare costs.

@garlic - yes those figures would be about £50k, maybe a bit less.

Perhaps the real discussion should be why do we need so much money to live on when salaries aren't realistic, if you know what I mean.

I'm a supervisor for local government and DP is a store manager. We couldn't even dream of having more than one child as we couldn't afford nursery fees. One of us would have to give up work and even then we'd only get £800 a year from tax credits under the current rules.

Santa - I'm fucking shit scared too.

And yes, I REALISE that it sounds a lot, when written down like that - but you have to bear in mind that I live in the SE, so both my childcare costs AND my housing costs are so high that even with TWO adults working FT on NMW it would be impossible to cover it all without help with childcare - the maths just doesn't add up. And someone on 30K will also get help with their childcare too - they would end up with roughly the same figure, unless they had a mortgage.

GN - many of those families won't be looking after disabled children.

and my income by the way comes to about 14k all in - so for rent, disability, ctc's etc. is that low enough?

Peachy - You get to work 20 hrs a week until he is 12 whether he has care needs or not PROVIDED your DH is working 35hrs+. If your DH is not working 35hrs+, then yes, either HE will have to work more hours, or you will. Between you, once your DS4 is 5yo, you will have to work 55 hours a week.

i'm aware how feeble this sounds, and it is feeble, but huntycat i'm really scared. i'm a disabled single mum currently on IB and DLA and obviously getting CTC and HB.

i know i could not work 20hrs a week - even if there was a 20hr job i could access whilst taking care of ds single handed. i'd say i could possibly manage it one week in 15 given my health record over the last 5 years that should be more of an ashamed face than a sad one - or a mix of the two.

i don't know how we're going to survive.

it is all so deliberately targeted.

do you know what i will sadly predict headline stories of mother's killing their children and then themselves rather than end up starving on the streets.

i don't know whether to read more and scare the shit out of myself or bury my head in the sand.

apparently people like me and my son don't deserve to live in this society anymore.

So Hunty I have to work for 20 hours a week as a carer then, OK.

Once ds4 is 5 do I still get to work 20 hours only or does that end, with carer status?

I hardly dare ask this - Hunty, your calculations equal a current salary equivalent of about £50k pa. Is that right?

If so, I wouldn't publish it. I realise you'd get about the same on NMW, with bolster benefits, but there must be an awful lot of people running a family on, say £30k.

Did I get this wrong?

DP and I both work full time. we have one child and own our very small flat.

We think we're reasonably well-paid. Between us, after tax, and including child benefit we take home approximately £700 a week.

We're not entitled to tax credits or council tax benefit and if we rented, we wouldn't be entitled to housing benefit either.

From January, we will have to pay almost £200 a week for child care.

I'm not suggesting anyone on benefits would rather not be in a better position or doesn't need them, but when you do maths like that, I'm beginning to understand why people think benefits should be less and that there is a disincentive to work.

I'm not sure the UC is the answer or that the carrot and stick are present in the right proportions.

I agree just put in a key

ie Child Benefit= CB, CTC=ChildTaxCredit, WTC=WorkingTaxCredit, HB=HousingBenefit, CSA=ChildSupportAgency

Hunty

This:

Right now, if you work for 16 hrs a week, there is no 'conditionality' on how much you earn a week, no making you look for extra hours, no making you take on a second job, you get WTC and 70% of your childcare covered up to a certain level.

On UC, if you are a lone parent, or disabled, or a carer, you need to be working for 20 hrs a week at minimum wage to not have to meet 'conditionality'. So if you are currently working 16 hrs a week and claiming WTC, there is NO conditionality, when UC comes in, you will be under the earnings threshold, and will be told to:

1. Get extra hours at work.
2. Take on a second job to make up the hours.
3. take a totally NEW job that earns enough to take you over that threshold. And if you don't - they will stop your UC for 3 months for the first time you don't meet those conditions, 6 months for the second time, and 3 years for the third time.

This is basically the total dismantlement of the Welfare system.

They will be lowering the amount of your childcare costs they cover - so if you will be unable to cover both your childcare costs and your rent, even working 20hrs a week, you will STILL have to do it, even if you can't eat - because if you DON'T - they will STOP YOUR UC.

I just want to crawl under a rock and die now, TBH.

If you have been on ESA in the WRAG for a year, you will also be subject to conditionality, because after a year, you will be passed back to UC. Even if you are still ill or suffering from your life-long disability.

And if you have a disability that is not classed as severe enough to qualify for ESA (like epilepsy, if you have less than 700+ seizures a year), they don't give you the 20 hrs a week condition - they give you the 35hrs one that fully fit people get.

A couple has a HIGHER level of conditionality - minimum of what you would earn on NMW for 35 hrs a week. And EACH person in the couple has to meet their OWN conditionality requirements, so the person designated as the 'main carer' MUST work for at least 20hrs, like a LP, and the OTHER paerson MUST work for at least 35 hrs, like a single person with no dependants.

and your maths example