£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?

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

You can't compare with developing countries though. Compare with similar countries in Europe - Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, France. In many of those countries benefits are in line with what you contributed. I remember a German friend earning more in unemployment benefit than I did in my job (both single) as she was getting 60% of her former wage.

When I was teaching, I was earning close to 50K. Living in London on my own, paying rent and debts, I was left with 105 per week after bills and travel expenses to pay for food and 'others expenses'. Yes, that's more than 73.10, but still far less than anyone would expect from a 50K a year earner. I had no savings.

Point is, just because you earn what seems to be a decent salary, you can still experience and appreciate others' difficulties, particularly in London - and I lived in a cheaper part zone 4, south.

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.

There's no real safety net for a young couple with no children earning minimum wage. If one of them loses their job there's very little help beyond the derisory 73.10. Even just a month out of work probably means a loss in income of a thousand pounds. If you don't have access to credit, family to help out etc. it's something that can be hard to manage, even if you get employed again reasonably quickly.

Yanbu and the attitude from those on this thread that say life is tough suck it up is what makes this country ugly and the hateful place that it is.

Your views of people are very black and white, OP. Lots of people who are now "well off" haven't always been that way. You would think of me as well-off, as I earn around £55,000 (even though I live in the SE and can only afford a one bed flat). However, what makes you think I don't understand what it is like to be hard up? I was a young carer for my mum when I was growing up, have spent time on the dole when I couldn't find a job and spent four years working full-time while living in substandard housing (in a mouldy granny annexe with a water supply which froze up every winter and an insect infestation).

My gripe with the system is that someone who has worked all their lives and paid their NI receives the same amount in jobseekers allowance as someone who has never worked or paid NI (I don't mean the disabled here - I mean people who are able in body and mind and just can't be bothered to find work - there are plenty of people like that where I grew up). People who have worked should get a % of the income that they earned when they were working for a certain length of time, say 6 months. Otherwise there is no point paying into National Insurance.

How do you reply to this? I guess I have no idea how people live on that. I'm a high earner and have been for years. I only work on temporary contracts so know it can come crashing down at any time. I live in London and could not get by on £50k with my outgoings.

However, I would say that somebody getting £73/wk after tax and rent living in a first world country doesn't fully understand the grinding poverty that the poor in developing countries have to endure.

"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."

Yep.
Jobs are paid according to how rare the skills are, how the skills are valued by the market, etc., not by how hard someone works.

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.

Exactly this! Our joint income is about £100k and as a family I think we have a less stressful life with less working hours than my DB&SIL who's joint income is around £30-£35k.

My DH is a big earner and he's home at 4pm every day, can take a day off when he likes or work from home when he likes. We're very lucky that his skills are highly sought after, he doesn't even have to manage anyone and can take his full lunch every day. I only work 17.5 hours in a much lesser paid but arguably more draining job that I wouldn't want to do full time.

DB and SIL both work 5 days a week and work weekends between them to limit childcare costs. We help them all we can without it seeming like charity.

SSP is £92.05 per week & is considered short term until the claimant is well enough to return to work.

It's a bit like low wages/maternity pay in that a company can pay more than the government set levels but often choose not to so even for those working 40hrs at minimum wage it's a big drop in income & often not accommodated for & of course universal credit is a mine field to navigate to access the other help you may be eligible for.

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

As I said about 10posts above:

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?

Clary - I went to uni, I worked since I was 13. I lost my job of a decade, and I needed emergency spinal surgery which has a minimum 8 week recovery
After that I took a care job to get any money I could to pay my mortgage. Only now am I back in FT employment but I now work a FT and a PT job to pay my bills

I worked my backside off but the spinal surgery wasn't an option, I had to have it. And I can easily see how if you were in a manual job or didn't get sick pay how badly it could end. They operated to stop me being paralysed

Short term £73 a week is manageable. However a bigger issue (if the race to the bottom has to happen) is that done disabled people are expected to live on £73 a week long term. Even when the ESA folks themselves say there’s no immediate prospect of a return to work.

The treatment of the sick and disabled in the U.K. is nowhere near as good as lots think it is.

