benefits - can anyone advise?

[namechangerrr]

hi i am a regulare but have name changed for this. i was wondering if anyone would e able to help me here. i have seen on the news about benfits being cut/capped but cant seem to find any exact figures.

was wondering if anyone could be able to help me and see if my benefit will be capped or cut, so that i can be prepared for this.

i recieve weekly:
£135 child tax credit
£48 cb
£65 incone support
£145 hb
£12 ctb

i no this seems like a huge amount when written like this but in reality it isnt. once i have paid gas, elec, water rates (£28 per week!), tv licence etc there is not much left for food/nappies.

i would be very grateful if anyone could help. i am not intending to be on benefit forever and i do want to better myself for myself and my children.

does the op work out at £28k gross? My maths is a bit rubbish.

If so that's weird, dp works and earns £20k gross.

Not op's fault re how much she gets, but posting in AIBU suggests she knew this would cause upset.

Personally I am a hell of of a lot better off with Dh working f/t and me working p/t on low income jobs.

We get CTC, WTC and CB and our wages. We are freakin' rich compared to how we were on benefits/in rented housing getting everything the op gets. Not to mention the house will be ours eventually.

you dont get HB for morgage,DWP pay their standard intrest for a morgage,did you mean that

and having experienced this method its not as great as you would believe

But, Brian, in that case you must either work too or get WTC and CTC which would work out at more than the op gets.

yeah sorry my post sounded agressive.im a kitten really

Dooin - is that right? If just dp worked and earnt, as he currently does, £20k, WTC and CTC would then mean he got more than £28k? That's the bit that was confusing me, that you could receive more not working than working, seemed a bit strange.

We don't get WTC or CTC because I work too.

Yeah you would get WTC and CTC my BIL earns around £25k and they gets loads of benefits.

I think most people can cope quite well on benefits in the short term. They will sometimes have savings or their credit rating will be ok so they have access to cheap credit/loans or family and friends might help them out if they think it's short term. Long term though it's incredibly damaging and it gets harder to juggle everything. And the longer you're in the system, for whatever reason, the harder it is to get out.

It's all very well for the government to impose cuts and 'make work pay' but rather than changing the system by say, raising the basic tax rate threshold (whatever happened to raising that to 10k by the way, Mr Clegg?) or allowing someone working less than 16 hours to keep more than £20 of their earnings or making it easier to reclaim if a temporary job ends or providing more accessible and cheaper childcare or encouraging more businesses to offer flexible hours or the option to work from home or any number of options that would mean it would be madness NOT to work...rather than that they will just cut benefits until it's work or starve. Yeah, that's really progressive.

TSc sauys she has little sympathy with: I am ging to be absoluely honest ehre and say I have little sympathy with virtually anyone complaining on this thread, in some ways anyway-

Because you have choices and what I would give for those! I have had everything dictated to me but the bastard that is autism, twice over, plsu an SEN dyspraxic child who has picked half his face off from stress and the fact we were so tied up with ds1 and ds3 we didn;t notice his own struggles.

I am lucky because I Dh and I are setting up together but it's the absolute oppsoite of any job I would ever choose, and as someone with a post grad it can't be argues I didn;t put in the workload to try and determine my career either.

But having been a carer, and continuing as sone albeit in 8 hours a week work from home, I would love to be able to say 'Ah sod it I am going to the job centre / agnecy / whatever' without that being folwoed with 'Oh no i;ve got an IEP / therapy / hospital appt / no childcare'

You know I even had to give up voluntary work at the school becuase a queue woudl form of kids complaining about ds1's ASD behaviours.

Your choices can be removed in an insteant- overnight. Anyone who ahs any- even if it would be the untenable pack it all in and go on benefits- is lucky. you ahve no choice because your house would be reposessed? We lost ours when DH got really ill just before ds3 was born. We would ahve liked the chance to keep hold of it, the choice.

And yet I do not see that anybody should struggle in poverty just becuase we've had it tough. Why would I? I don;t resent a penny of teh taxes we have paid, and I don;t want to see a single eprson sat scared that they can;t find the money for the man from the provvy or that their LO can;t have a Christmas gift this eyar. I grew up poorish., dad grew up extremely poor (child 15 / 16, working at five if he wanted to eat) and that's not what I want for anyone.

