£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?

how about the poverty trap?
we were pretty comfortable when dh was made redundant, for 6 months on JSA, housing benefit, you name it.
but then that stopped.
people juggle how many hours to work compared to how that will interfere with their benefits?
and people say, now we are no longer answerable to tax credits, ie children grown up, it is Easier

If you are single, eating doesnt cost much tbh, people do realise that dont they?

@DeloresJaneUmbridge

Actually it took a poster to say "money for nothing" to really get things going. Them again that's the type of person the OP means. Wouldnt know poverty if it smacked them in the eye.

Yes, that's what I saw as well. Lots of 'be grateful for your free money' conveniently forgetting ignoring because it doesn't fit their argument that the majority of people on SSP are working and contributing, become too unwell/injured and need the SSP because their employer doesn't pay anything for time off sick. And will then return to work once recovered.

I wouldn't accuse people of voting Tory or reading the DM but I would accuse them of having no compassion or understanding.

I'd add to that being wrong actually as well, as quite a few have pointed out, it's not 'free money' when you pay tax and ni from your wages and then recieve benefits when you fall ill, wind up disabled or get made redundant. But instead of arguing a valid point, when I pointed that out, I had the piss taken out of me and told I should sue for being made to work too much. As I said in reply to that post, when the 'free money' argument is blown out of the water, there's nothing left but snobbery.

It really does suck to be poor, well not even poor, to have a shit employer.

Being single does mean food costs are less but imagine that week in and out. What a miserable way to live long term

If you are single, eating doesnt cost much tbh, people do realise that dont they?
Depends on your situation. If you're disabled then it can cost significantly more.

I don't understand why anyone gets annoyed at or hacked off with people, who are well off. It's not as if those, who are well off, grow money on trees or print money at home. Well off people work hard and often make a lot of sacrifices to get to where they are. The problem is that most people only see what they have, i.e. the end result and very few think about all the work and sacrifices that went in to obtain that result.

With food, I think it’s also more difficult to get variety as a single person. Used to buying for a family so I’m not an expert, but it’s usually cheaper to buy bigger packs so as a family that’s one meal of baked beans from a can, single person had to have four bean meals in a row! Or a pack of sausages, if you don’t have a freezer that’s a lot to go through!

yanbu to try and enlighten those who are unaware op

If you are single, eating doesnt cost much tbh, people do realise that dont they?

And food is the only outgoing

Well off people work hard.

As do many NMW workers.

Not all well off people work hard either.

Not all well off people work hard either

Equally not all people on benefits or any other form of social support are in genuine need of it. But, in the end, it's still the working folks, who pay taxes that support those, who are in genuine need as well as those milking the system.

Not saying the OP is trying to milk anything but his/her anger is still misplaced. Well off people have nothing to do with the little support available to those who need it.

Arent the working poor struggling even more, outgoings outweighing incomings in some cases, and not entitled to any help at all

Arent the working poor struggling even more, outgoings outweighing incomings in some cases, and not entitled to any help at all

A very valid point and I think this is one of the most frustrating things about any welfare system that allows anyone to be better off while on benefits than those working in the lowest paying jobs. And, unfortunately, there are plenty of cases where people on benefits are better off than some of those who work in low paying jobs.

If you are single, eating doesnt cost much tbh, people do realise that dont they

Not per person usually, because you have to buy small quantities of things, which usually costs more. People on low incomes often can't afford to stock up or buy in bulk.

Those people oftentimes pay 40% taxes which helps fund your aid. I know it's annoying, trust me I'm on 17k full time in London, but what do you want them to do about it? Give 50% taxes? 60%?

Why should it cost less to eat if you are single than the pro rata equivalent if you are a family? The reality is it usually costs more than the pro rata equivalent. And the £73.10 does not just cover food. It covers a contribution to rent and everything else.

"If you are single, eating doesnt cost much tbh, people do realise that dont they"

Eating healthily would be impossible . Fresh fruit and eggs would be out of reach.

Where do you think the saying "cheap as chips" come from.

Yanbu.
Sadly, most people don't realise unless it happens to them just what life is like on very low incomes and just how hard it is. You get a bunch of smug, privileged people saying such things as "but healthy food is very cheap". Such people are rarely worth engaging with. Leave them to their illusions.

"If you are single, eating doesnt cost much tbh, people do realise that dont they"

If this were true, some old age pensioners, who only have the state pension, would not have to choose between eating and heating in the winter; and the state pension is more than £73.10 per week, isn't it?

It’s purposely designed to not make life comfortable for the claimant so they get a job ASAP. Of course in reality those jobs aren’t always available or the person may get knocked back time after time. Being a long term jobseeker isn’t feasible and will create a vicious cycle of debt. If you lose your job for whatever reason and are forced to claim JSA, there’s no way that could pay any existing debts you may have (and may have been comfortably paying whilst in work) so those debts will increase and I’d imagine some weeks claimants will make a decision between eating and paying for utilities so again, forcing more debt. Nobody can live on £73 a week, especially not now housing/council tax benefit rarely covers the entirety. But I think that’s the point, the government don’t want people to live on that.

And if you are on statutory sick pay, hard luck. You can be that on for a year.

statutory sick pay lasts for 28 weeks which equates to roughly 6 months.

I really feel for single people coping on £73.10 per week. Agree food is cheap for one is crap.
50p approx for a pint of milk. 8 pints for 2quid.
Bread that goes off before you can use it. Don't say you can freeze it when your kitchen only has room for a fridge with a tiny ice box.
It's a miserable life long term.
I say this as I see it with a family member who is a waspi. Her chances of finding work for various reasons are limited. Her pensionable age has risen several times in recent years.
She worked hard from the age of 16. Was made redundant in her 50s and has only worked intermittently since. Although does lots of voluntary work.
Our family income is over 50K and I can tell you for sure that I don't resent people receiving this benefit. They also have to jump through hoops to receive it.

I've spent a lot of time with dogs, both working and pets, and as others have said, unprovoked attacks are extremely rare - I'd say it doesn't happen really because a dog attacking is cause then effect. Even a highly experienced dog trainer will not be able to identify the root cause every time but there will be one. Whether the dog is being 'reasonable' to react with an attack from the cause is another matter entirely. But the dog will have had it's reason for doing so.
I believe this, mainly because of an incident with a pony several years ago. She suddenly became aggressive, unable to be handled safely by children, attacked other horses for no apparent reason and certainly wasn't safe to be ridden. She was checked by quite a few vets, many tests done and nothing could be found to explain this. She was PTS because no one could safely care for her. When autopsied she had a very small brain tumor that was totally undetectable - but it was causing pressure on a certain part of the brain.
So even though extensive tests were carried out and all manner of know it alls experts tried to 'train it out of her' nothing worked. To everyone there was no reason for her behaviour, but obviously there was and only detected because of an autopsy that was done at insurance company insistence.
Had the mare just been destroyed and that that I'd be telling the story of a horse that suddenly turned 'wicked'.
That experience taught me a lot about animals and their behaviour and I think there's always a reason a dog bites, we may never know what it is but it doesn't mean it's not there. The tricky part is finding the trigger and working out if it's safe and possible to work around or with.
I wonder if the pp (who's dad had 'wicked' dogs) if those dogs in fact had some sort of 'hidden' issue that couldn't be readily identified and therefore the image of a 'wicked'dog is projected.
Just my theory but I think it makes sense.

Please ignore that - I have no idea how it ended up on this thread rather than the one it was intended for!
My apologies.