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

Weirdcatlady I'm sorry to hear of your struggles.

But I'm not happy with my life as you say.
Far from it.
I feel heading towards a deep well of despondency actually. I worked up until my first child age 38. I became a lone parent on benefits because of DV. I am looking for work since the youngest started school. In the same way I can't imagine your daily struggle with a disabled child, you cannot imagine mine is a bed of roses either with the constant threat of DV past still very much present.
That's not an excuse however. But it may help go some way towards explaining the sense of dread, lack of confidence and general self esteem that adds to my failure at securing work so far.

This thread is to divulge how much a lone parent of two children actually receives in benefits, Weirdcatlady. It isn't a sympathy or boast thread or benefits bashing thread. It's just a declaration of plain facts, in the hope of encouraging opinion and discussion. Every couple of pages I have to keep repeating this.

Wantsunshine I did not start the thread to 'prove people on benefits have it hard'. Please read my opening post. You are a million miles away frm the truth with that statement

It's definitely a lot more than I ever had after rent and CT, which is partly why I actually did give up a ten-year civil service career to go onto benefits and it's the best decision I ever made! :) Slightly different different as I'm now a self-employed artist with a (legally, not fiddled!) small annual profit (and no children or official disability)

Housing benefit, council tax benefit and WTC cover my rent and all domestic bills, as well as car insurance and a little left over for food. Any monthly business income that doesn't go on travel/exhibition costs/art supplies is mine to play with (usually between £300-£500 a month) If I want/need more money for anything quickly I can churn out some extra art to sell online.

I don't have a goat or TV, but there's a Jag in the drive (no commute means I don't have much petrol costs so I can afford the running costs), I go abroad (for art exhibitions, mostly in the US) most months staying in nice hotels, dine out 2 or 3 times a week, always have good wine in the fridge and spend most days in coffee shops, chilling with friends, volunteering or learning new skills (being on WTC means lots of discounts on evening classes, etc) - a lifestyle I could only dream of when I was in the office, watching every penny, skipping meals and sometimes sleeping in the car when I couldn't afford petrol to get home!

Sure, I'll not be buying a house or having substantial savings anytime soon, but that wasn't an option when I was in employment either.

So for anyone saying 'why don't you give up your job and go onto benefits' - some of us have, and consider it an excellent career move!

CreepusExplodus

If the op only got £450 a month as you suggest then most of it would be taken up by utilities, gas and electric alone are £320 a month say add £40 on for water, transport depending on location could be £80 a month which leaves £10 a month to feed and clothe 3 people. Don't really think that is doable.

Renart ..... :)

Selling art online is good business...

I have lived with a man who had similar lifestyle on very meagre official benefits. His cash in hand (or 'laundering tax undeclared online sales via PlaguePal') made his wallet fat.

Hubbubs - I've read your original post a few times, and while I realise you have said since that you weren't complaining, the first post does read very much as an earnest sort of 'look how little I really get.' You list the luxuries you don't have and talk about little things adding up and then go on to list an income that's about what many working people have.

It's a weird thread to be honest and it highlights the problems. I don't think anyone has children to avoid work. But I do think it's common for young women to have children young, split from partners, rely on benefits and then when the time comes to work it comes as such a shock how much you actually have to do for so little!

HereBe - haha, I know, the potential for fiddling is huge, especially as I mostly deal in cash when at exhibitions! But old habits die hard (worked for HMRC) and every penny is recorded and every deduction entirely legal! I guess my main point is that, since benefits are covering my essential living costs, and a good chunk of my lifestyle costs are genunely not counted as profit (hotels while travelling, etc) I can have a better life on a small income with no need to find money to pay rent, bills than a larger income with lots of costs, stress, committments, etc.

In a year or too I'll probably put the effort in to make enough to not need benefits, but for the moment I'm just enjoying the opportunities that benefits allow!

Lots of posts here mentioning council tax benefit, I didn't think this existed anymore?
Although I'm aware that individual councils could set up their own scheme?

£360 per month?? Ours is just over £200 for a similar sized house and we live in one of the most expensive areas for water costs in the UK. Anyway, the point is that we have to EARN the money to pay our bills. We're not handed it on a plate for sitting at home on our arses all day, like the OP, who seems to be whining that she doesn't get enough to pay for Brownies, and birthday/Christmas presents. I agree with previous posters though - it's the governments fault for allowing this situation.

andsmile

How degrading to sahps everywhere.

People take pride from purposely avoiding work for many reasons, but mainly to care for their children. because some people believe their value in life isn't working for somebody else.

Ineed - it's been renamed Council Tax Reduction up here (Scotland), not sure about the position in England. Instead of paying you money to pay your council tax, it just reduces the concil tax bill by what you're entitled to - e.g. my full CT bill was £950p.a (includinng £120 water/sewerage), but will full CT Reduction it was reduced to £120 (no CT, just the water/sewerage charge).

I'm sorry, but I think it's appalling to choose to be on benefits in that way. I daresay I'll get flamed for that but I just think it's lazy and selfish.

It's been good to have a discussion about benefits though that acknowledges many people claiming aren't cowering in a candlelit room gratefully eating Asda Smartprice rice pudding from the food bank box though.

