To ask if universal credit should take into account what your living expenses are?

[Cheeseandlobster]

I have a family member who had a baby dd this year. She lives with her mum and dad in a granny annexe and pays no bills, rent or food. She sends me screenshots every time she gets a payment saying she is amazed at how much she is being paid (around £750 every 4 weeks). She also sends me screenshots of what she is buying and it's often urban decay makeup, Michael Kors designer clothing, etc. She has openly said she has no intention of ever leaving home or working as she has never been so well off and had such nice things.

She is a great mum to her dd and her dd has everything she needs but this isn't what benefits are for and she is now making a lifestyle choice of staying on uc for as long as she can. I have explained that once her dd is older she will have to find a job and tried to encourage her to think about what she would like to do when that time comes but she is adamant she won't be working again.

This isn't her fault in a way as the system has allowed her to do this and her mum and dad are choosing not to charge housekeep. I also know people on the other end of the spectrum on uc who have large bills and are really struggling to make ends meet

So should uc take into account what your outgoings are too? I don't know how much it would cost to administer but the differences in living styles between those living at home and those living independently seem huge and it doesn't seem fair to me

I can't afford those and I work FT

urgh! just stop it. Plenty of people work full time and can't afford anything at all. Do you get angry at the people living off trust funds? Or those with wealthy parents who subsidise the lifestyles of their working children? Or is it just people you consider should be somehow less than you that you criticise? Do you bring your children up to upset that someone in their class got to go on a more expensive holiday than them? Or gets to drive to school in a bigger car? What is it they say? Comparison is the thief of joy?

The moral outrage that how dare people question those being subsidised by the state, is staggering. In a romantic, frilly parallel reality, being a net contributor means nothing, because contribution can be made in other ways, i.e having children you cannot afford. In the real world of course, romantic ideals don’t fund the welfare state, the NHS and schools. It is human nature to be aggrieved to see net takers having a bette lifestyle than net contributors. No amount of frothing outrage can change that. If we don’t acknowledge and redress the balance, prepare for the welfare state to be diminished ever further. You have been warned.

It doesn't seem fair for one person on benefits to have a standard of living that enables regular and frequent designer purchases. I can't afford those and I work FT.

Whether they're unemployed or claiming UC to top up inadequate wages, my impression is that many claimants have a wretched lifestyle, barely scraping by from one month's end to the next, with a profound impact on their physical and mental health - and I don't find that in the least comforting or socially acceptable.

As PPs say, you're observing perfectly run of the mill disparities. There always have been people with better circumstances who don't have to pay for their housing, education, holiday etc. - there's no reason to dismantle a welfare state to address what you see as unacceptable anomalies.

Means-testing everyone's personal circumstances is infeasibly expensive and undermines the pillars of the welfare state.

If we don’t acknowledge and redress the balance, prepare for the welfare state to be diminished ever further. You have been warned.

Absolutely agree with this. It's already started, hence the squealing from those who expected to be able to live well off the benefits system for their whole lives.

The government are going to be looking to cut costs next year, to pay for coronavirus, Brexit and the likely recession. People are deluded if they think that the government are only going to increase taxes but not reduce costs. I think some people are forgetting we have a Tory government.

The benefits are not enabling her lifestyle, her parents are.

It's a bit of both. If her parents were providing accommodation and utilities and she wasn't eligible for any benefits, she would have to get a part time job to pay for food, clothes etc.

I have a similar relative. She has never worked, and has two dcs. Her parents are well off and so she drives a new Golf, has masses of clothes and top prams/pushchairs etc. She also gets housing benefit which is topped up by her parents so she lives in a dinky cottage. She is about to move into a new-build social house in her parents’ commuter village which on the open market would be over £400k.

It is of course fine for parents to bankroll their dc, but also taking from the public purse to such a large extent when it is not needed does seem to fly in the face of fairness.

@Babyroobs

I accept your apology. Plonker!

Ha. No seriously. Thanks for taking my post as lighthearted as I was actually being. Most don’t!

Thanks for making me laugh.

She doesn't get £9000 per year to provide for her daughter.

Well, yes, she does. The govt gives her this to provide for herself and her daughter. It's only disposable income because her parents are covering her living costs.

Sticking your head in the sand about the injustice doesn't end well and it's why the general population now have a hardened attitude towards benefits claimants

Having a differing opinion (is that allowed?) is hardly sticking one's "head in the sand." But as there are far worse injustices (corporate tax avoidance, a crap minimum wage) I'll save my "hardened attitude" for those that really deserve it.

