Here is my total income as a lone parent on benefits.

[HereBeHubbubs]

Inspired by a thread which is glorifying us lone parents as 'rolling in it', I'm prepared to declare my benefits income. It's not gauche to do so, because it's your money after all (looks at taxpayers), and you should probably know that I am also grateful for this support, prepad to pay back into the pool when working again, and am not extravagant nor consider this a 'lifestyle choice'.

I don't have Sky, a plasma tele, holidays, credit or catalogue accounts, smoke, drink and rarely socialise due to childcare issues. I buy all our clothes from charity shops. I do however have a concession rate council leisure centre swim membership of £18 a month and a £10 rolling contract mobile phone, with a phone somebody gave me.

I am terrible at budgeting and have been living on a £500 overdraft for at least the last couple of years - I never have enough income to return the account into the black, so I'm generally always at least £400 overdrawn.

My utilities are on prepayment meters currently eating up old debt weekly and a not competitive tariff.

I'm currently looking for work and can't understand how people sit at home without good reason, because since my youngest started school, I have been going stir crazy and begun to feel quite down and despondent about not working.

Fortunes will change in the near future as doubtless I will find work, but meanwhile, when you break down the cost of my outgoings, hopefully you can see that lone parents really are not 'rolling in it'.
Especially the ones who receive little or no maintencance from their absent children's father.
Unimagined outgoings include things like termly Brownies subs, school snacks at £8 a month, school shoes every new term, birthday and Christmas presents, rent shortfall £75 a month, winter utilities alone are £40 a week each gas and electric.

Lone parent age 45, two children 5 and 7, private rented three bed (officially two as one leads off the bathroom) terrace Anglia region.'Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit don't enter my bank account, they're paid direct to recipients.

Weekly Income
5.00 CSA
72.40 JobSeekers Allowance
34.05 Child Benefit
114.08 Child Tax Credit

£225.53 week
£902.12 every month

To me the shock from this post is not the amount the OP gets (though I do think it's wrong that work is often less rewarding - not sure how you fix that though)

It's the fact that her DCs' father pays 5 a bleddy week towards his children doesn't he have any shame?

Roll on the abolition of cash and us finding out what all these cash in handers really earn and getting them to pay their way - both in CSA and in tax.

tax home= take home

Roll on the abolition of cash

Arsenic what do you think about politicians who suggest (a) raising the minimum wage to 10 an hour and (b) raising the tax personal allowance to 10k a year?

All for it. £12ph would be even better. I think the PTA will break the £10kpa barrier this year, won't it?

"Wages need topping up because they are inadequate to meet living costs. We could solve that at a stroke by drastically increasing the minimum wage, but there is a lot of resistance to that idea."

The minimum wage is adequate for single people, who don't get much in the way of top-ups. It is not adequate for families due to the high cost of housing and child care (which is also a function of high wages).

"As you say yourself, the number of people on OOW benefits is low, so can't possibly be the cause of (allegedly, not actually) high taxes."

Taxes are very high in this country.

The basic rate of tax for employees is effectively 40.2%. That's too much. It's too expensive to hire people.

Then you have 20% VAT, which is again too much.

Some taxes are low: corporation tax and capital gains taxes.

But taxes on wages are very high.

Benefits do cost a lot, over £200 billion a year, if you include pensions (which are around £70 billion). That's more than health + education, combined. It's the largest category of expenditure. This country is fundamentally dependent on benefits.

The largest household expense by far in this country is housing.

The beneficiaries of this expense are landowners and banks.

Reducing housing costs by making it cheaper and easier to get planning permission would be a start. Reducing housing benefits paid to private landlords would also help.

Beast this is for another thread really but personally I'd like to see

1. fewer taxes on wages

2. more taxes on income that has not been worked for - so inheritance, any profit you make when you sell your house, gambling wins, etc

3. more focus on tax evasion (all those under-declaring self employeds) and tax avoidance (people using loopholes for purposes they weren't intended for)

I would hope that 2) and 3) would fund 1).

