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

Sorry, I'm on the app on my phone which didn't show an update from the op

Sazem it is including CB - read the post.

You get plenty - more disposable cash than we have and we both work!!!

Go on Another, treat yourself to another !

What makes me laugh about these threads, especially this one as the OP has told us exactly how much she receives after HB and CTB, is that people who are pissed off they are 'worse off' financially even though they are in work are assumed to be completely against the welfare system and must be wishing that people 'on benefits' weren't able to put the heating on or buy their kids an Xmas present.

Putting aside the circumstances that lead to people to ending up reliant on the state, as its not just people on benefits that ate the victims of dv or sufferers of depression etc etc, its not hard to see why some people get a bit pissed off with it when you see the figures there in black and white.

Bauer if someone has a more nuanced point to make than "that's more than we have", they could say so.

But maybe that is their whole point arsenic. They might not want to launch into a tirade about it as they do support the welfare state and don't want to see the OP's kids living in poverty. They might just want to add that it is more than they have as food for thought for the OP, the same as I'm assuming she is telling us how much she has, as food for thought for us.

Why is that not a valid contribution to make to this thread?

Anything is a valid contribution, but the 'that's more than we have' posts aren't coming across in the way you describe. They just sound disapproving.

as long as we're comparing like for like. you get people saying, 'you've got more money than we have' who are counting the money after they've paid their mortgage (massive investment in the future and the privilege of owning your own home and the security of that), after their car expenses (compared to someone who can't afford to run a car), after their bills (with heating used as needed rather than scrimped over) etc.

also are you living in a squalid little place or a nice place? do you have nice appliances that you can afford to replace in an emergency or not? is your situation going to improve over time re: paying off more and more of your mortgage, childcare costs soon to reduce, working your way up the career ladder etc?

£900 sounds a lot and i have said that i disagree with the way things go up hte more children you have - as a lone parent with one child when i was ill and on benefits i had nothing like that much and was surviving on about 12k all in (re: hb, incapacity benefit, cb, ctc etc from which came every living expense except free school dinners and prescriptions).

i'm also amazed by how badly off some of the working couples i know are BUT they're paying off mortgages, they have cars and they are well aware how radically better off they'll be once the children are older and don't need childcare and more of their mortgages/car loans etc are paid off.

having more in your pocket today does not mean 'better off' if you have no investments, no career, no anything other than that week to week survival. compare where you and the OP will be in 10yrs time if things continue as they are if you want a real comparison.

Everything TheHoneyBadger just posted. ...with bells on.

Exactly that....

I get that ta hard if you have to privately rent, but how many are private,y renting in a naice area to get their children into better schools ex and managing.

Someone on benefits won't have the same opportunities....however much disposable income they may appear to have.

I don't have a mortgage, am in a HA home (very fortunately) but once DS gets older the child related payments I get will stop.

I am fortunate enough to have a job but I will still have relatively little once DS grows up. Then again I might have the chance of working longer hours.

Great post Badger

So, by my quick calculation, the OP would have to earn around £24K before tax to be as financially well off/poor as she is now?

People may be paying mortgages (ie theoretically owning their own home) but all it takes is a market downturn to be in negative equity or homeless, and realistically most people's houses belong to the bank for most of their working lives.

Maybe the benefits of being in work will kick in at retirement, once the house is paid off and once occupational pensions kick in, but the way things are going I'm beginning to doubt even that- people's pensions are being whittled away to nothing, they (us! our generation) will have to pay our elderly care. I think the advantage may turn out to be illusory unless you count the mental health benefits from being in a job you enjoy.

Indeed and I am over 30 years continuously into paying a mortgage and still don't own a house outright. Anyway the difficulty for the state is how to make being benefits so unpleasant that people take £13k a year full time jobs without making benefits so low society does not accept that lower level of benefits. It's a difficult issue.

As duch says the benefits of working particularly at average or low wages may mean work doesn't really pay. I was discussing the new auto enrolment pensions yesterday.If you are on a low wage currently and then retire you may well get pension credit and housing benefit. If instead you give the state some of your money as your pension contribution you lose all that and have less money during your working life. Of course the gamble if you don't pay into the pension is that by the time you reach your 70 year old state retirement age housing benefit and pension credit for the old may have gone and you will at the mercy of your family or the poor house if you did not save into a pension so who knows?

Anyway this lady is in East Anglia. Cambridge is booming and I am pretty certain mumsnetters could help her get back into full time work very soon if we can.

The message for most mumsnetters is never give up full time work and live off male earnings as if you end up with a partner who runs off to Thailand with all the money or who physically abuses you you may end up on benefits - better never to give up full time work however hard that might feel at the time.

I totally agree, Green.

soontobesix Yes, I know that it includes CB

I stand by what I said: £225 a week is a lot of money.

Yep that seems a reasonably a comfortable amount to live on! I am a single parent, who works 2 (professional) jobs (46-50hrs a week) and juggles to be at home for my dd. I have no debt, no overdraft, no credit, get no child-tax credits or child benefit and a tiny amount of working tax cred and housing benefit (her dad gets these as he is otherwise in a worse situation than me, my dd spends half her time with each of us and therefore we make sure she has a bedroom in each home).

I have approx £200 left for food, clothes, toiletries, haircuts etc, gymnastics(a luxury that I'm determined to try and enable dd to have) etc after all bills paid. I have worked have the amount of hours and that was just as much of a struggle, my situation hasn't improved by doing more hours.

I don't think lone parents on benefits are rolling it in, but I can see why many choose not to work when, financially, they are often not much better off. The main problem in my area is the cost of private rentals.

and I mean £200 a month left - not a week!

I would just say that most ppl on lower incomes probably aren't paying into a mortgage. They are renting.

no lynette because she'd still get the child tax credit and child benefit when she was working and it would still be tax free and in fact she'd also get working tax credit on top. even if she could get a 16hr per week minimum wage job she would be better off financially.

re: she doesn't have to 'earn' that section of her living as she'd still get it. so realistically she only has to earn her rent and the £70 per week she gets for being unemployed to be 'as well off' and in fact she'd be better off as she'd get working tax credits which are a lot higher than child tax credits if you're on a low income.

look at it this way for a worked example:

i was on incapacity benefit, housing benefit and ctc for a while - my total income from all three was just over 12k.

i went back to work part time in a term time only 9k job. i then had that 9k (under tax threshold plus a much higher level of tax credits). i was better off by about 6k a year - re: a whole £500pm better off.

it simply isn't true that you're better off on benefits UNLESS you have multiple children (i have just one). that's where the benefits payments spiral upwards out of proportion with the actual increase in living costs (especially when you consider the main cost - re: bigger housing, is already covered in HB).

i have no idea how the OP comes to have so much money in her pocket but assume it is because she gets twice the level of ctc that i would have gotten via two children and extra child benefit.

say for example ctc for one child was £55pw and for two children was £100pw - where is the sense in that especially if you're housing costs aren't even in the picture because you get housing benefit.

how is that extra child costing you £45 per week more? how much can one child eat or wear? and that's without even factoring in the child benefit increase.

i really think that's where we need to focus on changes if we must make cuts.

Anyway the difficulty for the state is how to make being benefits so unpleasant that people take £13k a year full time jobs

Surely, most people would rather work when possible? It is not a purely economic decision.

Given a choice between £13k a year job and unemployment, I know which I would take. A family with children would get top-ups at that earning level anyway.

It is a tiny minority who actively choose the lazy path.