To notice the 10% benefit rise and know I'm on the bones of my ass

[Letspovertyplayagain]

I know it's tiny. But when you are properly skint after everything you notice this tiny rise will mean some strawberries for the kids or some fresh milk instead of uht. This is for the people who complain they are poor or feeling the pinch when they really have no idea. And define their poverty as not going on holidays....

10% of pennies is still only pennies. My child benefit has increased from £87 every 4 weeks, to £95. So, £2 a week. Hardly disposable income levels

I guess if you have an income of £45k you'd think 10% was a lot, but when your household budget is under £25k it's really not going to make a huge difference.

I guess that depends on your wage. If my wages went up 10% I'd get less then £100 a month more And that would be immediately swallowed up by the reduction in housing benefit & tax credits that would result. Clearly, if a 10% payrise would make a significant difference to you, you're earning a good wage abs managing better than a lot of other people.

@SpringHasSprungAtLast

It's called ZipZero.

They do pay you a tiny %age of your spend value but you have to match that award with online shopping through their links, so I don't take much notice of the few pennies they pay me, I use it for the chance to keep my receipts without keeping scrappy bits of paper.

I don't know how others are managing...not very well in some cases as evidenced here. I manage very well on a basic pension and have today, Tues 18th, spent £41 in Primark including a fabulous khaki/black animal print satin pleated midi-skirt, £31 on multivitamins and Straf in H&B and £25 on a fab Moroccan market basket in TKMaax. 😁 I don't run a car or have Sky, Netflix or an horrendous mobile bill. I have a £6pm SIM in a 2017 phone and use public transport.

Have you actually come on a thread where people are talking about barely scraping by, struggling to feed their kids etc to tell us about what tat you've bought in Primark today because you're managing just fine living off your pension?

Do you have rent costs? Childcare costs? Nappies/uniform/extra mouths to feed?

There's people here posting about being a single parent to disabled child and they can't afford their gas and electric and you're being smug about spending nearly £100 on a load of crap.

What was the point in your post?

If you had kids to feed and clothe you wouldn't be able to spend your pension in Primark

That's maths Rishi Sunak style!

Well on the contrary, the higher your wage, the more gets swallowed by pension, tax and NI and btw I am only just above average UK wage, and yes, I manage by being frugal....I don't understand why you say "Clearly, if a 10% payrise would make a significant difference to you, you're earning a good wage abs managing better than a lot of other people" ? Is not that it would make a huge difference, but certainly it would make more of a difference than what I actually got ( a lot less than 10%). My point is: if most people are getting 2-6% increase in wages a 10% increase in benefits is actually quite generous. So in simpler terms: the taxpayer is giving benefit recipients a higher increase in wages than we are receiving from actual profitable companies AND we have to work for it.....

That seems very low. I'm pretty certain we calculatde £30 a week when sons were at uni around ten years ago!

I'll swap, I'll take your job, NI, tax and you can have my benefits - but you have to take my ill health as well.

I think when people are saying 30k on benefits, or relays to having to earn 30k to take home the same amount, rather than actually receiving that amount.
A family member of mine is ostensibly a single parent (father is a nightmare, sometimes looks after DC and sometimes gives her a decent amount of money, but unreliable and often losing his job, their relationship is on and off), she told me she works 16 hours a week in a min wage job earning (net) £685 a month approx, her universal credit and CB combined is £1395 a month, which includes council tax reduction, plus she gets 85% of any childcare/wrap around she uses back (around £200) so isn't really paying much at all for childcare out of that money. So to match that she'd have to earn £34,672 to take the same amount home after tax, NI etc.
She has no reason to lie to me, she feels stuck and wants to get off benefits but feels she can't, because she won't be able to get a job earning that much.

That's a very reductive point of view. Are you implying that all people on benefits are ill? Why is it one or the other? There are also people in the world that are ill and live in a country with no benefits. Would you swap them? My point is there is no magic money tree regardless of the hardships some people might be in...benefits should be only for people that can not work because of I'll was or being a full time carer for someone I'll...this is not the case!

It won't last forever. As her kids get older she will have no choice to look for more hours. UC doesn't include council tax reduction, that is seperate. I agree though it's a huge amount that some people get on benefits and some people do feel trapped.

I suppose if you have a list of 8 benefits and they've all increased by 10%, and you're earning £30-35k PA, then that's an increase of £250-£290 per month which is VERY good.

Most people don't have 8 benefits though.

I don’t think the benefit cap applies if anyone in the family is disabled.