Creepers

Yes, lets punish the children, stop their brownies, only working parents should be able to access such activities. They shouldn't have Birthdays and xmas presents, why should they be entitled, their mum doesn't work.
School trips, nah make em stay at school.
If you would prefer to take the benefits yourself well do this, if you don't want to, what the hell are you going on about.

Re utilities, my oil is £110 pm, electricity meter £30 per week, water £50, so £280 roughly a month. Just on utilities. On the utter breadline if she spends £30 a week on food....that's £400. She now has £50 to pay TV licence, rent/council tax top up, bus fare to interviews. Creepus you must see that it is utterly not possible to live on that money earnt or not?!

no it's not. when my x refused to pay maintenance for two young children and I had a low earning potential in a recession I might add, I realised that my time was worth more to my family than it was to an employer. Literally, I wouldn't have earned enough to cover childcare. Also, my children had effectively just lost one parent (although that wasn't a huge loss at their young ages they didn't see it like that). We had to tolerate a relocation a new school, lifestyle changes, one shocking dx................. I wasn't fit to work really, I needed to hunker down and take care of my fractured family. Fix us.

I work now. We're back on our feet. There was a time when a thread like this would have dragged me down further and demoralised me even more which was absolutely the last thing i needed.

If anybody feels like that reading this thread, please step away. It will all seem possible and less overwhelming at some point.

Many children from families where mum (and dad) do work struggle to pay for Brownies and for birthday and Christmas presents.

I got £7.20 an hour as a home care assistant. Travel time (between clients) wasn't paid so really it was a lot less than that. Believe me the children of my colleagues suffered, not just because financially their parents earned so little but because to earn enough to put food on the table they had to work long, long hours.

Thanks Renart that's similar to what happens here although I don't know the official name for it. My council tax is reduced from £101 to £13 per month.
I know for the purpose of this thread it's semantics but normally mumsnetters are keen to get the terms correct ime.

inabranstonpickle

It is wrong that children are suffering like that however the answer isn't to make more suffer but to improve the situation of those that are. Lets figure out how to get money into workers pockets not take it from those who can't find work despite looking.

morethanpotatoprints - I have a child myself, thanks, who in the past has had to miss out on school activities as we just couldn't afford to pay for them (both I and DP are self employed and work damned hard for our money). You just don't get it, do you? There are people here who work all hours for a living and get zero hand-outs, whilst some are quite prepared to sit back and take all they are given by our very generous benefits system, and still complain that it's not enough. So I would ask, what the
hell are you going on about?

I have no desire to make children suffer but this is what we are up against in schools - no incentive to work for qualifications or to consider a career when you can see parents who actually have a pretty nice life on benefits, thanks very much.

Sometimes a wee bit of suffering is what is needed to make changes. I'm sure I wouldn't be the person I am if I'd never experienced any sort of suffering.

pickle I would suggest that developing a more tolerant attitude to the real problem of why the tax and benefits system is failing is more useful than your orejudiced attitude that everyone on benefits has 'a pretty nice life thankyou'. Your opinion is exactly the one I'm hoping will change by this thread.

Well, it's not really worked then has it!

Hubbubs bowing out. It's been a long thread.

This has been such an interesting thread, more so if you've managed to read from the start to get the full picture, and I'm genuinely grateful to everyone who has contributed. Thankyou

I've had a couple of stinky messages from posters on this thread, one suggesting I'm just perpetuating the idea of lone parents being dole dossers which is really sad, because that's precisely what I was trying not to do, by declaring my income, by showing that not all of us sit around all day 'doing nothing' (is that even possible? I'd need a lot of coffee and hobnobs), and that whilst a lone parent with two chikdren has benefit income on a par with the national average full time salary, in reality, for many of us, a temporary life on benefits is offset by the prejudice we encounter both imagined and unimagined online and in real life, the spiralling despondency: the real benefits trap.

You really don't want to give up your job and live this kind of life, trust me.
Meanwhile, don't buy into the media hype anymore about benefit scroungers. Let's put it to bed. We could even put the Daily Fail out of print. Mumsnet Strikes Again! Fail Goes Under as Parents Universally Agree that Yes, Lone Parents ARE contributing to society actually, they're raising the next generation of taxpayers just like the rest of us!

There are bankers out there earning tax free bonuses of millions of pounds. Your salary is paying for that. That's a gaping chasm of injustice and worth a heck of a lot more than the comparatively meagre total benefits bill for lone parents. We are a minority.

PS I blardy love Mumsnet

I have watched the debate from both sides. I currently have 4 part time jobs arranged so I pay no childcare (can't afford it).

I now realise I have made a big mistake, I can work less than 10hr days (spread out till late in the night) & earn more money if I claim benefits. How shit & stupid do I feel I've been working & missed DD2's big night at school, & someone on benefits gets more than me & misses nothing at school :(

I'm not a Labour supporter but the best thing that can happen is the minimum wage is raised. All those panicking, try raising a family on £8 per hour, we aren't asking for much!

Please, please report the idiots that sent you unpleasant private messages. What a nasty thing to do.

Good luck with the job hunting OP. I hope everything works out for you and your DC.