What is your household income, how much is benefits, and how are you coping?

[Gabrilla]

Genuinely curious after so many threads on here about benefit changes. Please feel free to name change!

I’ll start:

Salaries for both of us total 90k. Only benefits are £102 month child benefit, though we also get tax-free childcare and 15hrs free at nursery.

Total income is about 6k a month, mortgage and bills 3k, nursery 1k, commuting costs £500, groceries cost £500, husband pays CMS and other bits to his children totalling about £500 leaving us about £500 for everything else.

Feels like we’re constantly penny-pinching.

Most people can live quite well at £460 a week , unless they have childrens or mortgage .... My priority should be pension contribs - ( a guarantee of future indexed Income for me would be preferable and safer than accumulating capital or assets ) . I have mortgage + expensive woman-child offspring , and I struggle to save on £280 a week .. ( constant debt and overdrafts at 39%). Being single doubles my feelings of poverty and impending destitution in retirement ........the UK state retirement being the worst in the civilised world , in spite of the NastyParty's efforts

How do you still get child benefit on 90K??

Becuase their salary is 90k combined, if individual salaries are under 60k they can claim

I am just stunned when I read about incomes of that level, what does someone do to earn that amount of money? That is significantly more that the PM! I don't know anyone who earns anywhere close to that even couples who combine both salaries.

Mainly finance or law in London. I'm a chartered accountant on 150k, DP is on £210k in investment industry. Both of those are before bonuses which add another 20% or so on average.

Your friends can’t possibly be paying a nanny a full time wage, pension contributions and national insurance if it’s “much cheaper” than a nursery.

90k and penny pinching 🤣

It’s a hell of a lot closer to minimum wage than the inflated money you receive in benefits.

We have a mammouth benefits bill, not just direct payments but housing etc…..we also have an international health service that NO govn will
do anything about, its a vote winner/ loser…..it leaks money, it doesn’t matter how much money is poured into it.

Its bad times when its better for people to not work than to work…..and that is the situation we have in the UK.

The British people are generally, not all, rather lazy with lots of jobs beneath them, hence the need for immigration for service jobs and caring jobs - and why would they work when it’s more beneficial to not? I am NOT a Daily Mail/ far right voter- it just is what it is. No idea how to solve it, can’t afford the pay cut to run for public office 🤣🤣🤣

Not really inflated if we're entitled to them.

DP is on 43k. I'm part time on 15k. DLA for autistic child is 4800/year. Child benefit works out at £2040/year. After tax, it's about £4000/month combined including benefits.
Mortgage is £800/month.
Bills combined are about £ 1200/month (car loans, DVLA, cars insurance, gas,electricity, water, TVLicence, subscriptions, mobile phones, various insurances).After school clubs/kids lunches/ swimming for both kids work out at £150/month.
Son's counselling is £250/month (private).
Dog minder is about £ 150/month.
Food shopping is between £600 and £800/month.
All of this amounts to about £3450. We have very little left . We want to enjoy life too ,so have booked a holiday this summer. It's on the credit card.
I dread when DP will need to replace his 10 years old car. We need two cars where we live ( school and work commutes, different start and finish times).
I'm sure we could streamline somewhere but I'm not willing to stop counselling for my son, who struggles with everyday life a lot. We could sell the dog, I suppose, but we're quite fond of her. Without a second car, I don't have an income. I can't WFH.
Anyway, we're not on the breadline but it wouldn't take much to knock us down. New car, something major needing replacing, one of us losing their job, becoming ill ...

And I can't imagine parents on a household income of 90k claiming full CB is particularly uncommon? It is possible not to be eligible on that income, depending on the split, but there are more permutations where you'd get it than not.

I've had au-pairs that never cost anything like that. Not that I give a shit about your opinion, obviously 😃

@littleorangefox , genuine question here … how are you entitled to universal credit of 1700 if your partner brings home 2200 a month ? That’s above minimum wage as you say and after his pension contributions so his actual must be even higher.
How can they class that wage as needing topped up by £1700?

Well obviously, you aren’t paying an au pair anything like a nanny’s salary or full time nursery.
It’s literally the entire point of an au pair is not to pay them appropriately! They are young women working in a foreign money all but being exploited for childcare in exchange for basic living expenses, of course you pay them less than a nanny 😂

You also can’t compare the childcare prices you paid decades, that’s a totally stupid and redundant statement.

Is that 90k gross?

UC is based on net income not gross. Our UC is made up of couple element, 2 children (although we have 4 but only qualify for 2 due to ages), LCWRA due to my disability, carers element and childcare. There's a deduction from the UC award of just under £900 for his wages then we get what's left after that.

UC is based on individual circumstances. It's made up of elements which are all added up then deductions made for wages. If someone has elements for disability, childcare and rent (which we don't have) then their UC award will usually be higher.

Also my UC is £1500 not £1700 although I'm sure someone will have a smart arse comment to make about how it's not much different 🤣

Do you think you ought to get this level of benefit? Do you think that it’s a good way for the government to spend money?

Genuinely interested in your opinion.

Thanks @littleorangefox
Its just opened my eyes reading all of these amounts.
I really didn’t know people got so much in benefits.
The total amounts are equivalent to huge salaries of two really good salaried full time working people.
I just think it’s not “ top up “ , as I said before a top up would be little bit more not basically doubling the household income . I didn’t know this was the case commonly until I read this thread.

Me neither. I genuinely thought UC was topping up, exactly as you suggest. I’ve now discovered that a fair number of people are receiving so much that their household is taking home £2k more than I am as a HR taxpayer, even though the earner in that household is earning less than half of what I am.

I’ve never been entitled to anything in my working life despite being disabled and having spent years on the poverty line, so it’s galling to see that people who are on more then NMW are now getting thousands of pounds “top up” per month.

I had no idea the benefit system worked like this.

Smug because your home and childcare cost less literally decades ago?
Okay, cool for you.

That literally the point of the thread clearly going well over your head.

I don't tend to refer to it as a "top up" because I don't like the phrase and don't know where it even came from 😂

Yes I do.

A tradesman can easily outearn lower end professionals like you and your DH. They can make a fortune because they are in such demand.