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..

[YoucancallmeQueenBee]

jacks365, I presumed you were serious about sex ed, given the fall in teenage pregnancy rates.

Of course you can teach basic budgeting outside of the home environment! I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want young people to be given a chance to learn this stuff. It seems to me that you are at such a huge disadvantage not knowing how to manage your own money - so why wouldn't you want young people to benefit from knowing?

[jacks365]

Of course you are at a disadvantage if you don't know how to budget but I don't think the help with budgeting should be focused on schools. I think it should be targeted to a home environment and families encouraged to budget. I do think help should be available to those who need it. I do think young people should have the chance to learn it I just think it's something a parent should take responsibility to teach.

Yes pregnancy rates are falling but they are still way too high.

[AliceinWinterWonderland]

The thing is, if it's taught in schools, some of that information will not only benefit that generation, but those teenagers may be able to, at home, pass along some of that information to their parents, who may be struggling with budgeting.

Yes, parents SHOULD teach their children, ideally. But realistically, it's not happening. My parents really pushed education, university, hell even taking care of my car... but it apparently never occurred to them to teach me budgeting or household accountings. Why? Not a clue. But they didn't. And as an adult, I know that they were very careful to budget and save and plan for the future. If it had occurred to them, I'm sure they would have taught it to me.

But again, this is something that is HELPFUL to students. They're going to be taking out huge student loans for university, benefits for up to 25s are being almost completely cut out, and housing affordability is difficult now. If ever there was a generation that needed to learn the skills of budgeting and household accounting, THIS generation is it!!!! Why not make sure they are ALL equipped with these skills? It could not only be of benefit to them, but to our country's budget as well! It's common sense!

[JakeBullet]

My take on this is that too many children are being bought up in homes where nobody can cook basic meals. As a health visitor in my previous life I was shocked by how many young parents had no idea how to cook. They were living off ready meals and takeaways.
Okay so most could put together beans on toast when needed (and yes that is anperfectly nice and nutritious lunch) but ask them to make anything more complex and they were clueless. Our children's centre used to run regular and well attended food and nutrition type short courses.
Thankfully most schools now have meal planning back on the curriculum. The last school I visited had a delicious smelling classroom where the pupils were making chicken chow mein ....all chopping onions, carrots, mushrooms to go in. It smelt blardy marvellous......and I wanted to stay for lunch.

[SPsMrLoverManSHABBA]

Thank you for the good luck but nothing happened. Manager had gone and not even informed anyone that I was coming. I have to go back on Saturday.

[jacks365]

The school my daughter attended didn't teach the children to budget but did drive home to parents just how crucial it is to teach children those skills to enable them to cope with university etc and it worked well, they had sessions available for adults to attend if they needed help with it themselves. The onus was on the parents though to do it and I think that doing something like that on a larger scale would have more long term benefits than teaching the children directly. Part of my concern over it is that if children are going home to parents who don't bother then they will just dismiss it as useless and we are no further on.

[AliceinWinterWonderland]

So you're willing to leave it up to the parents, knowing that many children that will benefit from it won't get that instruction? I'm not willing to do that. I think it should be offered to all students.

[jacks365]

I'm not saying nothing should be done but that I think the focus should be on teaching the parents the importance of it. Teaching teenagers that it's important when their parents don't bother means that for the majority it will go in one ear and out the other plus does very little to improve their lot now. Put the focus on parents to show how important it is and you will make a difference now, lives will start to be improved from day 1 and far more children will take it in and understand the importance of it.

[AliceinWinterWonderland]

Nope. You'll never get the parents in to learn it. The teenagers are RIGHT THERE in school already, learning. And they're the ones that'll be taking out those student loans and getting into debt over it - it only makes sense to teach them how to manage their debt and finances at the same time, since they're already in school.

[YoucancallmeQueenBee]

jacks, you could argue that teaching teenagers something that their parents don't know will go in one ear & out the other - about any subject.

I really hated physics & it went in one ear and out the other. However, DS loves science stuff - it really clicks with him. So even though his parent is a complete dullard at it, he is still taking advantage of the fact that it is taught at his school to learn about it.

Anyway, it sounds like we'll have to agree to disagree, as you seem determined not to see the advantage of teaching youngsters how to manage their finances at school.

[jacks365]

We'll agree to disagree on how but I think we can all agree something needs to be done.

[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.

[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.

[IneedAsockamnesty]

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

[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'.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Anniegetyourgun]

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

[happytalk13]

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

[omuwalamulungi]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.