£73.10 a week to live on

[abacucat]

If you are single and on statutory sick pay or unemployed, this is what you get a week to live on. You will also if you have savings below £16k get help with rent and council tax, although you are unlikely to get all your rent paid, so will have to make a contribution out of the £73.10. That is the grand total of your entitlement.
So my AIBU is, I am AIBU to get annoyed about people who are well off and have no idea how little many people manage on?

It's unreasonable to be angry about it if it's seen as a living wage. People can't expect to go on long term sick/unemployed but still be given the same as a normal wage. It's a temporary measure, not a lifelong choice of "income". For some on 50k this isn't enough depending on their circumstances/where they live, for others it's far and beyond enough, depending on their circumstances and where they live. I'd find something else to get angry about.

I am not sure if YABU or YANBU. The thing which annoys me is when the people with a very comfortable standard of living bang on about their luxury living.

I have a colleague who is constantly going on about holidays/meals out/high end purchases. It seems as though she has no real idea that these things are quite beyond the grasp of the people around her. She doesnt get that others are on far smaller incomes which have to be stretched over far larger necessary outgoings.

You're angry at people who work ridiculous hours to earn a good wage, so they don't cost other tax-payers anything, and who pay tax to fund benefits? OK then.

I think contributions based JSA should be much closer to minimum wage or tied somehow to contributions made.

I was made redundant earlier in the year due to company insolvency. I was in the fortunate position that when we bought our house we ensured we could do it on one income and i had a savings buffer.

However a couple of colleagues had just bought houses and wiped out their savings and were dependent on two wages coming in to pay the mortgage and bills (no redundancy as less than two years service).

The sanctioning of benefits of the poorest in society is a national disgrace. I completely disapprove of that. Some people are sanctioned and have nothing, that's why homeless populations have increased, or people living on sofas or parents/children in hostels which are frightening (I know someone in one).

It's not the headline amount- it's the instability and the mentality people must be punished/brought it on themselves that is so mentally destructive.

I don't think this is relevant to the 50K earners- I earn on paper a good wage but my rent and council tax is very high and leaves me with not that much left, with energy bills rising. I wouldn't complain about being poor as I am not, but I don't feel as comfortable as I used to 10 years ago on my professional wage and being a renter who needs a family property is quite precarious.

Honestly couldn't imagine living on £73 and having no other form of credit or savings to live on. But you can't get annoyed about what other people are doing.

I left school at 16, worked as a minimum wage cleaner and a care assistant and saved my arse off. At 20 I got an office job earning around 23k. I studied and got qualifications pertaining to that job. I met my now DH at 24. He had debt which I paid off. I got made redundant. Found a new job, worked myself to the bone to get promoted 13 hours a day. Bought our first house putting down £30k which I had been saving since I was 16. Husband got made redundant. I supported him until he found a new job. He's studied and worked so hard to get promotions within his new job. I had a near breakdown at 6 months pregnant due to the sheer amount of work I was doing and the stress. Fast forward a few years - I'm now 32, working non stop for 16 years - we're now earning around 80k between us. We've worked so fucking hard for years to get here. So yes, you're being totally unreasonable to be pissed off at people who are in a better position to you. The majority won't have just accidentally ended up earning that money.

Please also note I am not in any way saying you haven't worked hard all your life - just don't waste your time being fucked off at anyone else who isn't struggling so much. I'm currently on unpaid maternity leave and waiting to be made redundant again. So I know we will be struggling next year. But I'll deal with it and won't be pissed off with others over thier situation.

It's a shite state of affairs if your ill you can't work so why are you punished by not being able to eat too ? They must fucking realise that someone who is sick might need decent diet to get well? If they insist on the £72.10 is reasonable to live on could they ar least sub it in with some fruit and veg vouchers

Your anger is misplaced OP. Some people work very, very hard, make an intense amount of sacrifices and pay an absolute shit tonne of tax to be considered 'well off'.

But, the whole benefits system and SSP and even stat maternity pay needs a massive review. Its ridiculously low.

@ClaudiaWankleman £73 is not enough to live on. Even if they are contributing towards your rent, this £73 then has to pay ALL of your bills, water, gas, electric, food, etc.

We have been in this position numerous times when my husband was an agency worker, on and off JSA. If it wasn't for my Mother giving us money we wouldn't have survived. Luckily he now has a permanent job.

It is not feasible that you can live on £73 a week to cover EVERYTHING.

YANBU. I think a lot of people find it difficult to believe it really is as little as that. I'm pretty frugal, but there is no way I could live on that.

People can be on statutory sick pay for a year.

Not on SSP they can’t, it is temporary for up to 28 weeks.

