To think many working/middle class are now ‘poor’?

[WorldsOnFire]

Inspired by the ‘People are terrible Scrooge’s who clearly don’t want to help the poor’ explosion on MN recently I read an article about a single mother on UC ‘left in tears’ as she ‘only’ had £60 left for Christmas. (Many similar threads recently about tight Christmas budgets so a lot of people in similar boats).

What shocked me was the hundreds of comments from FT working professionals - nurses, teachers, tradesmen, IT professionals, social workers... the list goes on. All jobs earning £20K+ and many with two adults in one home, all saying they were in the same (some even worse) situations. They receive no help as they earn too much but the cost of living is so high they can’t afford to heat their homes and pay their mortgages/childcare 😦. I find this shocking!

It sounds like those who don’t work/work PT (for whatever reason- not here to debate right/wrong of UC 🙄) are topped up by UC whilst those working FT aren’t and actually there’s not much difference at the end of the month.

AIBU to think that the whole country maybe aren’t terrible Scrooge’s and in reality the working/lower middle class who used to give to ‘the poor’ are now becoming The Poor and therefore are less compassionate/willing to help?

@DangerMouse17
I totally understand how you feel. I had the opposite journey - had a highly paid and a very stressful / long hours job when my children were pre-school age (also a single mother), and whatever I earned in the high tax rate bracket per hour, was not enough to pay for the nursery fees for my two for that hour. I have been gradually downshifting and working less hours / days, and discovered that my disposable income does not decrease. First the tax free childcare / 30 free hours kicked in, then I reduced the number of days in the nursery, then stopped paying for the early start / late finish (it alone was £18 / child / day). Now it looks like if I drop down to £40K and claim UC top ups, I would still get roughly the same total, as I also would become eligible for the child benefit.
I feel strange now as I tried to persuade myself that I am doing this to earn money to provide a better quality of life for them. But it looks like it would have been almost neutral from the financial perspective, and they almost haven't seen me during the week between ages of 1 and 4. It feels like a very stupid decision now.

@SympatheticSwan it wasn't a stupid decision. You made a choice based on the facts you had at the time.

If you have £16k + equity in a house that you do not live in - then it would make a difference to means tested HB paying a proportion of your rent

Yes that would make sense. It would be totally ridiculous to be able to claim hb to rent a house if you own a property with a certain amount of equity.

I thought the pp was talking about 16k equity in a house which they lived in.

You have to have children to do well out of the benefits system. Single people get very little.

People have noticed how unfair the benefits system is, that’s why we got a Tory government. I don’t think it’s just the unfairness though, it’s also the sense of entitlement from some claimants - often evidenced on mumsnet.

I meant single and childless people get very little!

Big issue for public services professionals- teachers , social workers, nurses is pay rises over last 10 years or so have been effectively frozen or 1% whereas cost of living, particularly housing has continued rising so effectively pay loss compared to private sector or those on government laid down minimum wage.

Formerbabe

Could be a parent leaves the former family home with children and rents a property - they could (in the past) claimed tax credits child tax credits and HB but obviously if the house was mortgaged and in joint names, would have equity in the property - jyst trying to give an example of where this may happen

I have a cousin (now 80), single, who has had severe health problems from when she was young. She has always been on benefits and has more than enough - years ago when husband and I were very hard up she even lent me money and didn't want it back. She's lovely and very grateful to receive as much as she does but I always tell her that is why we pay contributions to the government, in order to help those who are less able to help themselves.

A good friend of mine has also been on benefits for years and she talks about it as 'untold riches'. So I think some single people do receive decent benefits. Quite right too imo.

Shineynewapples
I live in a decent area, but rents are slowly declining & certainly not increasing. Rents are not cheap but some types of let’s have seen a 12% drop

Growing up, we had a cleaner...a single lady with no children who had a council flat in London. I can't imagine a single woman with no kids getting a council flat now.

Tax credits were preceded by family credit (same thing) I claimed it 1996 when I had my eldest dc. It started around 1990ish

Sorry it’s the tax credit element of universal credit

Yes do live in mortgage property and have no other properties

My tax credits and child tax credits got mixed up (even though correct information has been given to them a number of times - for two years I didn’t get any working tax credits then suddenly I was awarded them i made sure they still have the correct information and I was advised to change to universal credit (as I no longer needed support with childcare)

And people who have been switched over after a year savings are taken into account for some elements of UC - if you change over (often advised to) it’s taken into account automatically

What entitled to and other sites led me to believe i would be able to get doesn’t correspond with what Universal Tax Credits decide I am entitled to. Originally it was £53 pounds a month then recalculated to £0 a few days later (I had already requested an appeal)

If value if flat drops I will be laughing - but that’s just ridiculous system

@Bluerussian

Some kind of disability or a husband who had died in the war? No one resents paying taxes for people in those circumstances. Working people have seen the system gamed for too long by those who chose to have a load of kids, that they could only afford due to Brown’s generous benefits, instead of working full time. That system was unsustainable and there will be a lot of crying and wailing (often seen on here) as those benefits are reduced. A lot of people agree, that’s why we now have a hardline Tory government.

