What were benefits like in the 90s/2010s?

[Autumnflakes]

I’ve name changed for this.

I came into some inheritance and I feel my mum believes she’s somewhat entitled to it for bringing me up on her own/she has nothing. There’s bit of a split in the family as some see my mum as poor old Susan, always had it hard, would be good for her to have a bit of luck. Where as DH said that she’s just lazy, expecting the world to fall at her feet, and since he’s said that I’ve been thinking…

I grew up in absolute poverty, hot water was only on just before sharing a bath (couple of times a week) or I’d boil the kettle for a wash. Our oven broke and wasn’t replaced for years, even before that, it was seen as a waste to have it on, even on Xmas. There were times I was genuinely hungry, I was definitely malnourished for a lot of those years. Sometimes my mum would have a ‘partner’ for a couple of years at a time and things would be slightly better. I remember 2008/2009 clearly as mum was single and we had nothing. I’d sell things on eBay that I had bought from charity shops so I could buy myself lunch at school. I’d quite often miss school as it was just too cold to get out of bed/being lethargic. I worked 20 hours a week from turning 16 and it all went on essentials for us both. When I went to uni everyone moaned how bad living conditions were but to me I thought it was amazing, at least we’d have the heating on when it was really cold and I had money to do a weekly shop!

My mum always said that she was only entitled to child benefit and Widows pension. That’s why we couldn’t have free school meals and because she had a mortgage we weren’t entitled to housing benefit. All of her benefits went on the mortgage which was around £300pm. She’d often say that we’d be better off in a council house but we were trapped where we was (even now I believe it was the right decision to stay in the house). Apparently she wasn’t entitled to income support and that’s what other support was based on.

Something just seems a bit fishy. Food banks weren’t introduced until the conservative government came into power. Surely mum would have bothered to apply for all the benefits she was entitled to? She has a lot of pride to the outside world, but surely she would have put that to the side to ensure that we weren’t living in that level of poverty. But, her ability to procrastinate from everything/find excuses why she couldn’t work/general laziness is something else.

She’s always hinting for money from us. Sometimes I do feel bad as I do remember that time and I wouldn’t have anyone live like that. She is better off now, she’s mortgage free and receiving her pension. She always talks as if she was a hero for getting us through that time. How hard she’s always had it but made it work. How much she had to sacrifice as a single mum and I should be thankful. Thankful and repay her for her struggles. It was the governments fault for not helping. She would occasionally have a part-time job, but they’d always be a reason why it wasn’t working out.

Looking at a fact sheet of benefits from 2008, the only non-means benefits she was entitled to was CB and WP at a total of £438. Minus the £300 for the mortgage, it sounds about right that we had £138 for the rest of the month she always had enough for cigarettes too.

If my inclination is right, that she didn’t even bother to apply for more benefits/pride stopped her from reaching out for help, I will have zero guilt for not paying for her to go on holiday. I do have little sympathy already because she should have stuck at a job but if she didn’t even bother with filling out some forms for benefits while I starved, I will call her out.

Sorry to be hurtful but widows were the best off on benefits then they got a pension for life a child pension until you 18 and she could have had income support to top it up ..OK if she had a mortgage they would only have paid the interest but on an interest free mortgage that's the lot .yes she would have needed some sort of cover to pay off mortgage at end but no where near the mortgage price .and as a widow she would have got free school meals and clothing grants automatically ..and if she smoked 20 a day they were about £5 a packet then .basically you starved while your mother didn't apply for correct benefits or worse she smoked while you starved no wonder you bloody angry .

I'm so sorry you have to think like this OP, and I'm truly sorry you had such a tough time growing up. I'm sure it's had a lasting impact and is not the childhood you would have chosen for yourself, or anyone.

The problem is, regardless of what entitlements there were, it could have been that your mum was not claiming them, for any number of reasons (poor mental health, pride, fecklessness, a combination of many things), and that could have been while she struggled so much. There are statistics about this, and even today they estimate around £24bn a year goes unclaimed, with around 8.4 million people not claiming.

Whether she did all she could and truly had no money, or she didn't or couldn't do all that was possible to secure income, it doesn't mean she is entitled to any of your inheritance.

I'll tell you what though, if I couldn't even feed my children lunch or dinner, I wouldn't have been pissing about blowing off my 16 hours a week of work. The fact that she even worked that particular amount, and was so lackadaisical about it, suggests to me that she was in fact claiming child tax credit.

