To feel resenment towards well parents, while we're about to be made homeless

[KinkyGerlinky]

Ok I know that I am likely being unreasonable, thread like this always end up in the OP getting flamed for expecting too much but I am hoping there may be some constructive advice too.

DH and I are 29 and we have 3 young DC. We both worked full time, saved like hell and managed to save up for a deposit just as the housing market locked down. We were still renting when we decided DH should go to uni to get a degree as he hit a glass ceiling at work and just couldn't move any further without one. I became a SAHM because we couldn't afford childcare on my wage alone. We get some housing benefit and pay part of teh rent ourselves. Last week our landlady told us she was selling our rented house (we've lived here for 5 years) and we have 2 months to find somehwere else....

The problem is that now neither DH or I are in full time work landlords won't accept us, the council have said it could take 8 years to get a council house but they are prepared to put us up in a homeless hostel until then... If DH leaves uni and gets a job we will never get a mortgage on his wage (they will lend us 30k if he had a 20k salary...) plus he is just about to start his final year so it would be wasted.

We are just worried sick, meanwhile my parents both own large 4 bed houses and neither have offered any help, aibu to be upset and resentful?

OttillieRidiculous - One of the benefits of having a degree is that you earn more, thus paying more tax and getting less benefits, by benefits I mean working and child tax credits which most people on minimum wage with children are in receipt of.

I can see why you are upset and appreciate how worrying this is for you.

But, I don't have a lot of sympathy with people who give up their jobs and still have children. I am disabled. I, like every other sick and disabled person in this country, am facing having my benefits cut, being forced back into work when I am not well enough to cut the benefits bill!

It is because people give up their jobs and keep reproducing! I am worried sick!

HAve neither of you been tempted to get a job of any sort in teh last few years? I mean surely you must have known as each year past what a massive gamble it was both of you not working with 3 kids as each year went past. I am really not surprised your parents dont help. Perhaps they want to teach you a lesson in life.

I think it's pretty admirable that your DH decided to go back to Uni, and in the long term hopefully it will make things better for your family, but I do think you were very foolish to give up work too. I think you both need to look for work (maybe both P/T), and balance childcare between you. I have a hard time beleiving he has to be at uni/study all day every day; if he's doing a dissertation, I assume it's some kind of arts/social sciences course? He needs to look at balancing his studying around working, it's what thousands of other students have to do.

In the meantime, have you actually asked them for help? Spell it out to them, ask if you can move in until DH finishes his degree. You could also go to the Student's Union for help, they often have advisors and sometimes even emergency funds you might be able to apply for?

What is your dh doing his degree in?
Is it in something where he will get a guaranteed job at the end?

I must admit I don't know a lot about uni life as I never went but is it possible he could take a yr out and try and find a ft job to boost your cash flow?

Speaks volumes.

Awfully sorry if you don't like my views but I don't like funding people like you and your DH. He should have put the uni on hold until the children were at school and one of you could earn some money. I know lots of people who have done degrees and had part-time jobs to support themselves. Why can't your DH do that. I did a full-time job and professional quals and then a part-time MBA with a full-time working dh and children between the ages of 7 and 11. I got up at 5am for four years.

He has 'given up his job' in order to get a better one in less than a years time... Any decent job requires you to have a degree nowadays. We are funding the degree and our day to day living with a student loan!!!

Marriedinwhite - at no point has the OP made a decision to live off benefits. She made a desicion that she and her husband thought would work out better for them in the long run. I wouldn't have made that desicion and obviously neither would you but that level of venom is uncalled for.

I feel sorry for your children if you feel that by them making a questionable decision you are a failure.

In my mind, your narrow minded right wing attitude is what makes you a failure

I think, marriedinwhite, the op sounds like they both got in a rut and out of the habit of supporting themselves and dc hence expecting parents to step in when benefits arent enough. Had they continued to work then they would have assumed this was their own problem to deal with.

I think Married makes a bloody good point.

You both seem to have just done whatever you fancied without really giving it too much thought..

As for "we have paid taxes all our working lives".. to be fair, your havent really had that much of a working life yet.. and with 3 children, I am sure you are getting your moneys worth already.

Op,what is his degree in?

marriedinwhite - Well done, I wish we could all be a bit more like, the world would be a much better place.

Thanks guys for all the constructive advice, will look into f/t jobs, childcare and p/t degrees.

KinkyGerlinky are you aware of and are you getting the Child Care Grant (which pays up to 80% of childcare fees for full time students)?

I ask as you mention having to pay childcare fees if you get a job, but childcare should be pretty much covered (as long as you use and OFSTED registered provider).

Also, you mention your DH going part time. We looked at that (both DP and I are full-time students) but it simply wasn't worth it for us as it would mean we'd lose the childcare grant.

I would advise talking to the student services at your DH's university, I've found them to be excellent at mine.

I hope it works out for you.

