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

Beast, your human nature clearly works very well: you can see that other people need the of 'your' CB more than you do. Not everyone can manage that, and this means that universal benefits are a handy little bribe to focus the mind.

I am sure you are right. But it was more the miser in me, thinking that I didn't want CB wasted on ppl like me .

The changes to CB are inherently unfair though, as I have pointed out many times on here before. The fact that a family on a joint income of 100k can still receive it, means that it is still going to families who are much wealthier than single earners on much less who now no longer receive it. That change to universal benefits was not well received as far as I'm concerned.

"The cost of means testing a benefit, as opposed to it being a universal entitlement is absolutely eye-watering Beast, in percentage terms of cash paid out (I wonder if I can find a link)."

That depends on how means-testing is done. A new income support claim costs £181.

The average weekly Income Support Claim is £71.65.

There are 868,000 claimants, and 266,000 new claimants last year.

So of £3.2 billion paid out, the cost of new claims was £48.1 million. Which is about 1.5%, not really eye-watering by any means.

Ihate If one family earns 30k each, and gets 60k overall, they also have to pay for childcare.
A family where one person earns 60k and the other is a SAHM has no chldcare cost.
We have to take this into account when we think about those changes to CB.

Such children as the OPs should only get a piece of fruit for bday/Xmas, cheapo homemade card, cake about to go out of date, OP could do homemade presents for very little if necessary. A trip to the park/library. They're free. And be made to be bloody grateful. Think about children in third world countries

Oh you are a card.

My Mum grew up poor, only getting an orange in her christmas stocking, second hand knickers off the market and feeling hungry while lying in bed at night were the norm, 'never did them any harm' bullshit it was dreadful, awful and had lifelong effects on her self esteem/sense of worth. If you treat people like they are nothing, what do you expect to be the result of that?

All that 'never did us/them any harm' nostalalgic crap is such a crock of shit!

Hunger, squalor and misery are the reality of being poor back then, thank fuck we have the welfare state so chidren shouldn't have to live like that.

Beast, I'm thinking about friends of mine who earn 50k and 30k. They also have 3 houses between them and no child care as children are in school and are collected by family. I am also thinking about other friends, where the dad has his own business and the wife works for him. They too have 3 houses and they openly state that they have a very clever accountant and have not lost CB due to this. It just seems to affect those of us on PAYE. I do agree though that lot of working couple will have child care costs.

Just realised who Greengrow is.

Just realised who Greengrow is.

I'm fond of her 'wonky false moustache' style name changes

yes, wonder how the island is...

Good luck in your new career op. I hope you get a good job and employer. I couldn't bear to read the whole thread (I seriously hope no one has mentioned children busking but I've probably misread that) but the main figure I was struck with was the csa pittance. For what it worth I am crap at budgeting too - I hope soon you don't have to.

Ohhh I'm with you knee, well spotted.

SugarMouse1 I don't even swear, I think a sex chatline would be impossible for me to attempt. I also don't have a landline.
My children are also still young, they are content with board games and crafts for presents.
You keep complaining that the taxpayer is funding everything and you are right, but you forget I have been a taxpayer since my first job at 18, and I'm now 45 and have rarely been out of work.

Greengrow I did daff picking in Cornwall back in my Twenties. I can imagine it's not dissimilar to fruit picking. This was for the biggest flower farm, but even they cooked the books. It was literally backbreaking work and then as now I didn't have my own transport to get to a rural place of work.

Aga I can't find the reference at the moment, but I think your figures are off.

An 'income replacement' benefit like IS or JSA would, in any case, not make a good comparator to child benefit or the old age pension, both of which are both quite stable and long-term, once in payment (if universal).

She sold it Brave

yes, wonder how the island is...

Oh right! She'll always be Lydia to me.

(she was telling me a couple of weeks ago, I'm not spying on the island or anything )

Thanks, Arsenic.

I whipped through that very quickly and guessed at 100 quid a week childcare and other things and they say you need to earn about 6.31 an hour to be better off, which on a 30-hour working week is under 12 grand a year.

There seems be something wrong with that calculation!!!

Oh it says things like: Estimate does not include travel costs or your childcare costs of £100.00 per week

SugarMouse1 I remember some of your threads about your friends not wanting to spend time with you. It's so clear why on this thread.

Sugar has now been banned Kelly (thank goodness)

Thank you HQ!

I was waiting for her to do the 4 Yorkshiremen act from Monty Python

OhGood that sounds confusing. Does it mention what amount of tax credits would be available on those earnings?

ArsenicFaceCream

You know sugar I am now remembering the sweet faces of my then 6/7/8/9 year olds who never asked for anything (expensive or not), never failed to say thank you for and appreciate what ever cheap tat and secondhand trinkets I scraped up and wrapped for them, always treasured and looked after whatever they were given, and I am having some distinctly unchristian thoughts about you.

Me too. 2 years ago, for ds1's 8th birthday I was spectacularly skint. I bought him a board game and a book from a charity shop. Made him a card. I felt fucking awful that I couldn't get him anything else.
He opened it and the look on his face. ..A big grin! He said "wow mummy I love it. You always buy me the best stuff"

He also a said to me later that he knew it was from the charity shop but he didn't care because he knew I didn't have much money and I'd picked stuff I knew he'd love.

Makes me cry remembering it.

I seriously hope that the 'taxpayers' don't begrudge the £3ish that I spent on him that year.

And I would have told sugar to fuck off but see she's gone already. Thanks MNHQ

Georgina1975 I think you have a good point about means-testing pensioners to cut some corners off the goal benefits bill. I know of two who have excess disposable income they are forever saying they just don't need, and that generation are so very careful with money anyway, they still buy their value range even when they can afford finest range.

OhGood When I had a lone parent advisor they offered back to work calculations. It sounds simple: give a salary figure and then match it against all your outgoings. But what can't be done, is to give anywhere near an exact figure because they can't access housing benefit to show how much would be deducted if I worked part time for instance, and they can't show how much childcare would cost because it's a tax deduction from your salary issue not a set amount, and so on. There were also back to work grants such as £40 a week for the first few months I think to help ease the transition from benefits income to first wage payment, but she wasn't sure if/when that was being abolished, and so on.

I have resigned myself to the fact that I will start work. I ring benefits.mThey stop everything. And I'll probably be behind with my next rent payment and so on until wages come in.
I have to clear the £500 overdraft too before I start work.

I've never had credit cards or loans (unusual I know) and for the person who questioned why I hadn't built up savings or mortgage at this age, well, I have never really had a career. I'm only educated to A level, no degree, and as explained in the op, my work history reads like a gap year student's. Partly down to the town I lived in which had virtually zero unemployment and the 'culture' amongst us Twentysomethings then was to pick and choose who we worked for and change employers at a moment's notice, because the long term temp agency contracts especially were so competitive, the money was ridiculously good. But I was young and frittered it on entertainment, socialising, holidays, etc.

By the time I got to my early 30s I met the father of my children, and he convinced me out of my savings within 2 weeks of meeting him. This was a totally different part of the country. I never had anything above a minumum wage then. I left him with my newborn, age 40.

He opened it and the look on his face. ..A big grin! He said "wow mummy I love it. You always buy me the best stuff"

What a lovely boy you have.