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.

10% of the UK has the highest tax burden in 70 years (under Tories and now Labour) - those on £70,000 + before tax (which is £3928 a month after tax/NI and student loan). 50% of UK households now pay no income tax. Not surprisingly the 90% are often more than happy the top 10% pay more tax but the result of the current system is that that top 10% have had imposed on them such a disincentive to work in case they lose their personal tax allowance or 30 free hours for 9 month year old or lower down income level lose child benefit that the system means those people work less and there is less available for the less well off. So it really is not working very well to tax those on £3928 net a month so very much.

I would certainly support a much much smaller welfare state.

By far the largest benefit is the state pension. About 70% of the total, I think I heard on the radio the other day.

Exactly. They shouldn’t group that in. People just read “welfare” and not realise it includes pension.

According to Chat GPT -

Here’s a breakdown of what is known about how much the UK spends on social security / “benefits” and what shares go to things like pensions, working-age benefits, disability, housing etc. (Caveats and approximations included.)

📚 Source & context

• The “Benefit Expenditure & Caseload tables” from gov.uk forecast that in 2025/26, £316.1 billion will be spent on social security in Great Britain. GOV.UK
• Of that, £174.9 billion is for pensioners’ benefits, which is about 55% of social security spending. GOV.UK
• The remaining £141.2 billion is for working-age & children welfare (including Universal Credit, housing benefits, etc.). GOV.UK

So overall, you can think of social security / benefits spending roughly splitting as ~55% for pensioners and ~45% for working-age/children in the current forecast.

⚖️ What this implies (percentages)
Let me rephrase those into approximate percentages of the total social security / benefit bill:

• Pensioner benefits: ~ 55%
• Working-age / children welfare: ~ 45%
• Within that ~45%, disability / health benefits = ~ (75.3 / 316.1) ≈ 24% of the total
• Housing benefits = ~ (35.3 / 316.1) ≈ 11.2% of the total

Thus, if I break it down roughly:

• Pensions / pensioner-oriented benefits: ~ 55%
• Disability / health / condition-based benefits: ~ 24%
• Housing benefits: ~ 11%
• Other working-age / child / welfare support (including Universal Credit, child benefit) = remainder (~ 10%)
• These are approximate and assume the forecast figures hold.

Salary 35k. I work 30 hours a week. Two primary age children age 10 and 7. Take home £2250, child benefit £170 and UC - my childcare bill has just dropped so I think next month it’ll be £180ish. Mortgage and bills £1700. No maintenance from exh. My mum paid for us to go to Cornwall for a week over the summer. It’s a penny pinching exercise at the moment. I don’t see how it’s going to get easier for me either, my childcare bill is only £54 a month now and I am already seeing the kids eat more and want more expensive things as they get older. My eldest is nearly in adult size shoes.

Aren’t you eligible for the full 30 hours of free childcare?

Don’t you pay water/sewerage bills?

No benefits here except child benefit. I'm disabled but apparently not enough for PIP 🤷

I work part time because of my health, DH works full time. Household income is approx £3000 per month.

Our income over the last year after tax was just over 100k.
Mortgage has been paid off and children are over 18.

Zero benefits obviously, we have just had to enjoy being HRT on PAYE for many years. Chucked loads of extra money in to pensions. DH decided to semi retire early in the last few months income will be 70k.

The original posters mistake was going out with someone who already has children. Plus £500 for 3 kids a month isn’t exactly generous is it.

The welfare bill is huge because so many people actually need the extra “ hand outs”.

I don't necessarily disagree with the spirit of what you are saying but 'need' isn't exactly well defined in your statement. For lots of people, if they had less money given to them in benefits, they would be poorer but they would survive (because they do have jobs, just not very well paid jobs). I am not saying 'survival' is what we should be aiming for as a society but for some people, benefits just give them a better standard of living than they would have without them. Society sets the floor for what is an acceptable level of income and tops up people who don't reach it. That floor may change for various practical or political reasons; it's not really about absolute need in many cases.

But that shouldn’t be the aim.

Cost of living has put a lot of people into poverty. Me included. I was able to manage just. But that meant no luxuries or holidays or alcohol or meals out. Now with cost of living I can’t do the basics. I didn’t consider myself poor even with my frugal lifestyle but now I see the precarious position I’m in.
Im
not entitled to any benefits since youngest went to uni and I’m not sick enough or disabled enough to be on benefits even though I have a serious life limiting condition. It’s difficult to see where else I could cut.

I'm a single mum to a teen. Self employed, £65k income plus £450pcm for child maintenance.

I own a house with no mortgage or debt. I'm really lucky to have £750 per week left after bills.

I feel very grateful

Bills are 200 a month. For

council tax
gas
electric
water
tv license
WiFi

as the basic ? Obv area depending but most peoples council tax is £200 a month

I suspect that the split between your salaries might be relevant here - if one is on £40k and one on £160k the marginal rate of tax will be pretty cruel.

What are luxuries? I think social media is just making us look at other people and what they have.

I grew up in a relatively poor household in the 80/90s. Foreign holidays were not a thing and mum was adding up the food shop in her head before getting to the till.

Mass consumerism has meant we now believe we should be driving a new car, have a new iPhone and multiple holidays a year. How did we get here?

I count luxuries as anything that’s over food/ heating/ transport/ bills.

That means no Netflix or fast broadband. Phones kept for years until beyond the updates stop. No
hiludays, day trips are too expensive, lunch out too. No coffees out. Yes it’s miserable. But no choice.

Some of the bills amounts are amazingly low. My council tax alone is £250. My gas/electric is £130, broadband is £21, phones (X2) are £18. Not sure what the water is it's quarterly but I think about £30 a month.

Oh and I spend about £300 a month on trains to commute!

Id struggle to reduce any of that. My mortgage is stupidly high but that's my own fault obviously. Food is about £600 but I could get that lower if I had to I think.

You can’t afford to get your hair done on £90k a year?

Oh do leave off. 🙄

We earn approximately 65k, no benefits, no kids.

Own our house, run two cars and have multiple animals. No issues here.

Equal split.

You’d be happy to loose your state pension - it’s a part of the welfare bill.

We don’t have a TV licence, we pay our council tax in one go in April, so I don’t include that in our budget because I basically work extra to pay that in one go so we don’t have to think about it.
We also don’t pay for WiFi, my husband gets it as a “perk” as he works from home it’s classed as a necessity, therefore nothing to pay.
Our gas bill is small as we don’t use the central heating in our house, we have a new build and are sandwiched between two houses, one is an elderly lady who keeps the heat on constantly, which keeps our house base level warm.
Our water bill is partially written off due to my company and the same for electric.
So yeah my bills are about £200 pcm, in April they’re around £340, but we don’t count that as our “regular” expenditure.

So your council tax for the year is £140!?

Yes. I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s £140, we don’t live in a big house, but it is on a new build estate, so maybe it’s because of the eco friendliness of the buildings or something but we have a very easy price of £140 per year.