Are you looking for housing benefit places btw? Yes they're rare but they do exist. I certainly wouldn't bank on finding one in 2 months, but it can't hurt to look.

As to your original question, yes I would feel a bit put out if my parents didn't offer.

(For those posters who think that makes me entitled, what rubbish! I would offer the same to my parents if they needed it! It's not about thinking your parents should bail you out, it's about looking after the people you love. I have often taken in friends in difficult circumstances over the years.)

Would you want to stay with them? Do you think they would say no if you asked? Is there any possibility they're waiting to be asked?

i haven't read the thread. but student services at your husband's uni might be able to help with finding accommodation and with applying for access funds. access funding is brilliant. when i applied for £150 they gave me £500, and that was some years ago.

YABU, you know that, but you feel desperate. I'm sorry but I tend to agree with marriedinwhite. You are adults, you have made choices and you will be far happier when you take full responsibility for those choices and any consequences of them. But it is not your fault that the housing market is the overpriced racket it currently is. Your parents wouldn't be in comfortable houses now if it had cost them so much to make their first purchase.

You are making sensible steps, getting your DH to improve his degree, but the level of debt with no income seems over hazardous. Can he apply for a fee waiver? or a studentship (these are bursaries given to very promising students.) Can he apply for a 2 year MA or MSc and bypass the first degree, using his workplace experience in lieu? Some courses will allow this. MAs/Mscs are shorter, cheaper courses and at the end, you have a higher qualification.

Can he do an OU degree from home whilst holding down a part time job, and you PT working too?

Can you move in with either set of parents for a couple of years, to keep the costs of rental down, and maybe get some child care from them (without taking it for granted) while you work p/t to pay your way.

My advice is: recognise you have to make massive sacrifices in the short term, in order to get what you want long term. Accept these and make the best of them. Expect no one to bail you out over choices you have made, but equally, be proud of those choices. They may be hard but they sound like good ones.

No you aren't you have said you get housing benefit. You get that because you have a low income and little money. You have little money because neither of you works and you have increased the size of your family since your dh went to uni. I didn't go to uni but it didn't stop me earning six figures in the 80's and early 90's.

See if this were me I simply couldn't ask for any monetary help when I knew I was capable and able to work evenings/nights.

That's just me.

squeakytoy - We gave it a lot of thought, it was a massive decision and it will still pay off in the long run. We hadn't bargained on our landlord selling the house when DH had 8 months left of uni.

Loads of people do degrees, MAs, extra qualifications in order to get a better job. Most of them do them around the job they already have. That is the point.

BIL was doing a degree during his time in the Royal Navy, he was sent to Iraq somehow or other he took the work with him.

The OP and her DH have not given up their job to sit about on benefits. They've given up their jobs so that he can get qualifications.

As she points out herself this will make them better contributors to society than if they hadn't bothered.

Marriedinwhite, you should see them as an investment of your tax money (and theirs) not a drain! They'll most likely pay much more back in the long term than if they'd stuck where they were.

I really don't know why the OP is getting such a hard time here - they made the decision for the DP to go to uni, they were in rented accomodation which i assume they thought was secure. The rug has been pulled from under them at a crucial time in his degree.

Hopefully the DH will go on to get a higher paid job and consequently pay a higher level of tax which should, over time, compensate the blessed tax payer for any benefits they may have taken during the past three years.

It may not have been the 100% best chioce, but maybe he didn't have the option of doing the degree part-time while he worked or doing further qualifications within his job. Maybe his parents weren't well off enough to be able to support him through university when he left school so he had to go and get a paid job instead.

There are plenty of people on benefits, with no intention of ever working who deserve the scorn of the "im a tax payer how dare you squander MY money on an education" brigade. Save your indignation for them.

Are you saying he should have just accepted his "lot" in life and not tried to better himself?

The thing that surprises me most about this is that you've posted in outrage that your parents haven't offered you a load of cash and when people suggest even one of you getting a job your response is "Ooh yes that's an idea - I'll have a look at that"

I appreciate that you thought your housing was secure but over uni holidays (3 mths ish usually) when I assume you were BOTH at home with your children why did neither of you even want to work?

But you didnt give it enough thought, because if you had, you would have done when you could afford childcare, rather than jack your own job in to be SAHM, or, you would have waited a while before having three children, and concentrated on sorting your careers out first.

marriedinwhite - it's not the 80's-90's anymore, things are very different.

YABVU.

Your parents aren't to blame for the (bonkers) decisions you've made. You and your DH are.

I worked (very) full time while doing my degrees part-time for 6 years for the simple reason that I couldn't afford to support myself without work.

There's no way it's cheaper to stop work all together instead of working around a degree. Unless you mean it's cheaper because the taxpayer will merrily fund your choice of family size and childcare arrangements while you choose not to fund it yourself?

This actually makes me cross rather than just judgy.