Tothink it's utterly ridiculous that a 6k raise would only work out to be £100 per month

[theduchessstill]

I'm just feeling really hopeless at the moment. I earn a decent enough wage and know that I am very fortunate compared to many. However, as a single parent who receives no maintenance I am solely responsible for myself and two children and a mortgage, as well as having to save for a further pay out for ex when youngest comes of age. We do ok, but I have little to no savings and think about money constantly.

I have seen a job that pays 6k more than my current one and is a natural next step for me. 6k seems like quite a step up, but have just put the figures into a calculator and it seems that, taking into account the fact it would take me above the CB threshold, I would be a measly £100 per month better off.

Pisses me off tbh. As I'm in a public sector role I very rarely get other pay rises and when I do they're minuscule. I also think the fact that I would lose CB when a couple with a combined income well above my single one would keep it is an absolute disgrace. It just seems things are never going to get any better for me so just having a little rant, a pointless one as there's obviously no guarantee I'd get the job even if I went for it.

Op thank you for answering the question, seems to my mind you titled the figures, you will put more into your pension pot and therefore be more than £100 per month better of as it’s a savings pot for your future.

I earn a lot less than you but am happy with my lot and am not envious

I was just curious as to how you got to the figures you did as they didn’t stack up.

To come on here and post what you have you will get a lot of stick, especially when others are struggling to make ends meet...

It's almost certainly worth making higher voluntary contributions to your pension to keep your CB. If the pension that you pay into is DC type than you can get it out at age 55. You can set up a separate scheme, it doesn't need to be a fund via your employer. As a higher rate taxpayer the government will put in £40 for every £60 you put in (which isn't fair, but is still nonetheless true).

Also - yes he should pay child maintenance. Get on that asap.

I totally understand your disappointment and I earn no where near what you do.

But why isn't their dad paying his share?

The financial responsibility for them is his too. This is ongoing and separate from your divorce.

This happened to me too OP. I'm a single parent like you and was hoping my new job would mean I'd actually have some money over for savings and treats. But no. What made it worse is that I've gone to a role in the NHS where the pension contribution is fixed at 12.5%, so actually I'll end up taking home the same as I did in my old role.

OP, I think you've had an undeservedly hard time on this thread.

I get where you are coming from and understand the frustration. There seems to be an ethos on MN that unless you are in the absolute shittiest of situations that you can't be unhappy about a crap situation.

Hopefully you can redo yours sums and see what the real impact would be. If my salary went up 500 a month I would expect that the real impact would be at least £250 a month.

Also, getting CM involved does make sense, even if he just needs to pay £10 a month and you put it into an account for you DC and forget about it, it's their money and he should pay something. Don't let him make you feel sorry for him and that he shouldn't pay anything.

Just remember that you are doing a great job for your children. You got out of a bad relationship with your ex, you are providing for them, giving them good opportunities, and showing them a great example. You should be celebrated and celebrating. I like hearing about women doing well, it inspires me that my situation too can improve.

Good luck to you if you do go for the new job.

Check this OP, but I think you might have to do the pension top up as a salary sacrifice in order to keep your CB.

Blue - your situation is undoubtedly shit and the worst thing about poverty is the loss of hope for a better life. It sounds like you have been ground down and have become defeatist, but you are attacking the wrong people for that situation. A single parent teacher with extra management responsibilities is not to blame for your predicament, nor unworthy of sympathy for her own position. We need people like her to take on extra responsibilities, not to tell them they don't even deserve what they've already got. Nobody will end up any good at maths if we can't recruit good teachers, then we're all in the shit!

And try not to give up hope - that's often a mental state caused by poverty, not an inevitability however hard you try.

‘user1471426142

These financial threads always end the same way. Whatever the salary of the OP, they are criticised because they’re not as poor as someone else. Granted some posters have zero awareness that they are relatively speaking in a good financial position. However, when high earners are feeling squeezed, there is a message for society as a whole (I.e that living costs are too high compared to wages). There is a bit of an issue when people don’t feel they are getting anywhere near the lifestyle they were expecting for a certain wage. It weakens people’s ambition and desire to strive as the extra work doesn’t seem worth it. Of course people on lower incomes have it tougher but a race to the bottom attitude where everyone should be struggling does no one any good’

Well said, user.

