To think the benefit cap is going to plunge families into poverty

[Firsttheworst]

Next month the benefit cap comes in. It sets out the maximum that can be claimed in a week across all benefits. This doesn't include disability or wtc. Its aimed purely at women (mostly) claiming income support. You can only claim income support if you have a child under 5 and don't work.

The benefit cap is in the government owns words designed to get IS claimants out to work. The cap is currently £500 and will be reduced to £384 a week.

This includes, housing benefit, CT benefit, tax credits, income support. So all in total cannot be more than £384 a week. Over a 30 day month that comes to £1645.

From that £1645 I need to pay

rent £900 a month (no I can't move, its impossible to rent on benefits as it is, not giving this house up and its below market rent as it is)

CT - £60 a month

Electricity £80

Oil £80

Diesel £ 120 (rural don't drive anywhere other than school runs and supermarket/town once or twice a week)

Car insurance £49

Car tax £19.99

Phone/internet £40 (thats a basic mobile and broadband)

House insurance £13

TV licence £11

That leaves 272 a month to pay for food, clothes, car breakdown, school trips, birthdays, miscellaneous and god knows what else. For one adult and 3 children.

AIBU to think that the government have just decided that if they starve us out for long enough we'll be forced to go out and find a job? Like I said rural area so jobs are rarer than hens teeth and believe me i'm looking. It is pure discrimination against single mothers with small children (i doubt many men claim income support)

Sunshine, have considered it but my car is a piece of crap! Nowhere near reliable enough to use for a job. It just about tolerates doing the school run

Sorry, the thread has moved on, that was to Dawndonna

*All of you who say you'd just work or carry on with your jobs. Take any help you get from your family out of the equation. Take any help or childcare you get from your DH out of the equation. Just you on your own.

Can you still do your job?*

My husband was removed from the family home 8 weeks ago due to DV and after 6 weeks compassionate leave I just returned to work. I work FT (used to) and have two children, one school age the other preschool. I don't have a driving license and all my family are abroad, few friends. I have a log term MH condition. I became a single parent overnight.

I was determined not to give up my job I love, I needed to work to pay my bills, my rent and provide security for myself and my children. So I dropped a day a week (taking me down to just over £13k pa before tax). I enrolled my youngest in nursery for the other 4 days (couldn't afford the 5 hence dropping a day). Once I dropped the day that then bought me below within the threshold for FEET funding for my youngest. I also have to pay for breakfast club for my eldest and after school care for them both.

Because I don't drive we have to travel for an hour catching two buses to school, or we walk the 2 miles, then I walk to nursery then a colleague picks me up and takes me to work. I collect the kids at 5 and we walk and bus our way home. It's a long day for us all but I hope to start driving lessons soon.

It costs a fortune right now, and it's HARD. But I just remind myself it's only hard for now. Once my youngest is school age my childcare fees will go way down and I'll have only one drop off instead of two etc.

So yes, people DO cope with no support on very low wages as SP. I am coping because I have to.

This is unbelievable. You're pleading poverty but I have to work full time for less than that and pay childcare.
Yes I've been on benefits before and actually at the time I couldn't believe I was entitled to money for free!!
Being on benefits is hard but working full time on minimum wage is also hard.

That's a lot on diesel - DH commutes to work quite a distance and it's nowhere near that!

I would find something much more economical to drive.

I don't know what free courses are available to you locally OP but use them! I'm annoyed I can't - I temp, but I'm not entitled to benefits at all between jobs and have to pay for all the courses and I can't afford them/not be available to temp.
There are even courses here to do with being a cleaner (to do with health and safety etc) and food hygiene ones etc - often they are only one day.
I would go to your local adult ed and see what courses you can do that might help you find work

I don't like the nastiness of this thread but...
Am in the south east, higher rent, single mum of three, chronic illness and Work full time. You just have to. To have some pride and show your kids it's the way forward...
I would also follow advice and contact csa again if you are making decisions based on the children having a relationship with their father and he Isn't contributing....
come on op.... dig deep

Like others have suggested I think you need a serious discussion with your ex about what he can do to support his children, either financially or by providing some childcare to enable you to work or study.

It must be hard for you but you cannot be kept in the standard you are accustomed to by the taxpayer forever. As a previous poster has said, how do you plan to live when your children grow up?

Yes, the benefits cap is going to plunge single parents and their children further into poverty as it is intended to. It is intended to chase you out of an affluent rural area, thus ensuring that fewer voters in 'naice' areas know poor families. It is intended to 'strengthen marriage' by ensuring that fewer women can leave their husbands, and that being a stay at home mum until the kids start school is a luxury reserved for better off married ladies. And now that the tax credits etc have been cut it is intended to chase you into a job, any job, as even though when you are working you will be worse off than you are now, you will be better off than you would be under the benefit cap. And it is being done with the support of lots of voters who have been persuaded that the reason that they are struggling is all the single parents/workshy scroungers and immigrants instead of the deliberate growth of inequality and the booming wealth of the tax dodgers at the top.

op, what do you say to posters who say they have the same or less money per month than you, you seem to be ignoring anyone who says they have less than you and they work?

