That a single parent having her salary topped up to over £6k shows how unaffordable family life now is

[Tryingtryingandtrying]

I was reading about a woman, take home pay if £2800 and topped up by UC to over 6k. This must be £100k or thereabouts equivalent before tax. How can this be fair when earning that much actually loses you child benefit and free childcare? As she has 3 kids she will now be even more better off, not sure what the answer is though.

Have I imagined this, or is CMS not taken account of in benefits calcs?

Yes, me, and most of my friends. We work extremely hard and make sacrifices. We have all only had one or two children despite some wanting more because we are responsible and wouldn’t want to over stretch ourselves financially. It is sickening to see people like the first family in the article just popping out more and more children at the expense of people who work hard.

I had a work colleague this morning complaining about how care for people with dementia should be funded from general taxation instead of having to sell your house.

Then complained about how unfair it was that she and her husband would be taxed on their private pension.

Back in the eighties everyone was voting in Thatcher cutting taxes with North Sea oil profits while Norway was investing it for the country's future. Guess which country is better off now?

And we'd be paying out a lot less money to this parent if she was in a council flat rather having to rent privately.

Short term decisions have cost us hugely as a country.

That's correct

It would be interesting. Also overlaying the impact on a child of being at home vs being in full time childcare at a young age.

@Namechange822i am a single mother too, who works hard, doesn’t claim benefits but struggles a lot to make ends meet. It’s not until you become a single parent that you realise that if you play the system right, you can get all your rent paid for and 85% of your childcare costs paid for! Whereas the rest of us, who are working middle income jobs but above the threasehold aren’t entitled to anything.

Labour will never get my vote again, they aren’t a party for working people their party doesn’t make work pay. It would be better for me to quit my job, take less money and work less hours and I’d get more from the government! It doesn’t make sense and it’s no surprise so many of us are angry!

but you have no ideas what cards she's been dealt, do you?

Im sure it did. There are many people on this forum say they decided not to have a child because they won't be able to afford it because of the cap.

Yup - by "higher in London" read that as "twice as much".

I pay over £2.5k for one kid - cheapest nursery in the area that has a terrible Ofsted and several times has let toddlers escape and run down the road is £2k for one kid.

Well, that's the price I pay earning above £100k and not getting 85% discount, anyway...

I did some reading on this some months ago. The cap only applies to a few benefits, and notably, doesn't apply to housing benefit which scales up according to the actual number of people in your family.

One of the biggest reasons that people in work and not on benefits cite for not having more children is that the cost of housing for a bigger family would be prohibitive. E.g. for me I could easily feed and clothe 5 kids with my salary - however my house is only 2-bed and is already a huge stretch, upgrading would be years away and I'm mid-30s already. If I didn't have to worry about appropriate sized housing I would be golden.

I think this is one of the biggest reasons you still see lowest-decile family size as so high despite the "2 child cap".

This was definitely my reason for not having another. I could afford to feed and clothe them. Even afford the childcare. But to buy a bigger house was not feasible.

well, OP, as they say in internetland: "citation needed"

Are you including childcare as a benefit?

That’s correct. My husband’s ex earns around £2k per month. £1.5 per month add to that paid in maintenance to their 3 kids and still entitled to just under £2k per month in UC and child benefit.

receives £5.5 net per month (I don’t earn that on £70k salary)
pleads poverty as a “single mum on benefits”

entitled to all sorts of additional top ups for “vulnerable people”

Im sure my step kids are counted by the government as children living in poverty despite wearing designer clothes

If this is true it will be Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, not actual cash to spend. But I suspect it's not true - unless she is living in central London perhaps, where housing is outrageously expensive. Time to build more council houses, I think.

It is true, she is indeed in London, and how is that not cash to spend? Am I not spending cash when I pay my bills?

I must make a note to myself when my direct debits go out next week for mortgage, council tax etc etc etc that I’m not really spending cash. I’m sure it’ll make me feel a whole lot better 🤨

I don't know whether your question is serious, rhetorical, or sarcastic, but, if the latter, I take your point that raising a new generation and enabling parents to work are both societal goods.

I do think, though, that government is doing something else, whether intentionally or not, which has a long-term destabilising effect. They are subsidising investors (holders of capital assets that generate income or increase in value) at the expense of workers.

In this example, the state is using thousands of pounds a month to pump up assets beyond their true value, viz, the employer that pays employees less than they need to live on, and the properties rented by the benefits claimant and their childcare provider.

This just isn't tenable in the long term. It's not even classical capitalism, which is supposed to add value through innovation and respect the fact that workers are also the consumers on whom the owner class depend in order to generate their profits.