It’s like blasphemy to say it on mumsnet, but the fact is, people don’t all have the same determination and drive to do some of the tougher but necessary work in society that carries responsibility and pressure.

I’m in education and among my colleagues are women who have worked hard to get to the higher positions, often making decisions along the way that not everyone is prepared to do: paying out shedloads in childcare, moving across the country to gain promotions, putting in the hours that frankly not everyone wants to do. It’s not that other people couldnt do it- it’s a choice. Interestingly where i currently work, a large proportion of female staff in lower paid roles- admin, LSAs - are graduates. Many choose to work part time because it suits them (I’m not just talking parents of small children, I’m talking women in their 50s)
They have the ability to work in higher paid roles- eg as graduates they could do a one year post grad course to teach, or indeed go into some other area of work which is higher paid. But the majority of them are choosing not to- and are quite open about the fact they want low pressure work, part time, no work spilling over into home life.
Which is fine - provided those who do take on more challenging roles are incentivised to retain them and to gain further promotion. I can see exactly where the OP is coming from.
I earn a good salary working full time in middle management. I’ve no personal axe to grind. But what stops me from taking on any further promotion into senior management (which incidentally is crying out for more women) is that after paying even more tax than the hundreds i pay every month, even more pension than the hundreds i pay every month, even more NI than the hundred I pay every month ... there wouldn’t be enough of a difference from my current take home pay to make it worth my while taking on the extra responsibility.

People can snipe away bitterly about those on higher incomes as much as they like, but the fact is, there is a massive problem in society when the Correlation between working and remuneration for it is as broken as it’s become in the UK.

Hi. I haven't read through the whole thread as to be honest it got a tad tiresome reading comments about how you should be grateful and not moan etc etc.
I do understand. I worked so so so hard last year to get a promotion. Worked in evenings, worked on weekends etc. Got myself a bonus of £5000 - and I know £100/200 extra a month is something but bloody hell it isn't much after all those extra hours.
It's disheartening when the extra hours make the promotion actually not worth it.

And it is all relative.
But doesn't mean those earning £40k to £50k can never be disheartened.

What I can't understand is why you aren't getting any Child maintenance? It doesn't need to be the part of any divorce agreement.
The father has them 30% of the time. You would still clearly be eligible for financial support. Why don't you persue it?

Sorry that should be hundreds of NI I pay every month. A hundred would be wishful thinking - it’s well over £300. And that’s just NI. Tax and pension way more each.

You'll get little sympathy for earning more and paying more tax OP, because there are always people who want to point out how much it is for people earning less. As if you're not allowed to have frustrations and stress and should just be grateful for being "lucky" that you earn what you do (it being nothing to do with your skill set or hard work, of course!).

It is disheartening. When you're in the £100-120k bracket you pay 62% in tax and NI. I once broke my neck to get a bonus - I didn't bother the following year because it simply wasn't worth the hours I'd put in and all the social life sacrifices that entailed after the tax and NI had swallowed most of it! You don't get CB at that level either.

Personally I decided to take the view that it's a necessary step if you want to keep earning more - it's like stepping stones. Good luck if you do go for the job!

DH has just got a £1600pa rise and will be about £100 per month worse off 😪😪 He is moving to this job as his previous one had zero prospects whereas he will move up quickly in this one. Short term pain, long term gain. 🤷‍♀️

OP - I hear you, but I think it’s possibly better to bemoan this amongst friends rather than an online notice board where so many women are struggling on so much less than you.

I think you are getting an unnecessarily hard time here. And what I always find ridiculous about these threads is that people never consider the cost of housing. I read somewhere that if you live in London, you need about 70k salary to have the same lifestyle as someone earning 30k in Huddersfield. I can't remember exact figures, but i remember when I read it that it was the difference between MN people saying 'you rich parasite' and 'get out the violins, I manage on less than half that'. Well yes, there's a reason for that. If you have to pay 1700 quid to rent a 2 bed house, that 'impossibly high' salary might not stretch quite as far as if it only costs 500...