I'm not saying you have it easy, or move house or anything like that, but you do seem to be ignoring anyone on similar or less money who says they cope because they have to.

First rate post.

Oh sorry that was to missmayhem

Bang on with that, missy. Well said.

Yes, Missy

Just do what you can until you find something better living on £272 a month is not sustainable. Keep on telling yourself its not forever and if you can fit in a home study course. It will be worth it in the end.

Everyone saying just move, even if the op could get past the financial hurdles associated with the logistics involved with that and find someone to take HB

Do you know how easy it would be for her ex to get a court order preventing her from doing so?

Why do you keep ignoring the two things that would sort out your problems - deal with your ex and go to university. You've not acknowledged that both of those would change your life overnight. I'm going to sleep now, early start. My boyfriend sets out at 4am tomorrow - he doesn't drive so relying on lifts etc - I'm not suggesting you have to be out the door st that time, but you know what, people work hard for the kind of money you're given so try to be gracious about it.

OP your income equates to a salary of £24,000 per annum. It's what a huge number of people working full time earn. It's tough but not unusual.

" I'm just like you, well I was anyway. I had the husband and the two cars and the nice holiday each year. "

Thing is dude, is that isn't just like a lot of us. Loads of people have never had the cars or the big houses or the holidays or the thermometer set to 25*c. What you're describing as this extreme poverty is just a normal standard of life to large sections of society. That's why you've had the responses you've had, rather than the MC handwringing you perhaps imagined you might get.

Was your divorce fairly recent? I can see it's been a bit of a struggle for you to come to terms with the lifestyle you need to lead now, and I appreciate that it'll probably have to get worse before it gets better.

Sorry this thread hasn't been what you wanted. Sleep well x

OP- good luck with the job application! Earlier I stated that you would have had several letters advising you about the Benefit Cap reduction and I am just wondering what help or advice you received from the Jobcentre ? I am asking as you gave the impression in your opening post that all this was unexpected but it wasn't sovi am just curious why you chose to post now ? Hope things work out and well done for staying calm.

needs so she goes to court and says if the ex doesn't want her to move he'd better pay the rent or have the kids full time, judge will agree with her and over turn court if it gets issued in the first place.

Apologises for taking your post the wrong way mummyDragon also pm me if you want any advice re pip forms. Pip is actually better than dla for fluctuating conditions as you only need to have care needs 50% of the time.

It is hard. Full time band 5 nurses, working 50% nights and weekends get about £1500 pcm after deductions, so you can see why it may be hard to accept that as a tax free benefit amount, but as a society we should also protect our most vulnerable people. I suppose the difficulty comes in defining what is choice and what is circumstance.

There will always be people who feel more able to rail against their circumstance than others....does that mean those who rely on benefits who could work at a great personal cost are exercising choice to stay as they are, or are they trapped by the very system that is meant to give them help?

'Do like the Americans do with limited welfare'

Oh, yeah, what a fucking role model: crime is unbelievably high there. Drug use, people dying from lack of healthcare, kids dying because they have to be left alone whilst their parent has to work the 3 jobs (all their fault, of course, because they don't have one job that can pay the bills, they deserve to lose everything), mass killings. Yep, want to be just like them. Let's just go and find a person who thinks rape is alright to be PM and we'll be right there.

So much judgement on here!

I dont know if you are still reading Op. I got to about page 16 then didnt have the time to go through any more!

Anyway, maybe this has already been suggested - get rid of the TV license. I have had to. I know it wont save a fortune but every little helps right?? I just watch stuff on catchup or find old stuff to watch on Youtube. Also, is house insurance absolutely vital? With regards to internet, not sure who you are with but I like to ring and complain/suggest I will move to someone else and I generally get a discount on something. I think I pay around £28 a month for my home phone/fibre (rarely make any phone calls) and I pay £4 a month for my mobile. I have no idea about car stuff as I don't have one.

Sadly its the costs of the rent that is a pain but then lots of us have that problem. I think the poor really are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

Can I say something to those saying get another car

How?

What makes you think its that easy if she's already going to struggle?

Some of you have no fucking clue idea how difficult it is, and those of you that are back at work and struggling stop looking at those below and asking why they should have what they have, look above you and ask why arent they paying their fair share, they have their businesses because of the sweat n your brow but they are not willing to pay you a decent wage for doing that, such good little sheep