Working tax credits were introduced by the Labour government in 2003, but she would not have been entitled to this, Child tax credit was introduced in 2003, she may have been entitled to this, but might not have. You can read more here.
https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/tax-credits/policy/research/where-it-all-started/

She is right that people on benefits were assumed to be renting, and so the few who had mortgages were ignored. The £438 was supposed to keep you with an extra housing benefit payment for rent.
The benefits system was designed encouraging people to work. There had been a bit of a tabloid scare in the nineties about single mothers claiming benefits and not working. So the idea was to generously support those going out to low paid work to get them working again. I know your mother was a single parent because of the death of your father, but single parents who did not work were viewed quite harshly at the time.

In the early 90s benefits were not good for people who owned a property, they would cover rent but not mortgage costs, there were many repossessions and no subsided childcare.
In the early 00s there seemed to be a 2 tier benefit system, income support, which meant many were worse off if they worked more than 16 hours pw but covered housing costs if you rented and working family tax credit for those who worked more than 30 hours pw which in my experience was amazingly generous and paid all childcare costs and allowed me to keep my mortgaged house as a single parent.
It sounds as though your mom wasn't keen on working though, so no wonder you feel resentful.
I am sorry you had such a hard time growing up.

I agree many single parents worse off if they were low paid and worked more than 16 hours a week. Especially by the time childcare and commuting costs were taken into account. So her not working more hours was not automatically a bad idea.
It sounds like her mental health was pretty poor.

Childcare was dreadful in the 90s, and as no tax credits, no childcare element. Nurseries in my area wouldn't take children with SEN (relevant to me, but probably not to you/your Mum). Income Support. Child Benefit. I don't remember anything else ...

I think she’s lying to you. There’s no way you were all surviving on £138 a month, even without factoring in her bloody cigarettes!
Without gateway benefits she’d have had no council tax support for a start - and she’d have been in court for non payment of that pretty quickly. And if she was paying the council tax, it’s even less likely she had all bills and cigarettes coming in at £138 a month.

You don't owe her anything, if she had it hard it sounds like it was of her own making and because of that she made your life hard as well when it could have been so different. She was a rubbish mum, don't listen x

I got tax credits but didn’t own my own home, I privately rented but she’s probably right that you’d have been better off in council housing (that wasn’t available to me as a single parent mind) or private renting. We never had the heating on and it was cold but we always had enough food and I saved to go camping.in the 2000s and I worked part time.

I mean you owe her nothing form your inheritance it’s either nothing to do with her family at all or whoever left it didn’t want her to get her mitts on it anyway.

also 2009 tax credits where a bloody fortune on a low wage. Frankly and this will sound bad we had more money than we knew what to do with with one full time worker and one child. Dropped £600 on a dog one week and then a massive fish tank. Take aways regularly as in mutilple times a week. Full time job was definitely under 20k.

oh yeah and we smoked too. Was rented but housing benefit was separate to tax credit both child and working anyway.

Actually, you're the hero in this. The initiative you used so you could have lunch at school, getting a part time so you could buy essentials for you and your mum, then putting yourself through uni. You've done this on your own and deserve every penny of your inheritance. Don't feel guilty 😊

£1000 a month is amazing when you could work part time too.

I worked in a job with low income families. Most were way better off than me.

It was way more than that I think after 2003, I was working 16 hours a week got £100 tax credits a week and child and housing benefit. The housing benefit covered most of my rent at that time.

Clothing grants had been abolished in my area by 1997, so nobody got them at all.

I forgot about the fortnightly/weekly 'Is it going to be paid today or is there going to be nothing in the bank/the bloke at the Post Office is going to keep my book?' thoughts in the queue or cash machine. And if it had stopped, you either had to find the money to go and wait at the offices for hours but they'd normally be able to fix it or you'd have to have the money to spend 45 minutes listening to the phone at the DSS ring out 10-30 times before somebody told you they'd fixed it, but hadn't and that it was because of something you hadn't done, but had/they had asked you for, but hadn't/a completely different explanation you'd been told last week. Took from January to May to get a payment after somebody allegedly only had to tick a box onscreen to cancel the accidental/random cancellation in 2002.

Fortunately, I'd got a credit card when in my previous job so rinsed that to avoid automatic eviction proceedings + bailiffs due to that also automatically cancelling housing benefit and council tax benefit (and not actually having any food or electricity for the period).

If it worked, it was OK, but if something went wrong, chances were that you were screwed for months. The single advantage of the system was that there was a slight lag so you weren't instantly left with zero money and a demand for rent/council tax/repayment/etc, you had a week to a month before they all caught up - and child benefit was absolutely secure and reliable.

You have permission to be angry about not having access to the basics (heating, hot water, a working cooker and reasonably decent food) when you were living in the uk in the 90s/ 2000s.

