To believe £780 month lone parent benefits income is adequate to live on.

[goldfacegreen]

There's some myth busting required at last I think.

As a lone parent of two under 6, I receive a total of £780 a month in benefits:

Income Support, Child Tax Credit, Child Benefit, CSA (£5 a week).

I receive full housing benefit for a two bedroom house (£75 shortfall which has to come out of my income support, currently being paid via Housing Discretion Award) which doesnt go into mybank account, it gets paid direct to landlord, and £16 a month council tax shortfall also has to be paid out of income.

I'm on meters and gas and electric are around £20 a week each, some of which pays off accrued debt. Water is deducted directly from my income support via an 'attachment of earnings' type court order.

I don't have loans or credit cards, no landline, no satellite tele, no car, no travel expenses, no socialising costs, don't smoke, my Internet is paid for by someone else although I should have organised a bill swap ages ago and I run an old phone on £10 month contract. My other costs are regular swimming, yoga, wax salon, and I buy school uniform and children's clothing as and when required.

Childcare such as nursery (pre-school), morning and after school clubs are free to those on income support, school holiday clubs are heavily subsidised, as are school meals, dentistry, doctor's prescriptions, council run leisure centre swimming and gym classes, and many other recreation facilities.

My budgeting skills are atrocious but having recently done some sums, I actually have around £250 a month 'spare' from all benefits income. Although for the past year or two I've been constantly overdrawn by around £500 so whenever income is credited, I'm always 'one step forwards, two steps back' amd because of this will never get back in the black again.

So, with better budgeting (I don't buy a regular weekly food shop for instance, instead spend a fortune every few days buying dinners and sundries at the overpriced local Tesco Metro) I just don't understand how so many lone parents claim they can't afford to live on these same benefits.
Even if you have debts, there are features in place to reduce your debt payments to just £1 a week or even write them off altogether as a last resort.

Also, the father of my children earns thousands but fraudulently claims benefits, so he is only required to pay the minimum £2.50 a week per child direct from his benefits. Many lone mothers receive full child support which isn't deducted from their other benefits income, so can be receiving up to £800 a month on top of their benefits depending on what the chikdren's father earns. I have noticed that rarely will lone parents on benefits state this fact or include it in their income along with their complaint.

Yes, it is a struggle trying to support myself and two young children on £780 a month (but mostly because I can't get over this overdraft debt shackle) but on paper, budgeting well, it is entirely doable, and if you are frugal, you could even save a little too.

Why does the Daily Mail stereotype exist that single mothers are rolling in handouts, given the above figures? Just under £195 a week is an adequate income for one adult and two young children, surely..

[jakjakscot]

Right now I'm in receipt of esa, after my previous dwp budget loan payments I get £108/fortnight. Which gets stopped every 5months since I lost my son, I always fail the medical. I've been suffering from depression and anxiety for years and it seams that if they can't see a physical manifestation of your condition then to them your able to work.
I failed last time as they put it, "she has a very good understanding of her condition, got to the medical alone (all my family deceased and no friend to come with cause I don't go out to meet any) and I was clean and tidy and answered questions clearly." I have another medical this week.
1st question: Am I eligible for any other financial help? I do get housing/c.tax benefit but must pay bedroom tax. I can't afford to pay my bills and my house hasn't been decorated since I moved in, 2005.
Question 2: I'm awaiting a decision on budget loan application (this is first time I've been receiving esa for the 6mth needed to be able to apply) and I fear that when I go to the medical this week, my esa will stop and I'll no longer be entitled to a budget loan. Then the whole thing will start again, I'll need to apply for esa, then wait another 6mth till I can try again for a loan.
My credit rating was ruined years ago when my ex left me with a lot of debt.
Can I find out the decision on web?? I have no home phone/pc/laptop, and my mobile can't make calls as it broke when I dropped it, only the web works.
Can anyone help, I'm loosing the will to go on.

[CalamitouslyWrong]

No. But her ex is seriously wealthy. Her situation is certainly unusual.

[DownstairsMixUp]

Blimey I get £5 a week child support, it's so much, I have to plan in advance what to spend it on!

[shanelle5]

calamitous in EXCESS of £2k a month maintenance?? Was she married to a footballer of something

[CalamitouslyWrong]

I get much closer to £800 than the minimum in child support and I know someone who gets in excess of £2000 a month. But, I'm not sure why anyone would imagine that was common. The vast majority of people get very little in the way of child support (unfortunately).

[happytalk13]

£800 a month?! Another chuckle - I'm racking them up! We get sod all and I don't know a single mother who get's more than a few pounds a week.

[IneedAsockamnesty]

When I was at school we had cooking and budgeting lessons and sewing,and a cookery lesson did not consist of go buy a Swiss roll and cover it in chocolate or buy some dried pasta and boil it.

