I'm a single mother with two kids and I currently earn roughly £2000 a month as a nurse, very little UC due to my earnings, I get £200 pm from the kids dad and £140 child benefit each month. My outgoings are quite high - I'm paying out approx £550 a month in debts, £500 pm rent and all the usual bills. I've been working hard to pay the debts off the last couple of years since splitting with my ex and I'm getting there slowly.
I work full time three days a week and while that doesn't sound like much, it's mostly 12.5 hour nights so in a way I'm losing two days to one night shift as I struggle on little sleep and I'm starting to feel overwhelmed with it all. I feel like I'm missing out on time with the kids and I'm finding the usual housework a bit too much, I've never been one for cleaning so I don't enjoy it and find it piles up in front of my eyes. I've thought of doing more day shifts but my money would drop and I'd rather do less hours on nights than more on days, if that makes sense.
I'm not sure exactly what I would get from UC if I did drop to say 24/30 hours a week and I'm afraid to just drop my hours in case I find myself in a bind finances wise. I could ask my ex for more money (he supposedly gives his parents £200 a month for having the kids when I'm working - £100 from me and £100 from him) since they'll be having the kids less when I'm in work but I don't know how he'd react to this - he's not fussed on giving me £200 pm and when I've looked into it, going through csa isn't that straightforward. He earns well and owns his own house with a cheap 'mum and dad mortgage' of £200 pm, he was just able to put down £10k on a 20k car so I know he's not short of money. However discussing these things with him leaves me extremely frustrated and wishing I hadn't bothered although I know he shouldn't be able to get away with it.
Has anyone else been able to do part time as a single mother and managed ok with it? I don't have much to sell to earn money and debt wise I'm thinking if I did get stuck I'd try to lower my monthly debt payment to a more manageable figure but I don't particularly want to do this as I have them on good interest rates. I also want to be able to buy my own house in the next five or so years but I don't want to do this at the expense of missing out on my kids growing up any further (they're 7 and 10).
Sorry it's such a long post, thanks very much for reading.