Fed up of my cousins comments about benefits and UC

[glassor2]

I’m a single mum of two kids, ages 13 and 5. My older son has a relationship with his dad, but my younger son’s dad moved away a couple of years ago and doesn’t see him often-usually once or twice a year. He doesn’t provide any financial support, and since he moves around for work (he used to live in Canada and now lives in Australia), it has been challenging to get child maintenance to chase him.

I work 3-4 days a week (sometimes more if there’s overtime available) and receive a top up from UC. My mum occasionally helps with child care, but she also has a full time job. It can be difficult handling everything on my own, but I manage.

Anyway, I have a family member I'm quite close to, and she often makes comments, not aimed at me, but towards people who claim UC. For example, she mentioned that it's unfair for her to pay almost £300 a month in tax while others can work part time and avoid paying anything (I don’t earn enough to pay tax) and that she has to pay more to subsidise the people that don't. She even told the entire family that she pays almost £400 a month, including national insurance, which made things awkward and nobody knew what to say.

From what I know, she doesn't earn a huge wage, so I can see why it would be frustrating for her to have to pay that much. It's a lot of money. However, it's not our fault, and if she's upset, her anger should be directed at the government, not at those who are rightfully claiming.

Everyone’s situation is different, and some people need help. I never chose to be a single parent, and I can't control the fact that my ex chose to leave and decided not to support his child financially. I'm doing my best, just like many others on UC are.

I don't think she's intentionally trying to upset me, but she is.

AIBU? How do I tackle this?

It comes across that if they didn't have that choice than no other woman on UC should either. Pure jealousy.

I agree that benefits are too high and also child care is best supplied by parents, at least for most of it, until the child is three. Personally, I do not begrudge parents taking time out of the workforce to care for small children. Families only have two or three and the babies want to spend lots of time one on one with parents.

They aren't too high. They are too low if anything.

Then legislate for employers to pay a living wage so the tax payer doesn’t foot the bill enabling them to get away with crap pay while they pay themselves handsome bonuses and dividends to their shareholders.

I don't understand why people can't see this.

I've just calculated how much a single parent, with one child, renting a 2-bed property in my area would be able to earn before their income reached the point where they're no longer entitled to UC.

It came out at £36k*, way above NMW, and the reason it's so high is because the housing costs element alone is £1,200 a month. Even at £1,200 a month, it doesn't come close to covering the average rent for a 2-bed place, which is a gobsmacking £1,950 a month. This wouldn't be so bad if it was a high wage area, but it isn't. Hospitality and retail jobs are plentiful, anything else is very competitive. It's commutable to London, which pushes up housing costs, but a single parent would be very lucky to find childcare that fitted around a long commute.

*I didn't include student loan repayments or pension contributions in that, so the salary threshold would be higher for someone paying those.

Sorry, the take take take entitlement has left the country in a precarious situation. People need to start taking responsibility for themselves

I hope things improve for you. The system is supposed to be a safety net for people in your situation.

@LakieLadyThats not an average rent though! It’s pretty high. It’s £600 a month cheaper in my commuter town 40 miles from London. I’ve seen perfectly nice places for under £1000 in MK. So there’s obviously choices to be made to avoid huge rents.

I pay around £2700 tax a month. I am fine for the OP to get some money. It doesn’t sound like an easy life at all, and not one I would want. Being a single mum is tough mentally as well as logistically.

Re the actual question..
Anyway, I have a family member I'm quite close to, and she often makes comments, not aimed at me, but towards people who claim UC. For example, she mentioned that it's unfair for her to pay almost £300 a month in tax while others can work part time and avoid paying anything (I don’t earn enough to pay tax) and that she has to pay more to subsidise the people that don't. She even told the entire family that she pays almost £400 a month, including national insurance, which made things awkward and nobody knew what to say

I would say very little unless you want to get into an argument. Don’t defend your situation or say much. Just show polite sympathy perhaps with trite platitudes eg ‘I am sorry. That sounds tough. I hope things improve for you’ etc and change the subject. No point in getting into a MN debate with her.

While I agree that the system needs looking at, posts like this make me laugh.

What's Universal Credit, 380 quid a month? And that's supposed to cover food, bills, clothes, transport, phone? Could you live on that? I couldn't. That's not even living, it's existing.