[DizzyZebra]

I don't know anyone who gets more than the bare minimum child support. I have heard of one person getting £1500 a month, but that was on the internet so could well be total bollocks.

[DizzyZebra]

parents need to stop passing the buck onto schools and expecting them to pick up the slack. Schools should be educating about subjects not teaching children how to live.

Is it passing the buck though? A lot of parents themselves are clueless when it comes to budgeting. I think it would be good for children who aren't going to learn skills at home to have some sort of access to them in school.

It's a shame ESA was taken away as i thought that went some way to teaching kids how to budget. Certainly for the people i knew on it.

[IneedAsockamnesty]

According to gingerbread the majority of lone parents receive either nothing or £5 per week no matter how many kids.

[shanelle5]

I have been reading this since its start with interest and itching to comment on the child maintenance issue before now too.
I think almost all of us lone parents on benefit can only dream of getting "up to £800" of maintenance on top of our usual benefit. I was as to why she picked that particular figure, and actually why it was capped at that ("Up To") I dont know if Im typical (if there IS such a thing as this thread has done wonders to highlight each and every one of us has a situtaion that is unique to us alone) but the figure mentioned of up to/around £200 per week is actually quite a bit more than I get a month for 4 children so that smarted a little...

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

I'm not surprised about that Rowan - but I always think threads are about more than the OP anyway - apart from support threads, but even then we can often support others at the same time.

[SolidGoldBrass]

Yes, please leave the thread - whatever the issue with the OP, there's some useful informatiion for other people emerging over the course of it.

[RowanMumsnet]

Morning

Just to let you all know, we have some concerns about the OP so we've suspended her ability to post for now. We'd normally delete a thread in these circs, but as the conversation has moved on we'll leave this one for now.

[JakeBullet]

lots of absent fathers pay as little as they can get away with....in many cases that means bugger all.

I am one of the fortunate onrs....most months exDH pays me £200. In the other months he tries to do £250.

He is also quite happy to do things like buy shoes and a coat for DS if he needs it.

But I suspect I and DS are fortunate that exH takes his responsibilities seriously.

[omuwalamulungi]

Just re-read the bit about absent fathers paying up to £800 a month in child support. I lol'd.

[happytalk13]

Annie - that's actually the first time I've had a chuckle today. Thank you!

[Anniegetyourgun]

CBA to read 31 pages of bogus thread; just tell me, who pays for the goat?

[Misspixietrix]

Apols then sock I thought it was a new thing but suppose that's just because it's had more media coverage. Is this a wind up post? I just don't get how someone who claims from a limited resource has surplus left and still goes to yoga swimming etc and then has the audacity to say Sky Subs are a luxury. No they BOTH are.

[happytalk13]

However, I'm with you on the teaching of finance in school - I feel our school system is pretty much a joke. Spoon feeding and they come out of uni and often many of them can't "do" life.

There needs to be more emphasis on how to get on in life - IQ is great but also pretty useless without EQ and Street Smarts - or that's my experience at least.

Now that I'm older I often hear from other friends that the company they work for and the employees much prefer older people who have had life experience over university graduates - not always, but often.

[happytalk13]

Queenbee

I really don't think you can list "Getting a job" as a means to cushion yourself from life's pitfalls. I had a job. It didn't cushion me for reasons I won't go into here but it wasn't a disability or an accident. If you lose a job it can be difficult to get another.

I had a skill set - a good one - but most of my equipment I needed to use that skill set and the hours and hours of work I had as proof of that skill set was gone - I never got the money together to be able to do that work again.

I would have loved to have gained further skill sets and tried but my Ex husband held the purse strings.

People always think they have the answers as to why they would never fall into the abyss - sometimes it just cannot be helped.

The advice is to have 6 months' expenses saved in case of job loss - I don't know anyone who is able to have 6 months expenses saved. I did have - but again, I'm not going to go into why it didn't save me and there are many other women out there like me.

[SolidGoldBrass]

Bear in mind that 'budgeting' is not magic. And it certainly won't fucking help you when your income (whether a benefit or a wage) is delayed, withheld, reduced due to 'admin errors' or 'Whoops we have a bit of a cashflow problem this month'.

[IneedAsockamnesty]

misspixie the DHF was not set up by the coalition, it's been around many many years

[GarlicReturns]

I've seen teenagers in my family imparting knowledge to their parents about domestic abuse (sadly, and also quite inspiring), health & nutrition.
Pressure on adults to stop smoking has come from the children.
Seat belts, too, as Revenger says.

[Revenger]

I'm sure I read that the campaign for children to wear seatbelts in cars was targeted at school children so that the message would filter up to parents. I think it was largely successful.

Some Sure Start centres offer budgeting classes but their key demographic is families with children under 5 so not always accessible for all families.