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.

EEEEEkkkkk

Feeling hard done by as ours is £246 a month (over 10 months)

where on earth do you live? I can't find anywhere that's that cheap, even at Band A!

Parker "You’d be happy to loose your state pension - it’s a part of the welfare bill." - Yes, if my tax went to a third of what it is now (because the only pension I will have if I live to age 67 will be state pension and as I will work until I die it will then as to about half be taken away from me in income tax anyway. So if my income tax bill reduced by two thirds but I got no £12,500 a year state pension (the figure before tax) I woudl be better off as I am just losing about £6k a year after tax by that and gaining a lot mjore under my scheme of reducing tax by 2./3rds.

Also feeling hard done by - my monthly bill is more than double @ToffeePennie 's annual one....

Before I made the expensive error moving to Cheshire (😂) my council tax was £120pcm, but that was in the North East which is probably one of the cheapest places to live.

Staggered that it can be just more than that a year somewhere else, because I thought the NE was one of the most affordable areas already.

I agree @SleeplessInWherever - I've just done a bit of googling and am told that wandsworth has the cheapest council tax in the country - and the band A charge is more than £300pm - even allowing for a single person discount that is more than £140 a year....

The welfare service is for those who need supporting and it’s obvious that more funding not less is needed for social care particularly the elderly, mental health, the disabled and long term sick. The state pension also needs increasing to a level the retired can live on without worrying about not being able to put their heating on.
What services would you cut to reduce the welfare bill?

The welfare was designed to be contributory. You worked, you paid your NI and for that you got benefits if you lost your job and a pension. But now it’s swung too far the other way. If you’ve never worked and never paid any NICs you still get a pension. If you’ve never worked you still get unemployment benefit. Unemployment benefit is about 11% of pervious salary in the UK. In most European nations it’s 50% or more of the previous salary.

We need to scrap all benefits and reintroduce them as a split benefit. Mere subsistence benefits for those that have never worked or barely worked, and higher benefits for those temporarily unable to work. The work incentive has been eroded in our welfare system and needs to be reintroduced.

You’d have those unable to work due to mental health problems, long term sick, disabled on subsistence level benefits?

I’m in shock council tax for the year is £140 where I pay more than that a month

has to be having subsidised by uc/discount surely

Even with a single person discount mine is £130/ month

I can’t imagine where it’d be around that for a whole year. Is there no bin collection or street cleaning or lighting?

Yes, I expect the poster meant monthly and typed yearly by mistake.

I think she's mistaken - she was very clear it's annual

That may Be so - tho as she pays it in one go - it’s still an expense and should be added to the monthly bills