Don't get the wrong-I think this person is a fool for blowing the UC she receives on crap when she should be building a future for herself and her DD but, as I said, I can't get annoyed over someone whose income is below the poverty line, earned or not, when there is so much wealth in the world held by 1% of the population who are accountable to no one.

I think you have a point, op. This person seems to be living off her parents and doesn't seem to have normal living expenses. However, is a very unusual situation I would have thought.

It's a shame she isn't focused on saving as much as she can to make a future for herself and her child. If her parents are no longer able to fund her, she will have a rude awakening.

I asked if people living independently should receive more than those who don't citing two RL people who are close to me

UC is generous to people who remain living with their families, that's fair comment. I suspect it's because it encourages them to stay there, rather than move out and rent during a time when there is a housing shortage.

If her parents were providing accommodation and utilities and she wasn't eligible for any benefits, she would have to get a part time job to pay for food, clothes etc

Most probably. But on the other hand, if she were working at minimum wage and decided to move out, the welfare state would be paying an awful lot more for her in terms of housing, childcare and top up benefits than it is now. Of course, she would return some of it in tax and NI and long term, would be less of a 'burden' on the welfare state, particularly as her children grow and leave home. And her parents would still be allowed to give her as much cash as they wanted.

Swings and roundabouts. The system is one size fits all for a reason. Namely: it's far less costly to administer.

It's a shame she isn't focused on saving as much as she can to make a future for herself and her child

As soon as she'd got >£6k, her UC would be progressively reduced until her savings hit £16k, when it would stop entirely.

Apart from paying into a pension, benefits don't favour savers.

My daughter and children live with me for exactly these reasons - i have a well paid job and pay all the bills so they are much better off then if they have their own house. My Grandson has severe disabilities and requires full time care so she cannot work at present.

But this comes at a cost in terms of freedom for my daughter - it works well for us but if she did not have the money she is saving in paying bills she would simply move out.

The state would then have to provide her with a home, pay to specially adapt it for my grandson - i paid for all the adaptions to my home myself - and then have to pay her rent on top of the benefits she gets now. She would also be entitled to state funded respite care and home care that she does not need at the moment as i am there and pay for a cleaner.

The problem is some people assume everyone living in these situations is out for everything they can get and not - which is far more often the case simply living their lives in the most responsible and effective way they can.

@IrmaFayLear

I have a similar relative. She has never worked, and has two dcs. Her parents are well off and so she drives a new Golf, has masses of clothes and top prams/pushchairs etc. She also gets housing benefit which is topped up by her parents so she lives in a dinky cottage. She is about to move into a new-build social house in her parents’ commuter village which on the open market would be over £400k.

It is of course fine for parents to bankroll their dc, but also taking from the public purse to such a large extent when it is not needed does seem to fly in the face of fairness.

The new build 'social house' as you call it, is not funded or 'bankrolled' by her parents. Social Housing is essentially either a council house or owned by a housing association and council housing & housing associations don't work like that. She will have been on the housing waiting list for some time and will have been selected for the property as many others will have for the other ones. 20% of every decent-sized new development is social housing or part-rent & part-buy homes. Yes this seems generous from the outside, but these homes are long overdue. Disadvantaged families and disabled people (such as myself) have been getting shoved in the most dank, decrepit almost derelict hellholes for many, many, many years; Since council & social housing estates were first created all then decades ago. Believe me, some of them are truly horrific.

I was allocated a new build 2 bed home in November and it's lovely. However please don't think it's on a par with the other owned new builds on the development because it really isn't! Homes built for social going have no flooring - just concrete, no cookers. The ground floors are sometimes all one room(!!) with the most basic, tiny and ugly plain kitchen in the corner. They're far, far, farrrr from the swanky showhomes.
Thankfully mine is a normal layout with a hall and two rooms on the ground floor but finding the money for an entire house worth of carpet & underlay was hell. Myself and my DC were living on bare concrete for a long while. Not complaining, just pointing out that it's not the 'luxury experience' that many seem to think it is!

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

It doesn't seem fair for one person on benefits to have a standard of living that enables regular and frequent designer purchases. I can't afford those and I work FT.

Whether they're unemployed or claiming UC to top up inadequate wages, my impression is that many claimants have a wretched lifestyle, barely scraping by from one month's end to the next, with a profound impact on their physical and mental health - and I don't find that in the least comforting or socially acceptable.

As PPs say, you're observing perfectly run of the mill disparities. There always have been people with better circumstances who don't have to pay for their housing, education, holiday etc. - there's no reason to dismantle a welfare state to address what you see as unacceptable anomalies.

Means-testing everyone's personal circumstances is infeasibly expensive and undermines the pillars of the welfare state.