OP, why are you setting money aside to give to your ex if he isn't paying any CM? Set off what he should be paying against this money.

It is money owed to your DC so you really should be making sure they get the benefit of it.

I'd say definitely go for the promotion. Look at the long term rather than the short, that's what I'm doing because for me I feel totally reliant on Tax Credits at the moment, even though I'm putting in an awful lot of effort at work and paying a fortune in petrol to get there. But it's all about that future plan where one day I can hopefully go into full time employment and not rely on the government for anything, mainly because it's so unstable. My mindset has always been as my wages rise, and benefits fall, as hard as it is not to think "but why should I earn more to then loose free money in benefits" I try to think this is all a good thing to be self sufficient because my kids will be 18 one day.

The part of this that would annoy me is the child benefit element. It's incredibly unfair that a couple can earn the thick end of £100k and still get it, while a single parent loses it at half that. When they first made the change I was aghast at the illogicality of it. Why they didn't base it on household income I'll never know.

OP, you're massively subsidising your ex, you need to stop doing it.

Bluelady - I felt the same as my salary is over the threshold even though DP is a SAHD. I assume it's to do with encouraging parents to go back to work, like the 30 hours free childcare? But I may well be wrong!

I earn less than 2/3 of the national average working full time and because of where I live I can still afford to rent a nice flat, go out for coffee/meals once a week, go on cheap holidays and save (slowly) for a deposit. If I lived in London - which I used to, but as a teenager so I wasn't paying rent etc - I honestly think I would struggle to maintain my current lifestyle on 2-3x that amount. And that's before you even factor in dependants. Obviously people manage on less, but I can still see where OP's coming from as it's meaningless to compare salary across different regions.

FWIW I'm in education but not a teacher, and considered training as one in part for the increased pay. In the end I decided it wasn't currently worth it for the horrendous hours and stress, and that's just for a trainee, never mind the level OP must be at to be making 50k. I can totally see why you're frustrated, OP.

Rebeccaslicker - I think it's to do with wanting everyone to work and also not wanting to complicate things by linking incomes within the tax system - think of all the game playing, pretending you do not cohabit, the complaints by some married couples and the moralistic that it fails to encourage the most stable form of relationship and enables the unmarried to cheat the system, and the argument that tying men's and women's salaries together is a slippery slope which in the future might be used for social engineering purposes to force unhappy couples to stay together and remove privacy from people stuck in abusive relationships because they are forced to share their financial details with each other and the taxman and will be unable to hide money sources from each other that might enable them to effect an escape etc, etc, etc You have to weigh up the benefits of a cheap, simple system against a hugely complex and expensive one to administer which tries to get it right for everyone (but inevitably won't).

I think it was devised by lazy civil servants sharing one brain cell between them who went out for a boozy lunch and came up with it on their return.

That's kind of why child benefit used to be univeral. It was simple, and also, it was supposed to benefit the children, anyway, and they aren't earning anything.

Round it's a mess isn't it and there are still so many couples out there where (mainly) the wife still doesn't know the extent of their husband earns. Whilst I agree with the principle that it should based on household income rather than individual, to enforce that would be very very complicated. My ex dh never told me half of what he earned and had hidden and he chose to have it so I still got paid child benefit on my measly wage and he just got it taxed from his wage at the end of the financial year (he was self employed.) It was easier doing it like that apparently when they brought in the new CB rules years ago but it was more likely so I didn't go rifling into his finances

To stop univeral benefits, like universal free education, healthcare and child benefit, paid for by general taxation, you are betraying the concept of us all being in this together/all part of the same civic society, and the result of that has never been better conditions for the poor - instead, it results in crappy healthcare and education for those who can't afford it and everyone else buying out of it at varying levels of quality, depending on their means.