Instead, the country is eating itself alive while shovelling cash into the pockets of the rich.

Oh come on, don't be disingenuous. You know full well the distinction being made here - it's essentials versus a fortnight in Benidorm and luxury spending. Yes, it's all cash, the argument is around why the government is part of a system where things like UC payments for rent have to be so high in order to line the pockets of landlords etc - it's the analysis of wealth transfer from those with the least to those with the most, bolstering their assets.

And before you come back with moaning about your private rent or mortgage, remember that some of that is a choice you make ie to buy a house or rent somewhere you feel is commensurate with your lifestyle. Earning "your own" money does afford you more choice although it does feel somewhat illusory I grant you.

Most people will prioritise their rent and that market is brutal, because of lack of social housing and RTB.

You overlook the trap created by state subsidies for people trying to maintain some semblance of stability for themselves and their families. As for "just go out and get a job, any job" if you can get past the algorithms, the jobs at the lower end of the spectrum are minimum wage and subject to "flexible" employment policies - ie we might give you your fixed hours this week, maybe expect you to do more the week after, back to basic the next and so on. Which means your state subsidised income is never fixed and makes budgetting a nightmare.

Yes, naturally you are. But she will not be paying said bills, they will paid for her (with the insane caveat that rent must be paid to the tenant to pay to the landlord,with all the pitfalls that causes for people who are unable to manage money). If her rent is 2k a month - which I understand is not impossible - she presumably pays it. The rent and CT don't add to her spending power - she is still quite poor and doubtless will not be able to avail herself of the attractions of living in London, or not very much. And were she not living in London she would be receiving much less.
The solution is not outrage but more council houses and upper limits on what private landlords can charge in rent, or at least a limit on what the government will pay towards that rent. That will, of course make life difficult for tenants (more council houses again) and also some landlords, who may own only one or two properties which are their pension or their main income. So their spending money will be cut, too. If people cannot spend in our consumer whiligig world then the economy crashes. So not only more council houses, but less neo-liberal capitalism, less consumerism - a change in the way we live, which will not necessarily mean living less well, but more sustainably i.e. do you really need to replace your washing-machine, TV, laptop, other electronic device of choice, bed, bedding, hoover et al all the time? Washing machines used to last 20 to 30 years - we should go back to that. Incessant novelty is destroying us.

The person on £113k or whatever also isn't going to Benidorm though!

Both of them have rent and childcare making up most of their net pay with not a whole lot leftover.

One gets sympathy for being a struggling single mum and one gets moaned at for being profligate with their absurdly high income.

Money is money. It's no less spending cash if it comes from benefits or a salary. We all have expenses, we all have to pay them. It's not as though housing is an optional cost.
If she is poor, then so am I (we're a 6 figure household).
We need more council houses, yes. I do agree. But I'm not convinced they should be for Americans who fancied having lots of kids in London.

But one of the primary concerns being raised here is anger over the removal of the Two-Child Cap on means-tested benefits.

If we want a stable, happy, thriving UK, which we do, we can't have factions forming where there's huge resentment on at least one side.

Many people are justifiably angry that they are being punished/fleeced by this Government for being financially responsible. They're busy raising a family of one or two (occasionally three) children without needing or qualifying for any means-tested benefits. Both parents usually work as soon as the youngest reaches school age, and struggle with expensive childcare and a large mortgage. Many would love to have another child but they've done the sums, and it doesn't work.

Other people are very happily having three, four, five or even more children without bothering about how they will provide for them. It's primarily the state's responsibility, not for them to worry about. They're rejoicing at getting an additional £3.5K tax-free per child per year from Universal Credit for all their children now. Not just the first two.

The first group will, typically, have high emotional intelligence, be financially literate and (up to this point) have been strong supporters of the UK's 'social contract'.

The second group will not, typically, have the same attributes. Or they wouldn't have had a third child when they were unable to provide for the first two.

Do you really not see how damaging this is for the country?

I think she's probably having a pretty tough time and not rolling in it at all.

However just literally getting back to basics

Two people each have a £6k income and are each supporting 3 kids
£2k rent
£3k childcare
£1k left for bills, food, clothes etc for the family

Regardless of the source or long comments about how the UC payment is paid into bank accounts etc - these people have the same lifestyle, no? Either both are struggling or both are living the life of Riley, either both can afford to replace their washing machines or neither can...

I think the problem that has been identified on here is that someone could be earning very much less than 6k but be much worse off as a higher earner than this lady.

For example at a salary of 80,000, the point at which child benefit has tapered to a complete stop, take home pay is at least 1300 per month less than this woman receives. Would someone on 80k but similar circumstance otherwise be eligible for housing benefit?