Oh and working one job FT (5 days a week) and another PT job (3 evenings) gets me about £1600pm after tax

Why is it that if you state you work hard for your wage, you're somehow automatically ignoring the fact that; yes, people on lower pay also work hard, literally no-one I know actually thinks like that, so I don't know why so many people try to trap you in a virtue signalling "gotcha" moment by pointing it out, it's obvious, everyone already knows.

Just because you work hard doesn't mean you can't acknowledge other people work hard for less. I work hard for my £50k, doesn't mean other people don't work hard for their £13k.

Just to make clear, Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) is actually £92.05 per week and can only be claimed for 28 weeks (usually by your employer who will either pass it on solely or top up depending on your contractual sick leave rights). Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) is £73.10 per week as OP states.

As a benefits’ advisor I would urge anyone who is concerned about benefit entitlement (or lack of it) to use one of the online calculators (e.g. entitledto) to make sure they are claiming what they are entitled to in their individual circumstances. This includes (in non Universal credit areas) JSA or ESA, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Support and Tax Credits plus also PIP and Child Benefit.

U or NU it’s better to make sure you know for sure what you are and are not entitled to rather than taking it on hearsay!

"Why is it that if you state you work hard for your wage, you're somehow automatically ignoring the fact that; yes, people on lower pay also work hard"

Because look at this comment from a high earner:

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

That suggests she thinks only high earners work had, otherwise OP would also know about hard work wouldn't she?

Of course YANBU.

Some people have no idea, are in a fortunate position through nothing more than luck and still want others to be super grateful for getting any help at all.

Well this thread has answered my constant wonder of how the Tories got in!

Yanbu and the attitude from those on this thread that say life is tough suck it up is what makes this country ugly and the hateful place that it is.

^this. There is no empathy or compassion being shown at all.

I was earning close to 50K. Living in London on my own, paying rent and debts, I was left with 105 per week after bills and travel expenses to pay for food and 'others expenses'. Yes, that's more than 73.10, but still far less than anyone would expect from a 50K a year earner.

The £73 would have to cover bills and travel expenses. If posters living in London find it hard on 50k a year, what hope does someone on under 4k a year stand (even if rent is paid for - which it usually isn't completely).

From a purely economic point of view, more than £73 a week is needed to get a job. Job hunting can be expensive. Travel, clothes and mobile credit are all needed. £73 a week just traps people meaning that the taxpayer has to support them for longer.

And then there is social cost of children who are being brought up in households in poverty.

So giving people only 73 quid doesn't make economic sense. It's just punishment for not being able to work under the guise of motivation. Cruel and nasty.

"But 50k to someone living in London doesn't get them sweet f all"

Oh come on. I know London's expensive but it's not that expensive.

YANBU to be annoyed at people who choose to stick their heads in the sand and act as though their wealth exists in a consequence-free vacuum.

Money is useful because there is a finite amount of it. That means in order for some people to have more, other people must have less. Being wealthy is not a morally neutral way of living.

People with a lot of money who shrug their shoulders and say "that's just the way it is" while families in this country are having to choose between heating and food as a result of bad fortune like ill health are the absolute lowest of the low.

Quite Biker47.
I completely understand and have been in both situations so I know how hard being on a low income is and how hard you do work for that low income. I only get pissed off now when I'm told how it's "ok for me" and that I'm "lucky" and that it's automatically assumed that I "don't get it" just because we are now wealthy. I don't assume that all low income earners are lazy (far from it) or that people who are on benefits are there through their own fault. I'm not going to apologise for having money as it wasn't handed to me on a silver platter and I don't think luck gave it to me. I DO think £73 is a miniscule amount to survive on and I have done so in the past. It's virtually impossible.

@BarbarianMum that's all well and good but free schooling and healthcare doesn't buy food, water, gas, electric, clothing, any previous monetary obligations, plus a rent contribution as housing benefit does not cover full rent anymore. I'm guessing you've never had to live off £73 a week and a bit of CB?

Really OP you should be grateful to the people earning £50k a year as it is the people earning money and paying tax who fund benefits.

Where would you like your money to come from?

@MaggieAndHopey as someone who actually grew up and lives in London, I think I can say that with confidence.

Have you even seen the price of housing, public travel (or insurance if you drive) council tax etc for a London postcode ?

YANBU unreasonable for thinking £73.10 is a tiny amount to live on.

YABVVU to be annoyed at people who have more than that though. Why?