It’s not ok.

Whose fault is is? Well that’s a trickier one!

You did not get mortgage interest paid. You could get a loan for mortgage interest from the government, but it had to be repaid. It was meant to cover temporary unemployment.

I lost my job in the early 90's due to my son's sudden onset schizophrenia. I was sacked from my job of 5 years for having time off to deal with it. He was 12 and dropped out of school so I was having to leave him at home alone which was terrifying.

I was a single parent but had a house on mortgage. There was very little help with anything. Childcare was virtually non existent and astronomically expensive. I received some minor payment towards the mortage interest but, honestly, it was negligible and my house was repossessed. I couldn't work any more because of my son's illness. It was a breadline existence on Income Support and they kept trying to force me go to work to the extent that I would cry and plead with the job centre staff. In any event jobs were few and far between, even though I'd had a good career before and an excellent CV.

Our electricity was cut off and they kept threatening to cut the water off too. The school kept sending threatening letters about taking me to court because was son was refusing to go. One day he knocked my front teeth out and tried to stab me but there was no help or understanding. Nothing like there is these days. I was so scared to answer the door because of the bailiffs.

I watched everything I had worked for and my previously nice, respectable life fall apart. It was a very, very different time.

Yep, and it's funny how they could always afford to smoke (even then it was an expensive habit relative to income).
I think the amount of benefits the mother received is a slight red herring here, she should have been working so her child wasn't left hungry.

You did get mortgage interest paid. It paid above the rate of interest In most cases until it was reviewed by Gideon Osbourne so it did actually pay off capital in a lot of cases. It has since been changed to Support for Mortgage Interest which is a loan.

There was family credit, which was replaced by working families tax credit and then by working tax credit

Benefits are crap and always have been (unless you’re getting additional money for certain things).

I definitely think it’s slightly easier now because it is easier to find out information on what you’re entitled to and extra support put in place for people in need.

Its easier to find and apply for jobs and benefits now.

There are also more second hand things available.
If her oven broke now, she could just comment on Facebook and ask if anyone has one for cheap or free.

Being a single parent on benefits or a low income is incredibly difficult and you should be proud that your mum found a way to survive and raise you the best she could.

However you don’t owe her anything.

She is a person in her own right and can look after herself.

If I could afford it though, I would pay for her to go on holiday.

It will be the mortgage instead of rent.

Someone said they got £1000 back then?! Lol. I get £1200 a month now and this is only as high as it is because I have a disabled child. If I didn't get the carer element and the disability éliment no way I could manage because benefits don't pay a mortgage and the house used to be counted as an asset so affected your entitlement even more in the past. I've been advised sell the house and live off my equity end up homeless to get social house information and benefits to be able to afford to feed my kids. I chose not to do that and just struggle. I'm only ok because I get generous child maintenance from my ex and as a widow your mum wouldn't have get that. However if I didn't have a disabled child I would be able to work and absolutely I would be working.

I remember our cleaning lady when I was a child used to clean and tend bar and take in washing and ironing. All crap jobs that had to fit around her school age kids and they had no money for anything but essentials and she was council tenant. I remember her saying it was so hard to get childcare and job start date to line up in these jobs. I know she left her primary aged kid with her young teen regularly because of no childcare. Did your mum have qualifications or experience working? I think if you don't have those finding a job around primary aged kids is much harder than if you got your O levels.

Anyway it doesn't matter if the poverty was as bad as it could have been. It's not your fault! I have skipped meals so there is enough for my kids, I've sold everything I have of value, bought clothes bundles second hand dressed me and kids in the poor quality and sold the nice stuff individually-that is hours of work for enough profit to buy pants and socks that you can't get second hand. Soaking feet as I couldn't afford to replace shoes. Washing my hair with washing up liquid from the food bank. I mean it's been difficult at times (not so bad now I've got an ex paying maintenance). And I can't work due to my caring responsibility so I'm gonna be poor for life never paying off my mortgage (will manage by using all my inheritance from my own mother when that time comes) I can't build a pension will probably have to care for my child until I'm too old and unable to do it myself. My life is bleak. But my kids never asked to be born- that was my doing. They don't owe me anything. You honestly don't owe your mum financially and that she expects it is wrong. I have a non disabled dd and my hopes for her is she can get a good education and get a better life than I've had. She is a bright and hard working child. When she's got herself sorted and I'm still poor no fucking way would I expect her o pay me back.

i got tax credit in 1997, not 1994 though
but where did her money go op/?

I have worked my bum off to provide for my children. I do not expect anything back from them. That's not how it's meant to work (in my belief system anyway.)
Different people think different things.