But are they anomalies? My family member might be but I don't think my friend is who is struggling on uc. She lives quite frugally really and still struggles

@Lifeisabeach09

She doesn't get £9000 per year to provide for her daughter.

Well, yes, she does. The govt gives her this to provide for herself and her daughter. It's only disposable income because her parents are covering her living costs.

Sticking your head in the sand about the injustice doesn't end well and it's why the general population now have a hardened attitude towards benefits claimants

Having a differing opinion (is that allowed?) is hardly sticking one's "head in the sand." But as there are far worse injustices (corporate tax avoidance, a crap minimum wage) I'll save my "hardened attitude" for those that really deserve it.

Who is this faceless, nameless govt giving money out without any consequences. It’s the tax payer, net contributor, even non net contributors. Not an imaginary govt that can do absolutely anything without taking public opinion into account. Someone has to pay and is paying. The safety net should absolutely exist, but it’s entitled attitudes that have turned the safety net into lifestyle choices for a very visible minority of people. Ever wondered why austerity has been so easy to implement? Because most people agreed and welcomed it, thanks to that entitled attitude becoming so prevalent in our society.

@sst1234

So you'd rather throw all poor people (including the disabled, those who lose their jobs and minimum wage workers) under the proverbial bus, in order to stop a very small minority as you put it yourself, from playing the system ??

Ok then

The benefit reform - which by the way has been absolutely proven to cause debt, extreme hardship and occasionally even death (government's own enquiries), to those who fall through it's cracks - it's already years behind schedule and multiple billions over budget.
It has massive IT system flaws causing chaos for low income working people, which the courts have just ruled have to be changed and which will cost even more to fix.

The fact is, most people on benefits just live, and don't want to be in this situation. We don't have holidays or expensive clothing etc. If we can sometimes afford a small treat by being careful, then so what ??

It makes sense if the parents have the room. It must be quite isolating for a young mum on her own without support. I don't understand why people are feeling sorry for the op's relative living with her parents. If they have a good relationship then why wouldn't you have this kind of living arrangement ?

I don't feel sorry for my relative living at home. She is still very young and many of her peers still live at home. In fact most of them do. Her parents are lovely and have been very supportive of her pregnancy and birth of dd. One thing they have never done though is install any money sense into her and this may cause problems in the future possibly. So for example as a teen if she damaged her phone she would get a new one. She once got about 4 new phones in 6 months and not cheap phones either. She has never really had to save for anything or pay for anything 'boring' She even spent her maternity grant on a new tv for her room though I guess you could argue that she will be spending more time at home now so in a roundabout way she could maybe justify that as everything else was paid for by her parents. Like I said before she is bright and confident - it would be a shame if she didn't aspire to do something for her future.

Wish I was that girls sister so I could live of mum and dad too 😂 agree with you OP what a waste, could have gone on schools or NHS

In terms of UC paying child care / having a parent at home to save money...

If I go back to work part time earning minimum wage and working 30 hours (for example) I would earn enough to cancel out any UC entitlement BUT I would have to pay childcare which would be atleast £850 per month. I'd basically only be better off by £100 a month after childcare and travel costs but before taxes. So no, losing out on 120 hours of seeing my child grow for the sake of £70 (if I'm lucky) a month isn't worth it.

As a note my child is under 3, when they start school nursery in a few years I will look for work.

It's easy to be envious. To think that because some people are poor it's "only fair" to make other people poor too! But put it this way. OP, your sister is saving the taxpayer money. Because she's living with family, she's not claiming housing benefit, and she's not taking a council or HA home.

Now because of her family's generosity she has extra disposable income. But if she's spending that on luxuries, then that means more money straight back to the government in VAT, and more money to businesses who employ people and pay taxes.

So taking her benefits away because she has generous family wouldn't be such a clever idea. If the government does that then for one, maybe the family will stop being so generous - why would they bother if it's not going to actually support their daughter? For two, maybe she'd no longer want to live with family any more - again, why have that restriction if you're not even going to be any better off because of it? Your sister ends up worse off, the taxpayer ends up worse off, businesses end up worse off.

@onnaturescourse - so you are admitting you don’t want to work ? What if you didn’t get benefits anymore? Would you work then ? I’m sure lots of people would prefer to stay at home with their children . You’re taking the piss out of a system set up as a safety net . You are part of the problem and tax payers don’t want to pay benefits to those who do not want to work but could .
Sick , disabled, being made redundant, escaping violence etc not included. You may not want to work for an extra? as you put it £100 but you’re happy to take it off someone who left their children to go and work ? Charming !

Safari - she shouldn’t have the choice not to live with family anymore. It should be assumed that she will stay at home until she can support herself . I agree with not providing hb for those under 25 .