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.

So I don't think you owe your mum your inheritance! That should be for you/ your children

With an income of £400 a month she would have been entitled to child tax credit but not working tax credit (you would have to be working more than 16 hours a week to claim that). It was about £96 a week. See this link (think it answers your question)

https://revenuebenefits.org.uk/pdf/WTC22april2009.pdf#page3

I was a single mum and lived on what I think was called income support for a few years in the early 90’s. I think I got around £58 per week, life was bleak. There was no system for claiming childcare costs and the benefits were a trap as it was an all or nothing system. I did have a part time job when my DC was a toddler and was allowed to keep £15 of my wages.
I am pretty certain I remember what your DM is saying to be correct which is one of the reasons there were so many repercussions then.

Based on this, I’m going to say that your mum’s choices were the reason she had so little money.

@FreebieWallopFridge there were no childcare vouchers and often the only paid childcare was expensive. Someone on a low wage would have paid out all of their wage on childcare. So she did need work that fitted around the school run.
She may have called in sick because of mental health issues she did not share with OP. Losing a husband young is bloody hard.

How old were you in 2007/8 when you are talking about?

We were entitled to tax credits in 2003+ -we were both working but still qualified for a small amount.

No way would my kids go hungry while I smoked.

I grew up on benefits in that period and we were really poor. The rent was paid but the house was falling apart, we never decorated even once and our furniture was donated stuff that others were throwing away. We didn’t have enough food. It was a hard life, not like now where benefits seem to pay a lot more.

My mum also had money for fags somehow. I had this out with her a while ago, because I had free piano lessons at school and I was really promising but once the free lessons ran out she wouldn’t pay for me to continue. Yet she had money to smoke. She got really angry and called me greedy, saying smoking was the only thing she had for herself, and I was greedy to say she should have given up her fags for me to have piano lessons. Looking at it from my current perspective as a mum I just can’t understand how fags are more important than your child’s future.

@Shinyandnew1 she says she was born in 1990. So would have been 17 or 18.

@Blimpton I agree with your mum the piano lessons are a luxury and probably wouldn't have impacted your future

It sounds like we're from similar backgrounds OP - and my instinct is that your mother is minimising her role in the poverty you experienced. All the women in my life (mother, god mother, neighbours etc) worked part time as dinner ladies, shelf stackers or cleaners (including those with bad backs, they just got on with it) to make ends meet. If your mother was fit for work she should have been claiming what was JSA, and if she genuinely wasn't capable of work she should have been claiming incapacity or income support (can't remember which).

Child tax credits were also in rich supply back then, in fact under that Labour government was probably the best time in British history to be a single parent, especially when you factor in the support of SureStart centres etc. My family even had some help from social services as happily my parents weren't "too proud" to do the right thing by their kids.

I'm sorry that you experienced what you did, but can I applaud you for getting yourself to uni. I also managed it, first person in the family and all that, so I know how hard it is even with a full belly, what you did took real resilience and grit ✊🏻

Oh, I've remembered something else from the 90s.

Get temp work (so ZHC). Go to sign on, tell them you've got a week's work starting Monday, they say great, see you in two weeks.

Go back and declare you worked for a week.

No money for that week as you were working.

OK, understandable. The agencies didn't have anything the following week, so I can claim for that week, can't I?

Ah, but you would have been paid for the previous week that week, weren't you?

Yes...

So you got money that week. Which means you aren't eligible to claim.

Let me get this straight - if I work for a week but don't get paid until the following week, that money (all £180 before tax/NI/bus fares/childcare/school dinners/actually eating or switching the light on/etc), that money is therefore expected to last me both for two weeks and to get me through the following week if I get some more work? So it has to cover a minimum of two, if not three weeks? On no more than £90 a week? When rent + council tax is £130 a week?

That's right. See you in a fortnight. Unless you've got work and then we'll close your claim because you haven't come to sign on and then you'll have to start a new claim, which takes a week.

What if I don't work because it's not worth it?

That's when we sanction you for not working. See you soon.

So was your mum a widow ? Was it your dad who died?
How old was she when she became a widow? If she owns her house who is going to inherit that?
Have you got siblings? Where is your inheritance from?

I would agree if the money was being spent on food. But she was spending it on fags. Fags aren’t more important than giving a child the opportunity to play an instrument and develop personally and culturally.

