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 hate these goady threads too

Just. because you don't see the "expensive extra needs" doesn't mean they don't exist.

A child with a disability is more expensive in a myriad of ways. It's not just about having to purchase expensive equipment.

And that "low paid part-time work" is often all that a parent with a SEN child can get because there's no suitable childcare and the child doesn't have the same independence/maturity as their peers. But I'm sure you'll come along to insist that's definitely not the case here.......

We live in society where you are better off not working than working these days.

No, we really don't.

I consider raising a child to be work. 650pcm towards raising a child well, being present for them because you can only work part time seems fair to me. Of course the endless stream of feckless and abusive blokes who leave women raising families alone should be the ones paying, not the government, but since the gov does little to call them to account or educate them on morals, this is the solution. If OP worked FT she'd be paying through the nose for childcare and both she and her DC would be worse off.

We live in society where you are better off not working than working these days. So yes you are probably calculating it correctly. I have lots of friends who have given up work for various reasons and have found themselves financially better off since doing so. I know people will jump all over this defensively but honestly, some of my friends on UC earn more than my full time salary

Nail on head.

@ExhaustedFlamingo I would suggest a loss of opportunity is the biggest expense every parent face is whether they’re disabled or not

That's not how being a sole trader works.

The net profit of the business is what is classified - in law - as being your income. It's only limited companies etc that you pay yourself a "wage" and the profits of the company are separate.

Whatever the business earns every month IS your income, regardless of what account it's paid into. Not declaring that would be fraudulent.

As I've said before, I'm not sure how it all works. It's all done automatically, I had to claim due to tax credits ending in my area.

People who get paid weekly and fortnightly do get slightly less. This is the case for my sister and her husband, they get over £3000 joint income (paid weekly though) and can still get anything from £0-£600 a month UC (they also have 5 children)

Seems about right for one dependent. £1650 is not a lot to live on. I assume rent or mortage has to come out of that?

my partner brings home £2000 a month and we get a small amount of tax credits.

This is impossible. Try the calculator online, show me how you get there.

You would be surprised how much you can earn and still be entitled to help with childcare costs. You might be better off claiming tax free childcare if living with a partner but for example the allowance for a single adult and one child born now is £579.49 +childcare allowance for one child is 85% 646.35 so 549.40 entitlement would be 1128.89

2k take home you'd first remove work allowance of £573 assuming you own (your entitlement would be higher if you rent but work allowance lower) multiply remainder £1427 by .55 to work out taper rate. We take the original allowance of £1128.89 minus £784.85 means that you'd get £344.04 in UC so £2344.04 overall. This might be a lot higher if you rent.

Often the maths doesn't work out as nursery is so expensive and it may make sense to work a 4 day week. If you pro rata that out a take home of £1600 + £564.04UC so £2164.04 Although you take home less you save nursery fees.

Reduce that down to a 3 day week and again pro rata (this is very imprecise due to tax and what not) £1200 take home and £784.04 UC. Obviously take home has come down again to £1984.04 but you do have to balance that with the savings made of paying for a three day week at nursery.

I've made a lot of assumptions here (home ownership, nursery costs over 646.35 even on a 3 day week) but I think it's a good example of how people (who have children) can end up with the equivalent income of a full time job when doing part time hours.

Well set up a limited company then

Absolutely.

Loss of opportunity is of course an issue for lots of parents, but infinitely more so with a disabled child. The solutions which are open to all other parents simply aren't available to many with a disabled child.

Lots of parents on this board rely on childminders or after school club for wraparound care. Neither of those would accept my DS as he has high needs. I don't have the same options as a parent with a non-disabled child.

And of course, loss of opportunity isn't the only reason that having a child with additional needs is more expensive. It was just one thing that I mentioned - I could write you a very long list of the rest of them. The extra expenditure I have for my disabled DC isn't covered by DLA. Nowhere near it.

UC is all about your personal circumstances.

We are a working household and receive a UC top up, we private rent and despite living in a poor county it has incredibly high rents that keep rising. We also have children who have disabilities so we get extra elements to help with their care.

We still have to be careful with our spending, our UC covers most of the rent and the rest of our wages is for CT, bills and food, we don’t have any savings and some months we only just get by, we sell whatever belongings we can whenever we can to help pay for unexpected bills which we’ve had a lot of this year thanks to an unreliable car).

I have a non working family member who lives in a council house so rent is considerably less yet they receive around £600 per month, that has to pay for rent (which is over £400), food, council tax and all bills. It’s safe to say it’s an extremely difficult time for them and they need help from their family to get by.

If you are single and childless or your children have left home then you really don’t get any help at all and it’s miserable. The same goes for those who have a mortgage, you won’t get as much support for housing costs.

All those saying it pays to not work you really don’t understand the system very well.

It is that much...it's not very much to live on.

My bills are just over £1650 so I'd be driving nowhere and eating nothing 🙃 I suppose its based on average costs for low income families

^ this!

I speak 5 languages and travelled the world writing software for foreign governments.

I now have a disabled child and a low-paid job.

wasn’t entirely the plan…

But get the same benefit regardless

There should be a MN song to accompany them, like '(Let's All Do) the Goady Goady' with a special rap refrain:

I'm on the UC
With the DWP
Doin' my best
With the CMS
Got my big TV
Thank you HMRC
Dodgy hip
Gets me nice lot of PIP
Life is sweet
On benefit street
Hell yeah

Yeah, I'm going to stop replying to you because you're clearly just being goady and obviously don't actually know anything about the various structures of self-employment and how it works.

You don't "just" set up a limited company. It comes with its own costs.

And you're spectacularly missing the point which is - once again - that UC takes money off a self-employed person for earning the same amount as an employed person if it's not earned in equal monthly sums. That's the issue.

Changed username so it's not outing, but UC seems to be astonishingly high in some cases - my single friend with a disabled child (the child has no expensive extra needs, they have a learning disability & get PIP because of it) is now receiving the equivalent the take home pay of a wage of £55k a year with her UC income

How is this possible?
At higher rate PIP for daily living and mobility is only £8,158 per year and even with a over estimated UC award of £2,000 per month that's still £32,158 per year so are you saying she earns £1900 a month from part time work as if she did she would have the taper apied to her UC so her UC award would reduce.

No it isn’t much for a single parent household.

It’s about the same as working full time, without children on slightly more than NMW.

Its not benefit bashing to discuss the benefit system at all- it is extremely flawed and very complicated. Often very unfair too.

I'm going to but I wasn't expecting to get this much and was worrying about working so many hours while only having a bit to spare, now I can spend more time looking for better paid work and increasing my skills instead. I am very pleasantly surprised. I just earned enough to afford a meagre Christmas and now I know I will be even better off.

It's not a lot no, but it is if you've lived on nothing in the past and grew up with nothing.

Goady and irrelevant, seeing as the OP does work.

If you think it 'pays not to work' perhaps you'd like to try living on UC yourself?

I don't know, I have no idea how it works - she told me what she's getting as she was surprised how much extra she is getting now she's on UC. For example her rent is now being paid for her (even though it never has been and she never asked for it to be) which is over £7k annually alone, plus the actual cash she receives monthly has increased. I don't know how it all breaks down though, I just know the amount she earns, the amount of UC she receives and the cost of having most of her rent covered every month.

I totally agree. When my husband left I worked 30 hours per week, tax credits, child maintenance and child benefit. I was really well off for a few years. Then dd turned 18 and everything stopped and my income halved. Luckily I was able to increase my hours to full time but it was a tough few years.