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

(though ideally they'd prefer to make that written off section of society all go live together somewhere up north that they've already written off in the thatcher era - it does erk them that they have the audacity to take up space in the precious south east)

I don't think most people feel like that although I do object to Iraqi kurds or any other people getting council accommodation near Hyde Park when most women who work full time have to commute into central London because they cannot afford to live there, and then illegally rent out their places for £3k a week holidays to those in London which is the scam exposed today.

I don't see why hard working full time working mothers haev to live out in the sticks but those who don't choose to work get put up in the most expensive areas of London. That feels very unfair to many Londoners. No reason those benefits claimants cannot live in Watford or Luton or zone 6 of the tube. Even Cameron's pathetically high new benefits cap (it's going tob e £23k) will not really help.

when their little bedsits and flats become available do you think you'll have a stab at gettng one greengrow or do you think they'll be rapidly snapped up by politicians and millionaire developers? may interest you to look into how many council buy to let properties ended up in the hands of politicians back in the day.

Iraqi kurds or any other people getting council accommodation near Hyde Park
Do they? Where did you hear that? The Daily Mail does not count.

women who work full time have to commute into central London because they cannot afford to live there
Most people who chose to work in central London cannot afford to live there. Should they be given free housing because of where they chose to work.

I don't see why hard working full time working mothers haev to live out in the sticks
The rest of the UK is not 'the sticks'. Some places even have electricity. I hear we are getting running water soon.

I want to know how the men who work full time get there?

these 'Iraqi Kurds' are probably AS and have no recourse to public funds, can't work and have little say in where or how they are housed

The expose today is about large privately rented flats (paid for with HB up to a level of £500pw apparently) in prestigious Marble Arch mansion blocks and Art Deco buildings which are then (it is alleged) sublet illegally at rates of up to £3kpw.

Nothing to do with council property. Fat profit if true. It's out and out fraud, however, not a wheeze or a perk.

I'm not sure why Iraqi Kurds should be particularly under suspicion/guilty of this. Family size gives higher HB ceiling? Not sure

I heard David Cameron say this morning they were reducing the cap to £23K if they get in next year. Not sure if this cap includes housing benefit.

ah so it's benefit fraud and they have been arrested for it ...so no different than fraud committed by other people. Not right but not exclusive to Iraqi Kurds

and also completely irrelevant to this thread

ah so it's benefit fraud and they have been arrested for it ...so no different than fraud committed by other people. Not right but not exclusive to Iraqi Kurds

It makes better headlines when intergenerational families do it, I think, becase the numbers are bigger

Probably is cheaper to pay benefits than create jobs and up skill people, we do live in quite a dysfunctional society, everything is mechanised and outsourced, IT has taken over so much, we are all told we must consume, consume, and consume, all the politicians tell us that never ending growth is desirable and achievable and we must always strive for more, more money a bigger house a newer kitchen on and on and on the numbers of people are just increasing (worldwide) and truthfully we have all come across people who are unemployable (might not be their fault but they are) and society hasn't really adapted to all that

I heard David Cameron say this morning they were reducing the cap to £23K if they get in next year. Not sure if this cap includes housing benefit.

Fabulous. So much easier than addressing housing shortage/cost. Or the cost of living. Or depressed wages. Or gas bills that rose with the cost of oil but never fell again.

Let's just have everyone, working or not, struggling to eat.

Green grow 23k is hardly " pathetically high" especially if you have several children and or live where rents are high.

the job market has changed immeasurably in the last 30 yrs clarinet. it didn't matter if every other word was a swear word and you had no idea how you're meant to act in middle class service situations - you could be a labourer or an apprenctice or any other start on the ladder. now the low paid jobs available are things like call centres where total impulse control is required, skills in language, ability to affect a certain tone and manner and language style etc.

benefits have been put in place instead of job replacement in some areas of hte country. close the mines, tell the doctors to say those are signing on are 'sick' so as to hide them from unemployment figures by putting them on incapacity benefit, then a couple of decades later bemoan the amount of incapacity claimants and declare them all fit for work without any actual jobs for them to go to.

there is a bigger picture as to how and why we got into a situation where so many find themselves unemployable and not a good match for the expectations of the kind of employment available now (service industry, communication skill based, relying heavily on self subjugation and restraint).

there are very few honest ways to make a living now - you could be illiterate and shit at dealing with 'posh folks' but able to lug bricks or other pure muscle and sweat jobs 30 years ago. now those jobs barely exist but the people who needed them still do.

