Friend earns as much as me on benefits

[NattyFinch]

I felt really shocked and conflicted after a discussion with a friend recently that revealed that she receives over £2000 a month on benefits for 2 children while I work full time as a single parent with one child for a similar amount (once I’ve paid all my taxes, ni etc). It stemmed from her saying she was going for ivf treatment at 48 at a total cost of £8000. I’m supportive as a friend and try not to be a judgmental person but this just seems unjust when I’ve worked so hard to stay in employment and raise my son single-handedly for 12 years. She doesn’t want to move to England because if the ivf is successful she will get more money to stay in Scotland. AIBU to think this is all bonkers ?!

Yes, petrol or public transport money, parking money, work suitable clothes or shoes, wrap around childcare, food prep, simply getting yourself to work has time and money costs which are a struggle for many people living precariously on the edge financially at the moment.

Exactly !!! We should not be giving people on benefits more than the full time min wage. Easier to save when you don’t have to go anywhere other than take the children to school. The biggest kick in the teeth is childcare costs for working people. Those on benefits get discounted and also discounted holiday clubs !

How old was that Ukrainian ladies children? If she was single and her youngest was three then yes she would be made to look for any work. If she had a partner who earns enough however she wouldn't need to be looking for work.

I might get the up to 85% back but I have to pay up front first. Difficult when you have a very low income.

And you get that childcare help if you work.

I think this is reasonable. It’s not to say people shouldn’t be able to claim a reasonable amount of benefits (and currently they often seem pretty minimal) but that wages are very low and it’s unsurprising that people are upset that they are working really hard for it to make next to no difference to their lives

Say you earned £36,000 a year (fairly average UK salary) and are a single parent of 2 children of same sex with no financial or practical support from ex partner. You have a 2 bed flat with a mortgage of £600/month and you have £16k of savings that were left to you when your parent passed away. You are paying off your student loan and putting the required % into your personal pension. After childcare of £500 a month for wraparound, mortgage and council tax you have £1,250 a month to spend.

On the other hand say you are a single parent to a boy and a girl with maintenance payments of £500 a month from your ex who has the kids a couple of weekends a month and takes them on holiday a couple of times a year. You rent a 3 bed terrace for £850/month have a small amount of savings £4k. After rent & council tax you have £1,150 of your total benefits plus the £500 child maintenance.

Long term you are loads better off working but of course if you are the first person it must be incredibly hard to see lots less of your kids, always be knackered doing everything yourself and see that someone can have a similar or possibly better lifestyle at the same stage of life by not working.

I resent no one their benefits and I don’t see how they could be less really but I do also think the system feels like it fails to give any immediate reward to working and that it really should if you want to encourage more productivity

That's how it should be - parents of disabled children can't work often so shouldn't be bullied into it by work coaches.

And I also disagree with those saying benefits should be much less than the average wage. If they were, nobody would be able to live at all.

That is why people on low incomes also receive UC to top up their income - they have to.

So your point doesn't actually make sense.

There is no incentive to work, I am surrounded by young single females in new build properties with more disposable income than low wage married couples who have to pay for childcare and the rest. There is also additional stress that comes through working with no compensation.

I resent no one their benefits and I don’t see how they could be less really but I do also think the system feels like it fails to give any immediate reward to working and that it really should if you want to encourage more productivity

If you work, you're exempt from the benefit cap.

This is just nonsense. Do you have access to all their bank accounts? If not, you don't know their circumstances. Being jealous that they live in new build houses doesn't count.

When the Tories got in in 2010, they really cut benefits to the bone and also slashed housing benefit to a national average which meant that people on housing benefit, who lived in London for generations had to move to another town because they were now only getting 50% or less of the support they previously did.

Please do school yourselves instead of assuming nothing has changed.

Agree OP, it's totally wrong.

Why the fuck should taxpayers pay for other peoples kids when the parents contribute nothing.

Say you earned £36,000 a year (fairly average UK salary)

TBF if you've actually earned it you'll also not see the first 7k of that as it'll be gone via TAX.

As a little correction, in the £36k example your take home pay would be around £2270 so after mortgage and childcare you'd already be at £1170, not sure what you used for council tax but I think mine is about £300 so let's say £870 left to pay for gas, electricity, food, internet, phone, clothes, shoes, school trips, prescriptions, dentist, transport including commuting, birthdays, Christmas, and considerable extra childcare (to cover school holidays, or more day to day if one of your children is still preschool) among other things...