I don't think we should legislate for a much higher NMW because it would simply mean a lot of businesses don't employ people or move jobs to other countires.

Time for a citizen's income!
That way, everyone will be better off in a job, no matter how low-paid, and no-one will have to beg, risk having their benefits suspended because they went to a job interview instead of the job centre appointment, or didn't search for a job on Christmas day.
The cost of implementing this would be far less than the current benefits system.
It's a win-win. I know, I know, some people will say 'it's not right that someone should get money for doing nothing' but then that's what happens now doesn't it - there's not enough jobs to go round (not when those in work have to work 50 hour weeks) and there are people who can't go to work for various reasons - raising a family, caring for sick or elderly, being sick or elderly.
And given that anyone taking a job will be better off, most people will take up jobs (and given that no-one will be starved into taking jobs, employers will have to pay a bit more to entice people to take those jobs).
www.citizensincome.org/

Also get free school meals , prescriptions and dentist if you are on benefits. Working people have to pay nearly 50 quid for a filling. I need to go and am putting off due to cost.

It doesn't work out as £900 to just piss away on luxuries though. It's gas/electricity, food, clothes, tv licence, water rates and rent shortfall. After those things are paid I'm certain there's not "hundreds" left to fritter away!

I was about to start a thread but saw this. I have tonight just been chatting to my SIL about this very thing.
She works very part time, is a lone parent.
I am a GP registrar, I work my ass off for nearly 50 hours a week.
We live in similar houses yet she has more disposable income than me. She is receiving £1350 in benefits and maintainance payments., plus her part time wage of £1000 a month.
I bring home £2200 after tax.
Can't get my head around that at all.

Holy shit!

I would LOVE to have £900 left over after the mortgage and council tax were paid.

We have about 400 left after the major bills. That's for me, DH (minimum wage) and dd.

After food, diesel etc. there's not much over to play with.

I work, I don't get FSM but I do still get help with health costs. so prescriptions are still free as is dental treatment.
I am on a low wage though.

How many people on here are on prepayment metres? How many of you pay £80 a week for gas and electricity? I pay less for a month for both because I have the luxury of a monthly direct debit.

That seriously eats into that £900 pm. Plus there's water, tv license, phone on top of that and contents insurance.

caravan. .maintenance payments are disregarded when claiming benefits as it isn't reliable.

can't comment on the rest but no way did I bring in so much on benefits.

Even with housing benefit.

Excuse me - the minimum wage is NOT adequate for single people unless we are expected to sleep on the streets, not drive, not spend much time at all on social activities and not live a full life.

I clicked on this thread hoping to be enlightened, as all I hear here is how single parents have it hard. I can't imagine how hard it is emotionally being single with kids, and I really take my hat off to anyone who is in that position, it must be incredibly hard.

But...the money, well I thought I'd read something in the op that showed me how hard it is, but I'm married and work for minimum wage and dh isn't on much more and we don't have £900 left after paying rent and council tax, so am now feeling deflated and wondering why we bother.

I cant imagine you have had the answers you wanted here, op.

I'm with alsmutko - a Citizen's Income scheme is the way forward.

Abolish most benefits and all their associated costs (staff, offices, admin etc).

See a minimum standard of living in the same way as we see universal healthcare and education....as a right, not a privilege.

Everyone gets a certain amount a week, regardless of anything. Say £150 per adult, £75 per child.

Some people may choose not to work if they want to live off this limited amount. There's no forms to fill in, no explanations needed...just don't work. But you won't have much money, that's the deal. If you want a nice house, car, holidays etc...work for it. But your basic bills and food will be covered no matter what, because such things are NOT luxuries.

I think the fact that most people in this country do work, even though in theory we could all try and live off benefits if we wanted, proves that under this system the vast majority will still be going out to work. And you will always be better off working than not, always.

While most benefits are gone (thereby eliminating all forms of fraud), there will still be access to emergency funds for people who need them, and some HB for people with children and other vulnerable groups.

To my mind, the benefits system has the right idea, but the wrong implementation.

