To think £800p/m is pretty generous?

[Cuppasoupmonster]

Off the back of the ‘trapped women’ thread, out of curiosity I used ‘Entitled To’ to find out what I could claim if I was a single mum of 2 primary aged kids with no savings and an ex who paid the minimum in maintenance. The hypothetical single mum earns 1,300 p/m and rents a property costing £900 p/m.

The calculator said the minimum she would be entitled to would be £800p/m, which in my view is about right. Yet I hear a lot that benefits are a pittance and had assumed that to be the case, but I was pleasantly surprised by the result.

Am I overlooking something? Not trying to be goady, I’m genuinely curious.

YABU = £800 isn’t enough in these circumstances
YANBU = £800 is about right or even generous

All of these threads recently are just ridiculous. Clearly started by government in order to stir up 'benefit hatred' . Just the the TV programmes that were put out in the early 2010s.

Most people on benefits can barely afford to survive. A single person on benefits with no children, after housing, receives £60 - £77 a week for all bills after housing. You ever tried to live on that??

They put out stories of these extreme outliers and fraudsters in order to justify not increasing the pittance by inflation next week.

You are being fooled if you believe this crap.

ps I am on benefits with two children and receive the princely sum of £1110 a month total (I've got to pay £400 in rent with that too)

and that is total, no earnings on top.

@LINAVM do you work full time?

@Cuppasoupmonster see above post

a perfectly rational and polite thread about benefits

Oh, it's you. It must have been so upsetting when the similarly "suprised" thread about how much pensioners get per month filled up.

Sorry it’s not entirely clear from your post. So you don’t work and receive £1100?

youve just said the same thing. If the very lowest base salary doesn’t need topped up even though the person works part time - what are all the people working full time making? It’s fantasy economics.

in reality, unskilled people are not going to be paid enough to work part time and look after a family on their own without state help. We are lucky in this country that we do have a reasonable safety net. But don’t kid yourself that a much higher minimum wage would result in anything other than lower employment.

Why would that be upsetting? To whom?

It’s true that pensioners get a lot more than single mums on uc. Yet on that thread very few people would contenance means testing pensions even for millionaires.

we don’t have unlimited resources as a country. People need to get real.

I think you're probably right. The depressing thing is though that so many people end up agreeing. Look at the voting!

And yet people rarely look up and think "is it fair that I'm working like a dog and I've got fuck all, my kids have got fuck all, I'm freezing my arse off because I can't afford basic necessities, we're all eating garbage because we can't afford good quality food, my kids are undereducated because we can't afford private tuition and the state provision is woefully inadequate for anyone with additional needs, we've not had a break in years and we have nothing to look forward to, whilst the people we ask to represent us give all our money away to themselves and their rich friends and then think we're so so stupid that they can get us to turn against each other rather than demand they do the job we've elected them to do".

I’m a Labour voter.

And I'm Joan of Arc

🤷🏼‍♀️ it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me.

I don’t think this thread is controversial. I think it’s fine (the amount) for a single parent of two to have 1.3K UC as disposable income after their rent is paid? Unless I’m reading it incorrectly as I’m drinking wine.

Lots of people work full time and maybe on the same disposable income as above.

I think benefits are horrible for single people. What can you do with £100 a week? It’s not possible to live on!

I’d say it’s about right OP - I am a single mum to dd16, bring home £1600 in Care Sector (48hr weeks), receive zero maintenance as ex is a useless cokehead with mh issues - I get UC of £550 & CB of £87 - my rent is £560 per month (HA) - I don’t have a car! Pre pandemic we were ok - I now buy all clothes (except coats, shoes & undies) second hand and have a mini oven, single hob & washing machine (if it goes it will be 3 Klarna payments to get a new one) - I have 2 older DC, one at Uni and one working - I just wish the Gov would take anyone earning under 20K out of tax and I am too long in the tooth to change career 😃

I am a single parent to two young school age DC. I work 20 hrs per week and earn £950ish a month. I get £1100 a month UC. Plus £145 4 weekly CB. My rent is £500.

My children are autistic and don't cope in wrap around childcare and their dad works erratic shifts so can't always take them. I can't work more hours. I'm lucky I get CM but believe me I'm not living a life of luxury. I pay very little onto my pension. I'll be old and poor too.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 THIS ⬆️

Spot on.

Wait, are you bragging about the money that having a child with a disability, gives you???

I'm also a disabled single parent with a child with Autism who receives child DLA. I would never ever think to wield the amounts we receive as frankly, I'd rather be healthy like I was a year ago and able to earn a full wage.

By the way, if your take home pay is £1750 then UC are massively overpaying you - Scotland or anywhere else within the UK. You'd be lucky to get £2/300 with a take home pay of 1750. I'd be checking on that, otherwise you're going to get a very scary Journal message one day, followed by an eye-watering bill

Discretionary payments are paid for when you're in financial hardship. Funny that you work for the government....

Yeah. Funny that

Council property. I'm in a well off area and my rents about the same.

I’m on uc. 4dc all pre 2017. I get 1600 wages, 800 Uc 260 cb, maintenance is variable. When it is all going well it’s fine but its tight.

My full entitlement to UC is just under 1400. my take home is much the same regardless of whether I earn 7k or 23k by the time you knock off commuting costs tbh Obviously better to be earning more in the long run though.

OP you are not allowed to question anything about benefit claimants. They can never have enough money. They must always get more.

Yes, they should just reopen the workhouses.

Meanwhile, on MN, ooh, is anybody turning the central heating on yet?

@Beezknees I live in a 3 bed for £410 a month.

£800 in UC isn't a lot with rent of £900! A month OP is it? I suspect the mother would get more than £800 with 2 kids. In your example how do you know the mothers kids have a father who is alive to pay CMS?

You would get *upto 85% of your childcare fees paid depending on your salary. Presuming you have good transferable skills since you was a nurse depending on your wage in your next job.
UC don't automatically pay the 85% of childcare fees it depends on your wage.

I'm so sick of these ignorant goady threads.

A single person without kids gets less than £350 a month. No help towards a mortgage for nearly a year and even then it's a loan

You try fucking living on £350 __