No holidays, no savings, no pension, no insurance, no little luxuries to make life more bearable.

There are obviously a tiny minority gaming the system, but if we're saying that UC is a 'choice'...I can't imagine the majority are making it because it's the best choice.

No. UC is a top up. So it’s not total income is it? Plus it varies. But there’s options regarding working hours and job.

Just wanted to correct these figures a bit.

Not London, but South East. Childcare for two is £5,100 for two children. Not a fancy nursery. Fees have gone up twice this year to cover the free hours (that I’m not entitled to) and the NI increase. Travel to my job is £300 a month on the train. My friends in London are paying more for childcare. We basically are working for no extra money, to keep our jobs open, and to contribute to society.

Unfortunately quite a few of our friends and family have moved abroad, as the above wasn’t sustainable, and they were working long hours to pay huge amounts of tax but living in small rented flats. I understand why they have, but it’s sad for us

Also sad on a societal level, because these households were paying six figure income tax. And it’s gone. The grads in our company are looking for overseas opportunities also, as they have a good salary, but can’t really afford much standard of life

Also rent in London. We moved out but even a couple of years ago it was £2k for a one bedroom flat, with a baby in the closet basically. Our friends in London are looking more like £3k just for an ordinary 3 bed flat

It's not just people on NMW who are entitled to top up benefits. Let's debunk that myth shall we. Many are qualified professionals, nurses, teachers, veterinary nurses, dental nurses, nursery workers. You know the people who keep our society ticking over. The people you all actually need to care for your health and your children and your animals. No-one would be able to do these jobs without top ups then where would we be?
Half the people on here frothing are using childcare providers who's staff have to claim UC in order to eat.

People have said on this thread they receive £800 a month. Only 37% of recipients are in any kind of work. Some can receive the equivalent of 3.5k a month

Other than people fortunate enough to live in social housing, the housing element of UC is rarely sufficient to cover the full rent. The local housing allowance, which is the maximum that can be claimed for a given size of property, is based on the lowest 30% of rents in each Broad Rental Market Area (BRMA).

The notion that setting a ceiling on the amount of rent that would be covered would keep rents low has spectacularly backfired imo. What was intended to be a ceiling has effectively become a floor in many areas, especially in London and the SE. I check probably 50 or so UC claims a year, and I can't recall ever seeing one where the UC housing element covered the rent in a private sector tenancy. It's especially tough on single people, who get less than £500 a month to live on and often have to use a significant proportion of that to top up their rent.

@TwoFeralKidsjust because you’ve been quite scathing about the couple working in their seventies. Can I ask what provisions you’ve made for your retirement? Just because I think you’ve mentioned you work one day a week and claim UC, and your partner is part time

To be fair I am aware I will be working until very late on in life and so therefore I can't complain. If the reason they are working is the same and they haven't made any provision then they can't complain either but they are and they have no reason to be angry at those on UC.

He works five days a week actually whilst I am working four this week as I usually do in the holidays.

So true. Some years ago, I supported a band 7 nurse, with 3 children (yungest born pre the 2017 2-child cap on benefits), whose husband had left her. She was entitled to a fair bit of UC.

Had she been living in social housing, she wouldn't have been entitled to anything above child benefit.

Although I find it unusual for both to be full time in their seventies?

excuse me??? we did plan. what we didnt plan for was our daughter getting cancer! what we didnt plan for was our daughter dying! what we didnt plan for was us having to take over the care of her two children who were 9 and 11 when their mum died!!!!

Right. So in the same way OP didn't plan on being a single mum who needs UC help?

I am sorry for your loss.

The op has said she cannot get her most recent partner to pay for their child. He works abroad. Very conveniently so.

My niece has uc. She works as a carer. Her partner left after getting another girl pregnant. He also abused her. She will go back to full time work shortly but when you've got self employed builders like my nieces ex lying to escape paying child maintenance she has no choice.
Lots of these fellows are nice ish until you're pregnant (plenty of stories on MN) Then the real McCoy comes out.

I knew from the age of 20 upwards that I would never have a child with somebody who was self-employed or exactly that reason.
These types of men need to be ostracised from society and people do need to refuse to have kids with them if they give any food to who they’re having children with at all which I doubt