We all agree that no one should starve, everyone should have healthcare and everyone should be educated. But we've taken one of those fundamental rights and turned it into a privilege that you have to fill in forms to get.

Give it to everyone like we do education & healthcare.

this is what wrong with this country, people on benefits and people that are working and getting shit money are at each others throats all the time, and the fat cat bankers and tax avoiders earning millions are laughing at us.

Exactly ssd.

The minimum wage doesn't make lower paid people better off, it just makes people who earn a bit more worse off. Just check how much executive pay has risen since the minimum wage came in. What minimum wage does is allow big firms to charge more for their products because there is now a minimum to what people can afford. So people who got a rise to minimum wage see the rise taken off them via rising living costs. However the real losers are those who earned a bit more than minimum wage because they didn't get a wage rise for the minimum wage but still got the living cost rises.

If minimum wage worked there would be no need for talk of a living wage or citizens income. As those are now being discussed it proves where the minimum wage pay rises went i.e. to firms and workers are no better off.

Like Labour before them the Coalition have a panel of business advisers who "help" to form economic policy i.e. the CEO's of lots of corporations, who sit and discuss how much more they can squeeze from the public.

To clarify my earlier post My SIL gets £150 per week working tax credit and housing benefit, child benefit and £150 a week maintenance. Works out around £1350 plus her £1000 monthly take home pay for her part time job.She gets council tax reduction. I'm not sure about free school meals and prescriptions.
I am a doctor working 50+ hours a week and bring home £2200. How can that be right?
I'm exhausted and barely see my kids. Makes you wonder.

HoneyBadger Yes, I really do get extra for every child. I suspect why families out of work with 4+ children under 16 would never see the need to work instead of claiming benefits.

I don't include Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit in my income statement here only as it doesn't go into my bank, it goes direct to the landlord and council.

People have also mentioned they would love to sit at home and get paid for doing nothing all day. Well, you'll be doing exactly the same things all day that you do now, apart from your job...

'OP will be in for a shock if she gets a job'. I am 45, I had worked right up until my first child. I have paid into system.

I appreciate that it seems an easy life to 'sit around all day doing nothing' (does my life suddenly get less busy and stressful when unemployed then? I hadn't noticed!)

But when you are on Job Seekers Allowance, the feeling of despondency and intimidation from entering the Jobcentre fortnightly and waiting in line whilst the security guard slowly circuits the room, only to sit in front of your signing staff for half an hour whilst they browse exactly the same job websites you had been looking at yourself earlier that day, only to conclude that you 'should probably just keep looking for work', is mind-numbing frustrating.

You really don't want to be living on benefits, trust me, even if it does seem on paper they 'earn' you slightly more than your current job.
Your self esteem will suffer, the feeling of despondency at not being able to support your family off your own back, the poor role model you are creating for your children in not being self sufficient, the endless merge of one day into the next unless you keep yourself busy with housework and volunteering, the sanctions enforced on you if you don't keep your Jobseeker's agreement*...

I am in a minority, being a lone parent, and most benefit claimants have paid into the system after all. It's the long term, sense of being entitled to unemployed that give people like me a bad name. And that small minority is the one the media picks up on, because they have entertainment and controversy value (or I should say, advertising revenue value).

MN is 'consulted' on some major current issues. Perhaps in the future the issue with absent fathers costing the benefits system more money will be addressed.

Thankyou for all the replies so far, it's made really, really interesting reading, and so far we are managing to avoid the notorious MN goat and plasma tele thing . I really didn't want to create a bad mood, just wanted some honest discussion.

Cassandra

I think a Citizen's Income would mean that the minimum wage would become just that...a minimum. At the moment, it's treated as a pre-determined hourly rate by businesses employing staff for low skill jobs.

If no one has to work, then employees become valuable in a way that they often aren't now.

A CI isn't just about making sure people have more money - it's about trying to dismantle the idea that there's an underclass of "problem people" claiming benefits. It's about trying to underscore the idea that society values us all equally and ensuring that work will always pay.