I agree with your point!

Well yes but in the two scenarios I posted, based on looking at actual rental prices locally, having a good idea of what you’d pay on a mortgage for a recently purchased 2 bed flat based on prices and inputting details into entitled to then a single mum with 2 kids, a mortgage, wraparound costs and a fairly sensible amount of savings is entitled to nothing if she earns £36k and what someone on benefits in rented accommodation can claim what ends up being approximately the same net amount so I’m unclear how being exempt from the benefits cap really helps incentivise work. It seems like you’d need to reach the point of earning well above average before you’d be substantially better off day to day working (I fully acknowledge you are a lot better off long term). I don’t know how it can be fixed. Clearly people on benefits are not well off and you can’t just make a bunch of people destitute but equally I fail to see why anyone can’t sympathise with those who work on lower incomes or average incomes as single parents without any massive differences in their day to day living conditions. I also sympathise if people think what’s the point in working as who really wants to work hard 35-40 hours a week for a small amount extra a month and massively less family time.

The one huge element that example is missing is that once the savings dipped below £16k (including by using some of the £16k to pay off some of the mortgage) the family would also be in receipt of benefits. Potentially a large amount of benefits depending on their circumstances. So it wouldn’t just be £870 to pay for everything else.

I did it all based on our local area so council tax would be around £100/month on a flat & I included child benefit. I may still be slightly off but it’s definitely the case that there is a pretty small gap between income working/not working once you consider the costs of working (childcare, as you mention transport, potentially professional fees/work specific clothes etc). It’s very much not someone claiming benefit’s fault but we are all human and you’d have to be a saint to never feel a little hard done by if you are the one working.

Nope. Same example in my area as they have a mortgage they’d get all of £9/week without the savings 🤷🏼‍♀️

No partner, one primary school aged kid. She did used to complain and get really pissed off the the DWP and having to go to there office to see them. Not sure what they used to say to her, her money stayed the same though. I did get a call from a Ukrainian charity support agency asking about her kids asthma and if I could supply a statement about it, to try to get extra money for her for this. Her kid had just kid level asthma, never saw her having any kind of asthma attack (she may have done without me knowing though). So not wheelchairs, hospital appointments and oxygen asthma, normal running around playing asthma with an inhaler from the GP to use sometimes. Maybe she wasn't expected to work because of this though.

That’s not correct. They would get UC once their savings were below £16k. They would also get CB.

The manual UC calculation for a single claimant over 25 with one child born before 2017, one other child and childcare costs of £500pm with earnings of say £2500pm.

Standard element £393.45
First child element £333.33
2nd child element £287.92
Childcare element £425 (85% of £500)
Total of elements =£1,439.70

Earnings minus work allowance
£2,500 - £673 = £1827

Deduction
Earnings x 0.55 =
£1827 x 0.55 = £1004.85

Total of elements - earnings deductions = total UC for month
£1,439.70 - £ 1,004.85= £434.85

Less if they had savings between £6k-£16k or they were under 25 or their first child was born after 6/4/17. More if they had a disabled child like the OP does or if they were a carer.

We had a lovely Ukrainian woman live with us for 15 months. She really didn’t have to do a massive amount job hunting wise and had no dependents. She actually found it really frustrating the job centre were so unhelpful in directing her on how to find work. She applied for loads and did eventually find something but I know she wouldn’t apply for care work or cleaning jobs for example and that didn’t seem to be an issue

Maybe the tool doesn’t work but I put in those details and it came to the amount I said. Although £36k is 3,000 a month not 2,500 so maybe that’s the difference?

It isn’t £3k after tax, NI and pension contributions. Although even with earnings of £3k pm UC would still be more than £100 per month.

This is the problem - minimum wage is too low.

Like I say maybe the entitled to tool isn’t correct. It asks for your gross salary to be entered and I shoved in details based on an average salary and that’s what it fed back. I have no idea why it would be so far off what you are manually calculating but if it’s that wrong might also explain some of the frustration as frankly it’s what everyone I know used to check if they could claim anything while on SMP or unpaid mat leave and it’s where I’d start if I lost my job.

The calculators often aren’t correct and they are only as good as the information inputted (people often use the wrong figures or put in amounts in the wrong space/don’t put in amounts in the rights places). That’s why I posted the manual calculation. All the information is available online for a oh or who wants to check something manually. UC is based on earnings after tax, NI contributions and pension contributions but before things like student loan repayments. That is why you have to enter things like pension contributions on the calculators.