to be shocked at universal credit amount?

[oddsocksmatchifsamethickness]

I've just become a single mum of one, husband gone. So obviously I want to bring my earnings up. I'm self-employed and will be doing so. But I put in a calculation for UC to see if I could get help while I sought new contracts. I'm self-employed. I earned 1K this month and did the calculation and it says I will get another 650 a month from UC.

Can that be right? It seems a lot, it would take my income up to a wage of 28K/year, but I only work 20 hours a week.

Is this what people get?

I'm sorry too. And to op.
I shouldn't have been a cow about it. It's mean and just plain not helpful.
I'm just so so sick of the demonisation of people who are struggling and the surprise expressed at how 'generous' (hollow laugh) benefits are.

I can just about run it on 1K/month by the string of my teeth

Is there a lot of string in your mouth? 😆.

I’m guessing you will be ok with this because your rent is really low where you are and UC doesn’t vary by region? Someone I work with has just had their rent put up from £1200 to £1400 a month so things are v different elsewhere

From Gov website.

I’m pretty sure people’s attitudes would change if they had to live on benefits.

It’s no life at all.

Sending you coffee, cake, and solidarity x

It works well if you
A) Rent
B) have kids and childcare.
It has made a big difference to my dd2 in terms of making work viable. She has a partner, rents and has a nursery bill for a baby.
Dd1 recently lost her job and is actively looking for another. She is 27, single and rents a modest 1 bed flat. The total that she gets is a little over £600. It doesn't even cover her rent. And took so long to come through its ridiculous. If she didn't have supportive parents she would have been desperate and probably eating out of a food bank. As it stands we are currently paying all her bills whilst she put UC to her rent.

It's always been the case that the right amount of low paid work, topped up by benefits for a couple of DC gives almost the same monthly income for a full time salary of £28k or so.

Unless you're a much higher earner, you won't see a noticeable increase in income between PT and FT hours.

Is the £1650 taxed or tax free?

To get a take home salary of £1650, you need to earn £23,400

www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk/lifestyle.php

It totally depends on your situation. If you have rent and childcare to pay then it will be higher. I agree Uc is pretty generous for working people, particularly parents where you get a work allowance. It's pretty dire amounts for non working people.

I don't get this because I am self employed and was told i would get nothing unless I was working full time hours. Some months I have earnt well under 1000 and had to go days without eating. So to be honest it is kind of upsetting to read about people having these huge amounts when I have spent some months working every day (I am on 100% commission so if I don't sell I earn nothing, there is no base pay) and having to go literally days at the end of the month without food etc. When a lot of us are scratching around on tiny amounts unable to buy ANYTHING ie clothes, haircut, anything, just pay bills and buy food and that's it. I have not been able to 'do anything' or have a day or night out or trip or anything for well over a year. How is that system fair?

I come out of my job with exactly £1650 a month and my annual salary is 25k. I pay a very small amount of pension contributions.

I think it might also depend on your tax code as well.

I expect you are talking about the minimum income floor for self employed people where you can be treated as earning a minimum amount each month even if you don't. It is to stop people exploiting the system like they did on tax credits working a little hobby job , earning basically nothing much and claiming to work 16 hours a week as a single parent to qualify them for generous amounts of working tax credits. That kind of abuse of the system absolutely needed to end.

Bull shit no. Way would a random colleague tell you they were committing benefit fraud 🙄

OP just be careful with the money they send you cause UC did this to me for a few years , insisting it was correct and then I got sent an overpayment bill of just under £2,500k from year of 19/20 which obv I couldn’t afford to pay back . So if they have over estimated etc they will come back for it but obv they insisted at the time it was correct and not to worry 🙄

You are about to find out how expensive it can be being a single parent household. That money won't go as far as you think. If you're lucky you will be ok but it won't be easy.

I’ve never understood why when people split up, the state suddenly becomes responsible for subsidizing their lifestyle choices.

Actually seeing someone above's comment about being single with no children that's obviously the difference.

You’re obviously living somewhere very cheap. A studio flat is at least £700 here. A two bed is £1k.

This can’t be right , me and ex split but had to stay living together for a few months while he moved out but UC we’re having non of it and refused to do a separate claim as his address was same as mine. I still had to pay for everything as he refused which put me in debt . They are a lot stricter with this now

Is it because you have no children?

pop out a couple of kids and the state will happily pay for them 👍🏼

What if a partner dies? Is that considered a “lifestyle choice”?

UC isn’t fixed amounts it’s designed to stretch to fit the family’s needs. And it doesn’t replace work at all . The work allowance ( what you can earn before anything is taken off ) is generous as is the childcare element meaning it really does help single parents get back to work. The taper also means that it impossible to be worse off from working even if you do have travel expenses and stuff.
now of course there will be households who know how to take the piss and make it a lifestyle choice but most people just lean on it while they need to and then reduce their entitlement as their salary increases.
If you live in the south you can fully expect big payments on the housing element but in reality that money isn’t yours to spend but to simply pass to your landlord so I think if we are discussing UC amounts it might be helpful to just discount the housing payments as they are apples and oranges according to different postcodes.

We don't all live in London or the South East.

I've no idea about any of that and havent heard of the minimum income floor. I did phrase my post wrong though, I meant to put DESPITE working full time (obviously from my post I put in some months I worked every day - 30/31 days) and longer than FT hours. As someone else has commented the system is very different if you're on your own and there is often 0 help available.

Or your partner knocks you about? Is leaving them a lifestyle choice? There really are some nasty pieces of work on this thread.