OH lost his job today what can we do now?

[MrsHunterx]

I feel so gutted for him even though he says he's not to bothered. He's only been there for four weeks he took yesterday of to take me to the hospital because I was bleeding (36 weeks pregnant) and this morning they have sacked him.

We have about £6000 in savings and 300 in our current account I feel silly saying things are tight but our savings have never been so low.

Are we entitled to any benefits because we have savings? He wants to hold of getting another job until dd is here so he can spend time with her.

Any advice would be appreciated x

OP, I'm simply saying that I find it bizarre that you say you eat out all the time because you're 'lazy' and can't work out what to cook, you make no mention of our partner helping you cook at all, you say he doesn't want to go back to work straight away then ask about benefits which are subsidised by the tax that the very people writing on your thread contribute to, you're worried about your rent, he can defer his start if he is offered a job and can easily (and lawfully) say 'I can't start for 2 weeks due to my partner expecting a baby', you say you eat out 'for no particular reason apart from being lazy and can't think of what to cook' then are snarky with me insinuating that actually there is a reason and that it's due to you being exhausted (I'm not a mind reader)...

What do you want people to suggest other than your partner gets a job in order to make some money...? It literally is that simple.

I shop and cook for 4 children on about £50 per week x

Op pinterest is brilliant for food ideas...

There is lots of stuff you can cook for cheap go on the money saving threads. You can eat well still.
Keep your chins up! On the the bright slide you have that small cushion.

@LeftRightCentre as I said our outgoings aren't high. Our council tax is paid up for a year so is our car insurance and car tax.
Our rent is cheap £625 we don't have phone contracts we had "spare money"

@cheesefield your taxes paying for us to go out to eat! if the worst came to the worst and we had to claim benefits I don't think we would be going out to eat not with £1000 a month.

My OH has paid thousands in taxes being a high earner and so have I myself. So if we needed to apply for housing benefit for a small period of time surely we would only be using a small fraction of what we have paid in?

skye

That's amazing!!
My problem is my dc won't eat stuff like lentils... Or all the super healthy stuff. One of my fav meals is simples grains with lemon and feta but dc can't stand it. One doesn't like jacket pots or beans the other hates tuna.

Pasta is our main cheap option and gallets.

OP I don't think you should have named his employer.

If he's gone from JLR to AM, is it possible for him to find work as a contractor back at JLR and use some of his contacts there to see about spaces in teams? I know JLR use a lot of contractors.

@susurration I don't think he's even thought that far ahead yet his cousin is a PL at JLR so should be fairly easy to get back in but I know he hated it there in the end.

My OH has paid thousands in taxes being a high earner and so have I myself. So if we needed to apply for housing benefit for a small period of time surely we would only be using a small fraction of what we have paid in?

Unless you’ve both earned and paid tax on 6 figure salaries for a couple of decades you wont have covered the cost of your education and healthcare, the birth of your child and his healthcare since, council services etc.

Yes but neither will anyone else.

My OH has paid thousands in taxes being a high earner and so have I myself. So if we needed to apply for housing benefit for a small period of time surely we would only be using a small fraction of what we have paid in?

Taxes are not a personal insurance policy. Attitudes like this are exactly why the Tories and the likes of C5 have been able to ramrod austerity and that shower of shit that is UC through.

And what Titty said. Plenty of us have paid in, but if we lose jobs (and plenty of us have) we don't consider the state the default for support.

My OH has paid thousands in taxes being a high earner and so have I myself. So if we needed to apply for housing benefit for a small period of time surely we would only be using a small fraction of what we have paid in?

It seriously doesn't work that way.

MrsHunter most people with £6000 in savings, a 2 year old and a baby due any day and only one earner still on probation wouldn't believe that they could afford to eat out multiple times per week regardless of what the salary the sole earner was earning was. The safety net is too precarious. If you're renting you need enough to live on for 6 months in savings before you consider yourself well enough off to hemorrhage money on eating out multiple times per week.

Most people reading your thread have probably got more than one child, and two years is a very standard gap. I moved houses and countries 7 months pregnant and with a nearly 2 year old and yep, still cooked despite having about £30,000 in savings at that point having just sold a house, and there initially not being a kitchen fitted in our new house (cooked with a portable table top electric hob on a camping table and had to wash up in the bath) until the kitchen was fitted after 3 weeks.

That's why most people think your perspective is a bit off.

Your DH urgently needs to find work but of course it should be no problem to specify that he is unavailable for 2 weeks following the birth of his child. As I said loads of people secure a new job with a holiday booked which they're not prepared to forgo or with a 4 or 8 week notice period.

Going back to his previous employer and asking for contract work is an excellent suggestion from PPS.

I feel like this thread is getting silly now so I'm going to leave it here going into taxes and politics when it was never about that.

Thanks for the useful advice some people have given me on cutting back and ideas on getting him back into work sooner. Benefits was never a permanent option it's a matter of giving us sometime and breathing space as he has only been sacked today.

Yes but neither will anyone else.

What’s your point?

I'm sorry to hear that your DH has lost his job and especially at such a time of change, but maybe he's right, if he could line something up to start when the baby was around a month old, and you could afford for this to happen, it seems like a reasonable option. As you've already said you have thought of some ways to cut down on your outgoings. I would suggest meal planning and putting together a budget that you stick to. Then you can make a realistic assessment of how long you can afford for him to be off for. Wishing you luck and happy times with your new baby.

I’m a bit gobsmacked by your posts too, OP. You’ve ONLY got £6k in savings and you don’t work. And your husband took an almost 10k net cut in his annual income.

You seriously have no idea how to budget or save.

You seriously have no idea how to budget or save.

You do realise that over half the nation are in this sort of situation with very little (if any) savings, and actually apart from a mortgage have considerable debt with cars, credits cars, loans, other finance agreements etc.

It may well be a case of poor financial management / overstretching, but it's actually probably the norm for our country right now.