When I say I have £50 left , that's what I mean, that is all the money I have left in the world, not that I have 10K in savings I don't want to touch.
What has always intrigued me about paying benefits for those in work , is that essentially the taxpayer is funding the shareholder. Why can't businesses pay their staff an amount of money that doesn't mean they are subsidised by the Government? Is that such a ridiculous idea ? Will the world suddenly implode if they did ?

There is. Which is why I am attracted to these kind of threads. I really want to help others out.

It's a good thing, we earn over 70k with 2 dc but if one of us lost a job I wouldn't even think to look.

My mum works in the job centre and they quite often get claimants in who are required to get a full time job and they avoid it like the plague because minimum wage would be a massive cut in comparison to their benefits.
Especially if you have children under 3, paying nursery fees makes going to work pointless compares to claiming benefits.
I'm a teacher and my OH is a carpenter and earns less than me, we have enough to get by but after nursery fees and mortgage payment (so much more expensive than council housing rent) and bills, we're left with barely anything. I regularly buy nicer stuff for my son (fresh fruit etc) while buying cheap crap for lunch for me and OH. We'd love to have another baby but we just can't afford it right now.

I agree with the others on here that housing costs are the chief culprit. Dial back 30 years and the income ratio to get a mortgage or rent was a lot lower. Meaning, if the family chose, one parent could forgo working whilst the kids were young. That stored up its own set of problems but did allow for a good quality of life.

With both parents working to pay the rent, life gets more expensive to paper over the cracks, not least with childcare. There's also been the unpaid, hidden work done at home (mostly by women), from life admin to extended care across the family. It's a lot harder to check on elderly relatives when you live 2 hours away whilst holding down a 40-hour job.

Finally, we are all getting older as a population. An 80-year-old takes 10 times the amount of resources that a 25-year-old would. Whilst that's totally natural, it still needs paying, along with social care, and pensions.

I don’t think it’s housing costs at all...I think it’s the shite wages that ppl put up with in the uk!! I’m a part time (12.5 hrs per week) primary teacher in Ireland and I take home 1400 per month (and I’m on a low pay scale) ppl in the uk need to start making noise about wages over there!!
Even zero hour contracts here are banned!!

@EnthusiasmIsDisturbed
Sorry it’s the tax credit element of universal credit there is no tax credit element of Universal credit. Do you mean child element?
Someone has made an error with your claim, equity in the house you live in does not affect your universal credit. Neither can you claim
The housing element with a mortgage unless it is Shared ownership, or the loan on the interest.

www.entitledto.co.uk/help/Own-other-property

@Parttimers
**
I don’t think it’s housing costs at all...I think it’s the shite wages that ppl put up with in the uk!! I’m a part time (12.5 hrs per week) primary teacher in Ireland and I take home 1400 per month (and I’m on a low pay scale) ppl in the uk need to start making noise about wages over there!!
Even zero hour contracts here are banned!!**

that’s an amazing salary for 12.5 hours a week. It’s the equivalent of a £60k full time salary!
I didn’t realise teachers anywhere got paid that much.

@NemophilistRebel

My full time salary would actually be somewhere around 35k but full time teaching hours here are 25hours per week!
But as I said that is a low pay scale... it does go up and over 60k after about 10-12 years (with no extra responsibilities)

Dial back 30 years and the income ratio to get a mortgage or rent was a lot lower

15% mortgage rate 30 years ago - go and work out how much your mortgage would be if the rate was at that level

@EnthusiasmIsDisturbed equity in the house you live in, providing it's the only property you own doesnt count. I claimed UC when I was a single parent. I got a big promotion, so am no longer eligible. But the equity in my house didnt count.

You dont get anything towards the mortgage, which is fair enough. But they do, do a loan. You pay back when you sell. I chose to not take that.

Getting rid of the bursery for student nurses is one of the worst things they did

I trained to be a my nurse at 29 as a single parent , wasn't east with the hours you do on placements. Our cohort was the first to be offers the degree instead of the diploma in the second year, if you took it up you lost your bursery but you qualified in the 3 years instead of the usual 4

Most of us mature students couldn't do it .

Making it a degree only thing and doing away with the bursery and diploma will be putting off so many mature students with families wanting to retrain. That's not a good thing