AIBU to think you can't survive as a single parent without benefits?

[womanadulthumanfemale]

Unless you're on maybe £60 k p/a plus?

Maybe when they are school age but before that it isn't doable is it ... Or is it?

Also on the 30hours a week free childcare, my DDs nursery offered this so we moved her there.. it lasted a term before they changed the rules around and made it so that during school holidays they closed the nursery at 3pm and you couldn't pay to top up the hours til 5.30pm like you do every other week.

No idea why, and I got about a weeks notice.

It still costs £70 a week for 3 days.

How single people with no family help are supposed to manage this I have no idea.

I can't just say to my work "for the next six weeks I'll be leaving at 2pm by the way!"

So who exactly is it helping??

Childcare needs to be reliable!

It's also shit that there is this expectation that all parents should be working and yet we can't provide childcare that's reliable or affordable.

It depends on many things. I was raised with a few siblings, single parent mother earned around the 40k mark. We had a comfortable lifestyle, though never holidays abroad or the very latest gadgets, but never went without, always had nice clothes and good shoes for example. It also included full time childcare for my youngest sibling, as there was no family to help by the time they came about. Didn’t grow up in a particularly expensive area though. Times have changed recently, everything is so much more expensive, it’s harder to get the money to stretch.

Bollocks OP. It depends on so many variables - how many children and what age, your salary, your rent/mortgage, how much child maintenance you're paid, whether you have supportive family nearby. Also whether you are any good w money.

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you can have 2 parent's working on low wages, there known as the working poor and have been know to have to use foodbanks to feed there children

‘Working poor’ is not the domain of 2 parent families. Single parents can also be ‘working poor’ as can single,people. Plenty of people - with or without a partner and children - have to use food banks.

People try and help and get called stupid. Not sure what op wants to hear, tbh.

OP 😂😂 have a glass of wine and take a few fro breaths!!

It never fails to rile me that men can saunter off without so much as a backwards glance if they choose to and even those who make a contribution even above CMS standards is so far off the actual cost of raising a child it's negligible. And lo, it's the scrounger single mothers "relying" on the state that we choose to castigate.

Good grief. Hostile or what?

Calm down. Take a little walk maybe?
Getting wound up and arsey on internet forums isn't going to help your situation.

Trying to help? More like telling the OP to eat cake

It can be done - but the fine balance is at the back of my mind every single day. Lone parent (adopter so no ex, no maintenance, no shared childcare). I work primary school hours and top up hours after bedtime. That way I have minimal childcare costs. Was made redundant just before DC arrived and although the payout was "small" (approx 3k) I decided to use it to add a professional qualification. Completed that from home at night. A few years later that started to pay dividends as it boosted my salary, but it was a big risk at the time.

So no benefits now, but until child was 4 I got some tax credits. And yes, just one child. I do agree the related costs for more than one young/disabled child quickly magnify.

snuggy
They made a claim that it's not possible to be a single parent without benefits.

People are explaining how they manage without benefits and there's a range of different setups outlined by lots of posters.

OP gets arsey and rude to people for not agreeing with her.

It is bloody tough being a single parent, obviously.

But your OP is a generalisation and ignores loads of specifics.

What do you want people to say?

And you are being very rude.

I agree.

OP is starting this thread from a place of powerlessness and desperation no doubt (sorry, don't want to put ''words'' in her mouth) but hearing ''you're wrong because I managed it'' isn't very supportive.

OP is basically right, unless you have an ADVANTAGE, be that owning your own house already, or a grandparent who will mind your kids for love not money, or a high income salary that you can either step right back in to or never stepped out of, or a highly regarded and more to the point highly remunerated profession/qualification - then the OP is right. Coming from the current place of being out of the workplace as a lone parent with young children and none of the advantages listed above, it is very very very hard to make it work.

I am making it work now because my children are older but I do remember in fact, starting threads like this, feeling powerless and rejected by society and looking for some sort of validation that it wasn't ALL MY FAULT

Op if you're still there, it is extremely hard to make it all work as a single parent without advantages. Society allows this. Women/mothers pay a much much higher price for parenthood than fathers do and this ''effect'' is magnified for single mothers.

All I can say is that I felt exactly how you felt and eventually, when my dc were teens it picked up again. I still earn less than other women my age but at this point now I don't compare myself to them. I'm starting to feel fortunate. It takes a while.

Wow. Grow up. You got angry at posters who DO manage on less just because you can't?

I’m soon to be a single parent and I won’t need any benefits. I’ll be receiving about 65k per annum from stbxh though which obviously swings it!

@VladmirsPoutine exactly. I'm pregnant with my second child to my second husband. I was a completely lone parent with my first, from pregnancy. It scares the absolute shit out of me that if things go tits up it will be me up shit creek without a paddle.

I don't trust any man, no matter how nice, to fulfil his financial responsibilities after divorce. They can walk away and pay absolutely nothing, or fiddle their incomes, and there is nothing anyone will do about it. I know one man out of all the divorced parents I know that pays his full CM and goes half in other things.

I'm sure if it was that easy the OP would have a better job or save enough buying second hand to pay for extortionate childcare

I really think it depends on a variety of factors including if you have a council house, the area you stay, rhd chikds dad who contributes to clothes or maintenance and childcare costs etc. When we were on a low income (£28k total for 2 adults and 1 child and had childcare costs) I knew single parents that had more spare income than me every month. I also knew some that had much less.

Omg you sound a right cow I'm sorry to say
Nothing wrong and second hand and 'shitty camping holidays'.
Myself and my oh are on very good wages and we love camping holidays. You come across as rude and stuck up

Thing is, the benefits have been cut. A lot. So in a way, OP, you're right and yet, with UC, it's going to be even tougher. The real problem is NRP get off with not paying maintenance. I guess the best bet is for people to make sure they are never financially reliant on another person, even though you see it on here everyday - 'D'P 'can't' work flexibly so the women gives up FT work or stays at home.

Wow, ok. I had no intention of being rude. You asked if it was possible to be ok on less than 60. I said I'm fine on 42 and explained why/how. Just answering the question. You didn't say that's not what you wanted. It depends on individuals and there are many that wouldn't be ok.

I'm in the SE, earn £38.5k plus child benefit. Mortgage, work full time, DS14 and DS9, pay £400 after school club/school fees. Constantly in my overdraft and have a loan and two credit cards. Did get £463 maintenance per month until ExDH sadly passed away recently.

It is possible but is a struggle..