To think if most people waited until they were earning enough to not be entitled for any government benefits before they had children there'd be hardly any kids in the UK?

[LaWeaselMys]

MIL had an argument with DP last night as she does not want us to have any more children until we are not eligible for any government help and are 'paying for them ourselves' To not AIBU by stealth - After a choppy period we are earning and from next tax year will be entitled to very little bar CB and a small amount of TC.

Tax credits is a bit more complicated to work out, but to not be eligible for Child Benefit you (or your partner if there's two of you) would need to be earning more than £44k pa. That's twice the national average wage!

AIBU to think that by the time most women and/or their partner earn more than 44k - if it ever happens, they would be infertile?

cakeretention - excellent point, well made.

We claim tax credits. If I think about "the state" and "our entitlement" then I feel fine about it. If I think about them coming directly from our neighbour then I feel guilty about every penny. Part of the problem is that the government has been very clever with the name. By calling them "tax credits" it makes us feel like we're getting something that we paid back from the nasty taxman. But actually they're a benefit, same as any other.

I don't get why people begrudge a family to those on low incomes. They work hard and contribute to society. I can understand why people get upset when people have large families with no intention of working. How you prevent that without penalising those who have fallen on hard times I don't know. I would rather a few spongers get away with it than there being no safety net.

Only just come to this and haven't read all the thread so I don't know if anyone has mentioned that Tax Credits were brought in about a year after the Govt got rid of married mans tax allowances (although ironically those aged 65-74 still get it).

So in the good old days most couples would have benefited from family allowance and reduced tax payments at the very least.

My ILs didn't claim family allowance because FIL says he'd have paid tax on it but the result is that MIL didn't get any benefit from Home Responsibilites Protection for the many years that she was a SAHM and now gets a piddling little pension.

Ask her when she'll be selling her house to you for 60k, or 3x average salary.

ideally yes you should be able to afford your children be3fore you have them. post cuts dh and i will be entitled to no government top ups whatsoever.

to my shame i am getting more and more resentful of families who do not work. i dont see my dh for long periods (and neither does dd) so that we can have a well funded, secure lifestyle. iam returning to work shortly to make absolutely sure we have cash back up as dh self employed and it goes up and down sometimes.

i have a friend with two dc who has not had a job since 2000. the dc are 10 and 3. there were some college courses for which she got even more free money but now straight back on IS. she didnt name either father on the birth certs to avoid having to go through csa etc. even though one of them lives around the corner and has a full time job and sees his dc all the time. he willingly participated in this - easier for him i suppose. im sorry but it makes me cross. she is a good mother dont get me wrong and spends very wisely but benefits should be a stop gap - not a lifestyle choice!

"I think if you work and you pay in, you should not feel guilty about receiving TC. The cost of living is very, very high in the UK, especially housing and utilities, and until hard-working couples in low-paid professions (as listed by Riven, the list could be much longer) get paid a proper living wage, there's nothing wrong with them getting top-ups to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Successive governments have created this situation by allowing employers to get away with paying wages you can't live on, so let those governments take the consequences."

"people with a work ethic should be encouraged to have children and to pass that work ethic on, and that doesn't just apply to those of us who are well paid."

Well said and I agree totally.

The way I see it, as a single mum who works FULL TIME but only earns 10k , WTC are a subsidy paid to help businesses keep wage costs down.

The alternative would be abject poverty, unrest and criminality, or fewer jobs as businesses would have to pay living wages. Take your pick.

I think it depends on lots of things. I think if you have a family income of say £9k - £15k and are v young (under 25) then yes I agree with your MIL that you should wait until you can afford it.

However if you are earning average wage and are not v young then your MIL is BU.

maybe it is because these people (its not just your mil that thinks this way)
just feel that those who are unable to earn such high wages should be refused permission to "breed" as they are unworthy members of teh gene pool.

if you work as a checkout operator/cleaner/bin man/bus driver/whatever you are not worthy.

Hello - anyone remember the OP?

Firstly your MIL is a similar age to me, and if you and your DP are both 23 you are younger than my children. I assure you she will have had child benefit for him. In those days it was a universal benefit and there was no stgma attached to it everyone got it there was no sense of entitlement or scrounging it just was.

I mention her age because it probably never occured to her that CB should be included in her idea of her grandchildren growing up without being on benefits.

I agree that your finances are none of her business but what Mother would not want to see her son or daughter supporting their family themselves. It is a shame that wages are so low in this country that people doing normal everyday jobs can't feed and house a reasonable sized family on them, but it's a fact they can't and that is how it is.

Maybe being so young she is actually saying I love my Grand-daughter but please don't make me a Granny again just yet?

There is something really warped about a society where 24 can be considered very young to have a child.

Not everyone is capable of getting a 20k plus salary! Ever! That doesn't mean they aren't hard working. And it certainly doesn't mean they aren't entitled to a family life.

The problem is the high cost of living and/or the low increase in average salaries. Sort that out and tax credits wouldn't be necessary.