Absolutely the minimum wage is too low or house prices far too high, yes, but that ain't gonna change-
can you imagine the outcry if the bottom fell out of the hosuing market from the owners? Or from those IOD types if a living wage was suggested? There are so many people in the world wanitng everyone else to have it as ahrd as them, and I pray to god I never become one.

oh god im losing the will to live

i think as individuals we all have different ideas of what is a priority whether on benefits or not,same as the stereotype of benefit claimants

think we personally most of the time go for the option which makes us better of,human nature

dont know why if posted this,bet lets keep the im worse of than you,you and you as just breeds spiteful remarks

god just read back,talking utter nonsense,its been a long day

they will pay the intrest after (depending on your claim and how much borrowed)your morgage if your not working

However this sounds so easy but its not,they set there own rate across the board so alot of the time you have to make the extra out of your benefit,and those on repayment would be hit hard as they dont pay capital

i had 2/3 endowment and 1/3 repayment had to make up approx 100 amonth,that was fine only the same as a rent top up really,what really stretched me and i mean streched was the endownment 150 month if i didnt pay the whole morgage was worthless and i hadnt spent 15+yrs paying for it all to lose it

ended up dinnerladying earning £20 a week and used that towards it but those years were very tough and dont realistically think i could of gone on much longer,but things changed and the morgage was no more

I am staggered at this amount of benefit, no wonder the current government needs to make changes. Namechangerr doesnt have any costs for travelling to work, no childcare and no worries about holding down a job with all the stresses that brings and she still feels hard done by.

You're right of course, OP hs no stress

She just escaped a DV relationship and was sent to a new area FFS

She wants to work

Get over it!

TSC if you lose the house isn;t that what benefits ARE there for? you might not need them- we didn't, we were lucky enough to have enough equity that we could clear the mortgage and pay the rent- but it was better times then, for the national finances at least.

But yes, they would the interest, after a qualifying period and for a time at elast. Full HB is also conditional; they do (rightly) chack income very often indeed.

OK generally I will not ever get involved in this osrt of post BUT..... the OP has escaped DV and is setting herself and her DCs a new life. Yes she recieves benefits while she is getting back on her feet....she has said is going to getting a new job FFS!!!

Everyone who is moaning about benefits there for people who fall on hard times....well the OP has! She is getting help to settle her and her children in a better life, that is a good use of public funds if you ask me!

Some of you on here seem to think it would be better that she ekpt her children in an enviroment with DV, rather than recieve state support! Of course what about what that would cost the state if the DCs grew up damaged because of the homelife.....then of course people would all be shouting you should have got your children out of that enviroment!

OP - you ahve done the right thing in my opinion...hold your head up high!

Hear, hear BC

Be proud OP: you are doing all the right things.

im still waiting for reply a couple of pages back about what the amount the anti benefit brigade think the op and the like should live on,as the op is getting so much

answers welcome

wont hold my breath

£30 in food vouchers and first dibs at a jumble sale every sixth year.

Possibly.

But never, ever a wardrobe.

i dont think a cot is a must have,plenty of draws,oh no not aloud a chest of draws either

thank god for the trusty carboard box and when not sleeping in could be used as entertainment as deffo NO toys

lol

I am raferring to many posts I have seen implying that all people in receipt of benefits are scroungers. The OP came on here to ask a question, this thread has been nasty. Maybe people can have some consideration, and think that venting their anger at the system could be done in a manner that doesn't seem nasty to the OP.

And for information......I have lived on benefits.....and on different amounts of wages, including low for long hours......I was never once better off on benefit.

From what I have seen and experianced in my personal life, benefits can be "comfortable" for the short term, but any time prolonged on them is hard. I have gone without a bed, food so DCs could eat etc while on benefits, but not while one of us was working.

I said this earlier and so have a few others throughout the thread (bearing in mind that the OP says she has namechanged, so must therefore know something of the workings of MN).

This is AIBU!!!! What does the OP expect????

'does one become an utter cunt for raising an eyebrow that someone who does not work can be financially better off than someone who does.

On politics or a separate thread, no

here? Yes, I think so.