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.

Where is all this work you speak of??

How many divorced families still live close enough to maintain a 50/50 residency?

How many full time jobs enable

Parents to just work around their 50%?

How would tax credits be assessed on 2 incomes in 2 homes, when new partners are also living there??

How fair is all this on the kids? Even if only a distance of 15 miles, how would school work?

Why would the love only have to be for the 50% anyway Sprinkledust - childcare is widely available even in rural areas. Having a child does not render people incapable of working and the sooner we lose that mindset the better.

As to "how is it fair on the kids" - surely its better for the children to have both parents play a role in their life on an equal basis rather than the token weekend every two weeks that many fathers end up with.

If both parents are working and sharing the costs of the child then there would be little need for tax credits. I'm sure the minimum hours needed for them will slowly increase anyway to stop people working the bare minimum.

love!!! should be employment

Xenia says "The answer is for girls to pick good careers and don't get side lined into shelf stacking and low grade stuff in their teens I suppose".

I have to respond here as this deeply p**sed me off. I am a care assistant at a care home on £6.50 an hour. I do this through choice and there is a deep need for it. (I was previously a city exec, robots could of done my job). Without people taking low grade jobs you would have nothing to spend your money on my dear!!!

Stuck in the middle, the rich have split themselves off from the rest of us insects years ago, and all that's happening now is that the middle is getting slammed too lest the RICH have to pay a fraction extra.

Xenia, are you in the top 1% of earners, because if you are everything makes sense, and you are protecting your position; if not you are a dupe, and so too is anybody who thinks any government as full of the very rich as this one gives a crap about anyo9ne except their own kind.

But soeone who has chosen the care assistant in the care home rather than to own and run a chain of care homes or could have had their better ex city job then lives with the consequences. It's a free market. YOu have less power and less ability to provide for and care for your chidlren if you go into low wage jobs. It's a risky strategy and children can suffer for it so those decisions have to be taken with extreme care.

Xenia, what if everyone wanted more then there was no one left to be a care assistant? what happens then? If no one is going into jobs because they love them and want to help people, rather than helping themselves? Where would we all be then?

Xenia, What a load of twaddle,

How can you suggest that my ability to bring up my children is less because I am in a low paid job!!.

Tell me is it your ability or your childcare providers ability to bring up your children then??

I had kids and made a decision to put my life on hold. I still work my backside off but with little responsibility.

I know of someone that was a manager and her daughter called in distress. She could not leave her job until a manager took over and when she got home...daughter was dead through suicide.

HOW DARE YOU suggest that my kids suffer for it.

Not only that wubbzy, If everyone had massive drive for money like her. I am sure she would herself be buggered as who is going to want the pittance she pays for looking after her children?

Lets face it if you are a top 1% earner, you couldn't be that if people were not being paid less around you!

Nannies and your staff cant all be top 1% earners too can they. So you should thank your lucky stars for all us paupers who only get paid £12 an hour! it allows you to get fat off our backs don't it!

There will always be people who cannot or choose not to get better paid jobs but many women and men do find they benefit their children by earning sufficient to buy enough food and house them well and be near good schools. That's all I'm saying.

There's another thread complaining about people who choose to earn so little they get more state help. People's views are clearly very polarised on these issues.

choose to earn so little??? thats ridiculous

Xenia - There is a difference between earning less by deliberately reducing the hours you work to get extra state help and earning less because that is what your job pays.

If all people in low paid work decided not to go to work tommorow as they want better paid jobs, the country would grind to a halt and be on its knees instantly.

As I said, I have been at both ends of the scale and feel extremely lucky to be able to spend so much time with my children. But then that IS why I had them.

I feel sorry for you Xenia if you think that the only way to bring up kids is to lavish money on them and be near good schools.

There are no bad schools...only bad parenting. It is only ever the parents who choose not to supplement their childs' education at home that come out with that cr*p.

Now if you had said "I chose to work hard because I want my children to have better than what I had" then no-one could condemn that attitude. But, to suggest that parents on low incomes do not benefit their children is ignorant.

I chose to be at home because I was the little girl who's mum was never able to make school plays. I didn't want that for my kids at all.

And I tell you what else. My kids have NEVER said that they wished we had more money. But when i was a city exec they did wish mum could be with them more often.

I expect you know all of this is you are truthful with yourself though. Working mums are full of guilt over their children as are mums who struggle financially. The fact is as long as in your heart you know you are doing the right thing that is all that counts. To put down other famalies who choose to do it another way says more to me about your insecurities than it does your arrogance.

Forgot to spellcheck

For all those going on about us benefit claimants having a sense of entitlement.

Damn right am I entitled to benefits. Before 1984 my village was a mining village. It had pride and most of the population worked. Either down the coal mine or in some form of manufacturing related to the mine.

For generations my family has gone down the mine, or manufacturing. It was a bloody Tory government that ripped the heart out of that village and broke its back. Since all those with a work ethic left (including my mother, without my dad), leaving only the sick, poorly educated or the lazy behind.

My village isn't a lone example, its echoed up and down the country. Dead towns and villages. all slaughtered by a bloody Tory government. So yes, damn right I'm entitled to some pay back from another fucking Tory government when it was probably due to them that I am disabled in the first place.

Can see Xenia is at it again, suggesting parents cannot provide properly for their children unless they are business tycoons or the like. She said the same to me because I work for a charity.

It's wrong to assume that being able to spend a fortune on your children = being a good provider and parent. We don't all aspire to affording private school for our children and think we have failed them if not. I'd rather bring a child up who values other things not just what money can buy.

All of us could be with our children 24/7 in the UK as it's not that hard if you can accept the poverty to live on benefits - in that you won't bne shunted back into work by the state. Therefore every parent of either sex who works is choosing not to be with their children. Presumably any criticism of working mothers on the thread is also directed by the housewives against their husbands too to ensure they are not being sexist about it.

If you earn a lot you can outsource dull cleaning stuff and spend more time with children. I don't think i've missed a school play in 26 years as a mother actually but that's because I picked work where I had the power to dtermine these things which you can't if you're on the factory production line or even teaching in a school. I did thikn about these things as a teenager, got books from the library about different jobs etc.

never felt guilt surprisingly. I think I am lucky. I am most lucky for being healthy but secondly for being content. Women and men who accept things are good enough (satisficers) are happier than those who are perfectionists and can't accept what they have. That principle applies across the board to working and non working women too and what children like is happy parents.