If the Widows pension was as much or more than the income support level she wouldn’t get anything. If it fell short of the income support level it would have been made up to that level.

Some very good advice on here. I can’t really comment on the benefits situation as my parents weren’t eligible to claim (rightly so). We certainly weren’t well off, but not poor either. My mother worked when I started school and full-time when I went to secondary school. Both parents just did it to pay the bills. I can understand that if you have a disability you’re unable to work, so that’s different. I was a late child and around the time my hormones set in, my mother was going through the menopause. Certainty no help for mental illness then, so we got on with it. What you experienced in your childhood wasn’t your fault and I don’t think you “owe” her anything.

But wait? You mentioned in a previous post a holiday? Was that something your mother wants you to pay for? If she receives her pension (with pension credit) she should try and save up for a holiday if she wants it. It’s not a lot (my mum only gets that amount) but then again, she doesn’t smoke or drink and gets her sheltered flat paid for, so she tells me she has enough. If your mum wants extra money for a better quality of life/holiday, now that she is mortgage free, she could consider equity release? Not ideal for you I know, but I think you should forget the possibility on a house inheritance from her (eaten up by care home fees) and tell her to take equality from her home. She is “entitled” to nothing.

She would have had to pay gas and electricity, council tax, water rates etc out of the rest of her money

Forgot to say, that my mum (like a lot of elderly pensioners) didn’t get the full new pension (that’s why she gets pension credits - to top it up). She also gets an attendance allowance, which is spent on carers three times a day. I do her shopping either personally and sometimes online, and pay for a fortnightly cleaner for her, so she doesn’t really spend that much. How old is your mum? She’s not “entitled” to any of your inheritance but if you wanted to, perhaps buy some premium bonds for her? They might win! A one-off present to replace furniture/white goods? Far better than a holiday. Only if you want to, don’t feel guilty that you HAVE to. If you’re mum is still smoking (and I hope for health reasons, as well as financial) she’s not, she could SAVE what she spends on fags and in no time be able to afford a really nice holiday.

I was a single parent in the 90s with a mortgage and vividly remember not qualifying for any help with housing costs. There was something that could have topped up my income, family support allowance? Something like that, but I couldn’t get it because I had a court order in place for child maintenance that I never received (because ex left the country) and I was simply told it was up to me to enforce it. Even though I had no idea where he was or how to contact him, I think the current system sounds much better, it was unbelievably difficult in those days.

I think it’s always easy to have rose tinted glasses on when you are pulling people to pieces and examining how much better you could have performed in their position. I am quite sure your mum went through exactly the same as you being hungry etc etc and I am quite sure she didn’t enjoy it. You mentioned widows pension…can’t be easy being a widow.

Food banks weren’t introduced until the conservative government came into power.

Food banks have been around since at least 2000 and food parcels were being provided to people in need long before that.

My Granny talked about giving foodparcels out to families in need through the WRVS in the 50s through to the early 80s (when she became less active in the organisation). It may not have been called a foodbank, but the concept was still there.

Your inheritance and your mums circumstances are two entirely different issues.

Your mum made choices, she chose to have a child, you don’t “owe” her any of your inheritance for raising you, that was her role she chose as a mum. She should just be pleased for you that someone loved you and left you something. Sorry for you loss.

The second issue, your mum made decisions and sounds like she chose to buy a home and live very frugally. That was her choice, and in itself isn’t wrong, only you can decide if you feel that choice spilled over into neglect and what it means for your relationship, do you really need ammunition of knowing about benefits at the time for that? To put it in context you would also need to know all her financial circumstances.

@MargaretThursday Mine did exactly the same! I'm always shocked that there's so little awareness of how many people have always been in need of help.

Very few people qualified for Income Support. If she got widows benefit sh wouldn't have got Income Support too. Every one got child benefit. Quite honestly in those days you either earned the money yourself or went without. There were no top ups from the state for most people. If you got child benefit but no other money at all you got a miserly amount of Income Support and claiming it had a huge stigma to it. You only got the 'dole' if you were actively looking for work and could prove you'd applied for jobs. There was no big state support. People turned to family if they had very little. My DH earned very little and I was at home with 3 small DC. We were not entitled to anything. My parents helped us out if we had no food or something broke or kids needed new shoes. I went back to work part time when my youngest was 2. I was very lucky my Mum looked after my ds as I couldn't have afforded childcare and no government child care help. Your Mum had it tough in those days.