I am a full time teacher on top level threshold before management. I work an average 40 hours a week and earn £37,000 a year. This comes in at £1800 a month after tax etc. I have to pay child care everyday before and after school, plus rent which leaves me with far less than £900 a month.
How much more do you expect to get? More than a full time teacher of 14 years experience? Now surely that would be an injustice.

£23k is nothing....you'd have to have several children to be eligible for the cap.

I only have one child. I was in benefits for two years, the benefits cap didn't affect me because I came nowhere near it. Suspect my "income" from benefits was less than £10k including housing benefit. (Not totally sure of exact figure).

I do know that one of my childless friends gets just £71 a week on JSA, he does get housing benefit and council tax benefit but actual cash in his hand is £71. From that he has to pay electricity, gas, water costs etc AND somehow adequately feed himself.

Most people on benefits are not actually better off. My friend still gets JSA although is about to sign off again as he has yet another zero hours contract. This one does seem to be offering g him regular work though...as a result he will be over £200 a month better off than in benefits...even taking into account his rent and council tax contribution.

Benefits as a whole are quite low. It's only if you have children that they seem generous, and children grow up leaving the non worker in a very poor place financially once those child related benefits have stopped.

This is our problem which we have not solved on the thread. If benefits are okay then those in work are working for nothing. If our teacher gets £1900 before childcare and housing she has bothered getting all those qualifications and working her fingers to the bone when she would have as much net income if she never left the house.

The benefits cap is very very popular both amongst labour and Tory voters by the way. It unites most of the country. At the moment although it has still not been enforced very often or very well which is pathetic, it is £500 a week including housing benefit and other benefits (£26,000 a year or £34,000 a year of before tax income). I think that is very high. The plan is to reduce it to £23,000 a year ( which is about £30k before tax if you work). That means the state will pay up to the equivalent of a £30,000 wage for people to do nothing. Still seems on the high side to me even when it comes down to this new level

Yeah savvyblonde, you know the answer to that don't you?

Leave the relationship you are in and your job....you can have the same as the OP.

Hint...you will also need (like the OP) to be in a violent relationship leaving you with no option but to leave with your children to safeguard them.

Is it acceptable to you that she claims benefits in her situation? Or should we say "no sod it....you and your children can suffer"?

oh and as you obviously haven't read the thread either (like several other folk frothing at the mouth), the OP clarified that she does not in fact have a spare £900 a month. Hope that helps.

Greengrow you hVe been on this thread for some time now. You KNOW as well as I do that the OP has left an abusive relationship.

Is it okay with you if she claims benefits while she gets her life back together?

...and your key phrase in your previous post was "up to £30k".

Most people in benefits will see nothing like that amount....ever.

and again - that teacher is paying for a good pension (deferred gratification), she is paying for childcare that will lessen hugely very soon, she is paying off students loans that will end and god knows what else is coming out to turn 37k into 1800 a month - presumably she's deducting her housing (which may be a mortgage - again a massive investment for the future).

it doesn't compare.

after tax 37k equates to £28,114.72 net pa and £2,342.89 net per month.

she'll also get the same child benefit as the OP gets and ctc/wtc/child care element if she qualifies so it also isn't the sum total of her income and again we're not comparing like with like.

after tax 37k equates to £28,114.72 net pa and £2,342.89 net per month.

That sounds better. I was trying to do different student loan repayment calcs in my head in between talking to the DC, but nothing accounts for £542 gap pcm.

Greengrow you've talked a lot about the need to frighten people into £13kpa jobs.

Don't you think £13kpa is just too low a wage for any FT job? Isn't that what's wrong with the wage economy?