You could apply this 'giving directly to your neighbour' idea to any number of situations.

If me and two of my neighbours have gone out to work for the same number of hours, and society is sharing out 1 million and 48,000 pounds between us. My first neighbour has 4 children and gets 28,000, I have 2 children and get 20,000, my other neighbour is a childless banker and gets the remaining million. Do you really think I am going to be sat there begrudging the 4 kids their additional 8000 pounds?

I was outraged at a comment of Richard Littlejohn's a columnist in the Daily M**l the other day - I know, I know - a colleague was reading it on the bus and I'd finished my book.

He was ranting yet again about that feather bedded civil servants with gilt edged pensions should stop whining about having to take the brunt of the austerity cuts.

It occured to me that the majority of civil servants (not the top chaps in Whitehall) but the sort that get spat ou behind the counter in the dole office, who get sworn at over the phone in the CSA, who dig illegal immigrants out of the back of lorries, who take abuse for the length of the queues in reception at the hospital etc actually earn so little that they are in receipt of Tax credits and housing benefit.

So are they the working poor or are they feather bedded civil servants because I don't see how they can be both.

Tax Credits and so forth seem to me (I don't live in the UK so don't know the intricacies of the system) to be a subsidy to industry.

It's not a subsidy to families. It's a subsidy to every single company in the UK that is paying its workers wages on which it is economically impossible to make ends meet.

If you can't afford an average lifestyle on an average wage, and can't afford a family at all on an unenhanced minimum wage, then the government has to intervene in the form of TC etc to ensure social stability.

Takeresposibility - you may well be right. I do like my MIL (despite being really cross with her about this!) and I know that she probably didn't want to be a grandmother before she was 50, and worrys a little bit about DP not being able to run around being carefree in his early twenties the way she imagined he might do.

In answer to the query about topping up other people's wages - I don't have a problem with it, obviously at times we have benefited, but we both worked before DD was born and paid tax (and saved on a lower wage than we will have next year as much as possible so even if the worst happened - which it did - we would be relying on the state as little as possible) and DP pays tax now, far more than we get back, even though it is only an average salary he is on.

There are other people that need it more than me. And ninedragons has just explained the economic side beautifully.

If your DP pays tax now, far more than you ever get back, you cannot possibly be entitled to tax credits. Or do you not use the health service or free education.

Genuinely not trying to be argumentative as I have been accused of already, but for the vast majority of us, that simply isn't the case.

We are entitled. It is because he has not been working through the whole year, so we have a low 'year' income and get a high amount of tc, but his weekly wage is good and taxed at 20%, plus 11% NI, so it's still more going out from his untaxed salary than we are getting back.

ATM, we probably have not paid back as much as we took out of the system in bad times as we don't have that many working years between us.

But next year when the whole year salary will be good and we get very little tc, we will probably cover the full amount. Not sure precisely, but we have not claimed that much over the years (there were only six very ropey months).

In our whole life time - especially when I go back to work so soon, hopefully or after more DC if that's what we do, we will easily pay back enough to cover not just this benefit reliant patch, but also contributions to health and schooling.

I think she means money handed back in the form of benefits rather than services.

yes! That would've been a quicker explanation.

Don't be too harsh with your Mil. If she is in her late forties and you are early twenties, she probably still sees you as very young.

Really, some people close to your MIL's age are just having their first children let alone grandchildren.

She is probably just worried about how you will cope with small children, jobs. etc.

No one wants to see their children struggle financially.

Angels - could you just add - late forties IS still young??

It is young to be grandma!

I have calmed down a bit now. I think that a) she probably has no idea how little tc we will be getting, and how easily we have coped on less money before. b) she is lovely really, and supportive lots of the time so easy to forgive!

DP is under strict instructions to keep quiet about our finances in the future though.

I agree, late forties is still young.

It was nice of you LaWeaselMys to say that in your last post.

I really don't think that she was having a go about people being on benefits (not that I can read minds ) but more the fact if you are on benefits you must be on a low income and therefore struggling.

The old saying "cut your coat to fit your cloth" really is true. Some people achieve amazing things on a low income and some people on high wages are perpetually broke.

ninedragons- the issue isn't that wages are too low in the UK but that living costs, particularly housing are too high.

Wages cannot rise when large swathes of the UK private sector are largely exportable and this has obviously increased over a generation with the growth of technology- I read an interesting but depressing article in Time about "accounting super centres" opening in Sri lanka to outsource run of the mill account production and book keeping- qualified accountants there get paid £5k pa.

House prices really are the elephant in the room. They need to come down significantly, not just 5-10%. Successive governments have really screwed up housing policy- the Tories by flogging off the council houses and Labour by encouraging the massive boom in prices.

In HK, where the minimum wage is about £3 ph, people can still afford to live without benefits because 33% of people live in government housing for which they pay around £200 pm rent. As a result, wages are very competitive, but people can still live.