Can I use my savings to pay off some of my mortgage, and then claim benefits?

[BzzzzzOff]

Well aware that I'm about to get flamed for this, but I am fed up with being penalised for being responsible with my money.

DH and I have £30k in savings, which was intended to go towards our next house when the DC start school and I go back to work. Currently I am a SAHM with two toddlers, and DH is on a low income (£24k). We just about manage without needing to dip into our savings, but from next year they will start depleting pretty rapidly as our energy fix comes to an end.

I know how lucky we are to have plenty of savings, but I am really upset that if we'd been reckless and bought the bigger house before having children then we could be on benefits now and receiving all this extra help. As it is, we'll probably never be able upsize as our savings will be gone.

So, I think I'm going to stick £25k onto our mortgage, keeping £5k in the bank, and start claiming Universal Credit. Could this be considered deprivation of assets? Frankly don't care if this is "immoral", I am just wondering how careful I need to be in order to protect the savings I worked so hard for.

To me paying off a mortgage can never be wrong. People who say that you should invest some savings at a higher rate of interest may be theoretically right but in practice I don’t think that’s at all easy to do at the moment. It probably was possible twenty years ago.
The problem comes when you have to agree to actively seek work, even if it’s only for sixteen hours (or less I’m not well informed on this). That would defeat your object.
I think you need a Plan B.

There are a lot of moral grey areas around assets and benefits tbh - you see it most acutely with the elderly. What about the couple in their sixties/seventies who either sign their house over, downsize or go into sheltered housing so they can distribute the proceeds from the house sale among their family years before they actually need care? Is this a kind of premeditated deprivation of assets in order to evade care costs, and is it wrong? Or the adult children who are happy for mum or dad to stay in their own home with costly domiciliary care provided by the council, when they really need full time nursing care - also to put off a house sale that will be used to fund care - is that also wrong?

Sorry yes it will be 16 hours with a 3 or 4 year old.

www.gov.uk/universal-credit/your-responsibilities

For me benefits are for people who have no other way.

I dont care, what OP does, I just said what I would do.

I agree with you OP. Myself and my husband have a house that we saved and worked hard for. We've never been on holiday, we rarely have days out but we saved for our home and we were proud of that. We saved enough to support us having a child and me being on maternity too. Now, nursery fees are absolutely crippling us - nearly £50 a day - and I'm essentially going to work to pay nursery fees. My husband is working as much overtime as he can.

Somebody I know however, doesn't work, never has worked, chose to rent because its practically paid for her and still has managed to have three children!

This is not me slating people who genuinely cannot work, who are disabled or who have fallen on hard times, this is about those who could work but choose not to because sadly, it's better for them financially!

I think you should get a remote job and work to make up the short fall. Your dp should also use some of the savings to retrain and get a qualification so that he can earn more than the minimum wage. The problem with you both is the lack of ambition to better yourself & the over reliance on benefits to bail you out. You haven't got a disability so you're both perfectly able adults who've chosen to stay in the low earning sector.

Such a crappy response, and 24k is quite a bit more than minimum wage. They clearly haven’t relied on benefits either.

No but they want to, if you read the op you'll see that she wants to overpay her mortgage using £30k savings. This is so they can continue to claim benefits.

Here you go

Yes I have read it, it’s so they can start claiming benefits as they aren’t currently eligible due to their savings. I’m also capable of finding the opening post, your answer was still crappy and unhelpful. Clearly you just enjoy being unpleasant though.

No that's playing the system, they should use the money to upskill themselves & get better paying jobs. It can also be classed as deprivation of assets, it's also telling that her first instinct was to claim benefits. Rather than encourage her dp to look for a higher paying job, shows lack of aspiration.

There is a problem if the NMW is not high enough to live on without claiming working benefits. If you have a company making millions in profit & paying their CEO 325x more than those at the bottom. 50 years ago that disparity was 21x different. Where is the outcry about that being morally bankrupt? Where is the outcry about not paying staff enough to live in? Where is the moral outcry about the tax payer topping up the wages of the CEOs company whilst he earns 325x what they do?

if op had overpaid her mortgage instead of saving, this wouldn’t be a conundrum and she would be able to claim benefits

as for retraining to earn better money, if everyone did that - who is going to do the NMW jobs? And not have enough to live on

The most interested part of this OP to me

ow that the Op thinks that her husband earning £24k a year and supporting a family of 4 is a scenario that anyone would regard as a boastful post

It's the MN chicken isn't it?

I think supporting a family of 4 and owning your own house on one salary of 24K is pretty impressive. Lots of people struggling on twice that! I'd quite like to know how they do it tbh - I assume they may have saved before children when OP was earning too?

I don’t really understand how you’re different to Person B?

Lile them, you think your nice things should be paid for by others.

Perhaps you minsinderstood me

i think £24k sole income for a family of 4 must be very difficult.

my starting salary 20 years ago was £23k. And that was me, on my own, aged 22!

”There is a problem if the NMW is not high enough to live on without claiming working benefits. If you have a company making millions in profit & paying their CEO 325x more than those at the bottom. 50 years ago that disparity was 21x different. Where is the outcry about that being morally bankrupt? Where is the outcry about not paying staff enough to live in? Where is the moral outcry about the tax payer topping up the wages of the CEOs company whilst he earns 325x what they do?”

^This^ in spades. We have all been nicely conditioned to look down on those claiming in work benefits as a convenient distraction from looking up at the real problem of immoral greed. We are literally watching wealth transfer from the majority of the population into the hands of the rich.