We are well off. DH owns his own business and works 7 days a week, I work 30 hours a week in the business. We pay a HUGE amount of tax. We aren't "lucky" to be comfortable, we work our fingers to the absolute bone to be so and made a tonne of sacrifices along the way to get to where we are. I remember well scrabbling through drawers to find spare change to buy a loaf of bread so we could have toast for tea. It really fucks me off when I get called "lucky" and that I don't know what it's like to have no money. Not everyone is the same.
I understand entirely why you fucked off at £73 a week...it's hard and I've done it. But don't point your anger at others who have more, it isn't their fault.

YANBU. It's enough of a struggle on WTC.

Your anger is misplaced OP. Some people work very, very hard, make an intense amount of sacrifices and pay an absolute shit tonne of tax to be considered 'well off'

And people on JSA or other benfrfits have never a)been high earners or b) never worked very, very hard or c) made an intense amount of sacrifices or d) paid an absolute shit tonne of Tax?

@BunsOfAnarchy the benefit system has just had a massive review (universal credit) and believe me, people will not be getting more money under it. I had a customer in last week that had barely eaten that week. It's awful.

I think its quite nice that we live in a country where there is sone sort of safety net. It's not just £73 a week, there's housing benefit and free medical care and free schooling for your children even if you're not earning and child benefit and all sorts of stuff. Nobody in the UK is truly destitute unless there are other factors such as mh and addiction in play.

In the vast majority of countries round the world things are tougher than this.

Ive been on jsa. Its not enough to live on. If you havent been on the recieving end of the benefits system in the uk then its highly unlikely that you would have a clue how soul destroying it is ( no matter how much empathy you have).

Being too ill to work is different to not working when you could. JSA isn’t meant to be a long term solution. It’s there to provide a minimum standard of living until the person who used to work gets a other job. Under UC it’s changing but it used to be a gateway benefit which could get you housing benefit, council tax relief, free prescriptions etc and those added up to a decent amount of free money paid by the state, out of working people’s taxes, to someone who was able enough to work but didn’t have a job. I’ve been made redundant a couple of times, it’s horrible! I signed on once but as my husband had a job I could only get the basic jsa and none of the other benefits, didn’t matter how much national insurance I’d paid while earning, and it was capped at 6 months. Where we lived and our housing hosts at the time meant the benefits I got were worth pretty much nothing and I used my redundancy to pay my half of our costs and then thankfully got another job within a couple of months.

"I'm shocked and quite pissed off that you can claim any benefits if you have £15k in savings!! Savings are for rainy days, if you have a few grand in savings you shouldn't get any state benefits in my opinion."

You get reduced benefits from 6k in savings and none with 16k or more. Anything in between and your benefits are reduced proportionally.

It's quite unfair for the government to tell people to save all the time and then punish them when they do.

The MOST unfair thing regarding savings though is that you're only penalised if the savings are cash or property (i.e. house). If you have an expensive car, art or jewellery these don't count. However, it would be illegal to spend your money on one of the above things if you knew you were losing your job - illegal divestment of capital I think.

I used to have your attitude cheesy when I was very young, but then I realised that contributions-based benefits are a social insurance system. You pay in and then you can take out. It's not charity.

YANBU, it's very stressful living on a low income and worrying about how you will pay rent, bills, food and heating costs. Then if you have to add anything to that like travel costs or pay for repairs you know that you will not be able to afford the essentials.

Someone suggested that benefits are supposed to be a temporary measure and that that is why it is acceptable that they are not enough to live on but for sick and disabled people with no option to work they are not always a temporary measure.

I do also hate the 'If you work hard, you will become wealthy too' rhetoric- there are lots of people who work very hard and earn a pittance, there are also lots of people on £70,000+ who do not work hard. Some of the highest earners in this country got their jobs through contacts made at private school and through friends of their (wealthy) families. For some careers such as airline pilot, training is so ludicrously expensive that you could only consider the career if you came from a wealthy family in the first place; similarly training to become a lawyer is much easier with family money and connections.

I don't think you are being unreasonable at all but as all wealthy people believe that they are rightfully wealthy (otherwise they would experience cognitive dissonance and perhaps some guilt about being so wealthy whilst others are barely getting by) because they have worked harder than everyone else or made brilliant career decisions, it's probably not worth debating!

Do you know how much those people who are well off had to do to get to where they are. They worked for it. Uni, full time jobs, sacrificed, took shit positions to build up, you have the options to do the same.

Benefits isn't a lifestyle choice so people need to work to get off it.

"but it used to be a gateway benefit which could get you housing benefit, council tax relief, free prescriptions etc and those added up to a decent amount of free money paid by the state,"

Where I live there are free prescriptions for all, but I believe that in England they're only available for those on income-based JSA, not for people on the contributions-based who have worked in the last six months. Same would go for reduced cost of dental care. You're penalised for having worked and only being on benefits temporarily.

You have to pay a proportion of your Council tax now as well. And water rates

"Do you know how much those people who are well off had to do to get to where they are. They worked for it. "

People on low income jobs work hard as well and no, we DON'T all have the option to get a high paid jobs as we don't all have the capacity in the areas that pay well. I will never get a highly paid job no matter how much I work.