Can we all take a moment to pray for Thea, living life on the brink of poverty at £6k a month (£3.2k of which is UC).

[BananaramaDefence]

In a good month when UC gives full entitlement, Thea has a total of £6,142.00, from £2,800 in take-home pay and £3,342 in universal credit plus child benefit. Her monthly expenses such as childcare, rent, council tax, energy and food etc are usually around £6000. She says: "So it’s living very much on the edge."

And now the cap is removed she will get more!!

From this: Pregnant mum-of-four: 'Budget benefit change saved our Christmas' - The Mirror https://share.google/QGbNeuIKPAmg1qNG5

No wonder people get pissed of with welfare in this country. I work 40 hours plus a week, have children, have to pay a mortgage, childcare and I earn way less than this!!!

No child should live in poverty but at the same time no family should get this muxh in benefits.

Before people say, yes but it's to pay rent and collate, I also have to pay all that and my mortgage is half my wage!!

People aren't angry about struggling families getting support. People are angry because the system keeps rewarding poor decisions and then people like you try to guilt-trip anyone who points that out.

Not every situation is down to “deprivation.” Some people genuinely graft and make sensible choices. Others don’t. Pretending everyone’s circumstances are identical is just dishonest.

It’s not “ugly” to expect accountability. It’s ugly to shame anyone who notices the difference between hardship and irresponsibility.

Compassion doesn’t require switching your brain off.

But around £3000 of that will be on rent and another £2000 on childcare as she works full team. Leaving £1,000 for every bloody other thing for a family of 5. I couldn’t manage on that, honestly. How much is the council tax?!

Our outgoings when we had childcare were over £4000 a month before food and we have a relatively small mortgage for London (£1.5k) and I only worked part time.

Would it be better if she claimed fewer benefits but didn’t work? What’s the best outcome do you think?

Lol at all the people saying, it’s housing, childcare, etc. She is clearing the equivalent of a 135k salary after tax and ni. That is disgusting. A person on that salary has to fund everything too AND for everyone else. They lose their entitlement to everything. The 100k salary thread is interesting. Higher earners are hated and told to cut their cloth. Get the equivalent of 135k in salary and benefit? What a struggle. The welfare state is eating itself and unsustainable.

she’s pretty gleeful. Five kids by age 28 is insane

Her childcare bill alone is £2.9k a month.

That's where nearly every penny of her UC is going. That and to her landlord, who charges £2k a month for a 1 bedroom flat.

It's in effect a short term subsidy to keep her in work - because in a couple of years her children will be in school, there won't be a £2.9k childcare bill, but she will still have a job and be able to support herself and her family.

THAT IS NOT THE WOMAN WHO IS BEING DISCUSSED

The four-kids-and-one-on-the-way family are NOT the woman that this thread is about. Read the flipping article will you?!

It doesn’t always have to be us vs them, this fight doesn’t need to happen. People blame the wrong people. Nobody gets angry at multi billionaires or massive corporations not paying their fair share in tax. Nobody realises there’s one man on earth who could afford to comfortably give every single country on the planet around a billion dollars and still be a billionaire. But no, let’s get angry at a single mum on benefits.

A massive majority of abusive men do not show their true colours until the woman is pregnant.

And your evidence for that is...?

IMO if there is abuse in the relationship then it will get worse when the woman becomes pregnant. But there will be clues about a man's tendency to be abusive before it happens.

So where is the children's father in all this ??

In 2008 the welfare bill was 0.8 of GDP - by 2030 its predicted to be just over 11% of GDP

I don’t wish for any child to grow up in abject poverty, we all should be glad that there is a safety net there

but this level of spending on welfare is totally unsustainable.

now before someone cries but what about the billionaires - I also agree that the likes of Apple, google, Costa & Starbucks have been taking the piss for years, successive governments have not had the balls to tackle the issue and make them pay proper corporation tax

two things can be true at the same time, which is why the middle people, who work 40 hours a week, pay childcare, mortgage etc, end up losing their child benefit and don’t qualify for UC are being totally and utterly shafted - we should all be more angry about this

I can't tell you how wrong you are here.

It's well known that abuse often starts during pregnancy. Have a look on the big wide web and do some research if you need evidence.

No idea. But the state has made the decision that it's more preferable to pick up the bill than to chase down absent fathers and make them pay! The CMS is useless and toothless.

We left London in 2019. The place we were renting was 2k a month (it was just a two bed terrace that was falling to bits). It was the going rate for that area. We couldn’t move somewhere cheaper, there wasn’t anything. And despite both working, the second letting agents/landlords heard you are getting HB top up, even if it’s just a few hundred pounds a month, they didn’t want to know. I was told, “no dss” more times than I cared to remember while begging to pay someone an extortionate amount of money for the privilege of living in their damp house.

Anyway, that same house is now up for rent again, 6 years later. Only this time, is up for 3k a month. I still keep in touch with my old neighbours. The house is even more run down now because subsequent tenants didn’t upkeep it like me and dh did (at our own expense the landlord didn’t want to know).

3k a month! Absolutely ridiculous. The whole area has gone up by that much.

I am just thankful that circumstances allowed us to move away. Our mortgage on a wonderful home is £600 a month and we can live on dh wage alone. We no longer have to claim anything. Not everyone can leave for somewhere cheaper though.

Wow calm down 🫣 there were lots of people discussed in that article

Either way - slash the benefits, get people back to work. That’s the way forward surely? No sensible adult wants the state propping up all these adults who have failed to make provision to support themselves and their kids. Life isn’t fair it isn’t the state’s job to pick up the pieces.

Sorry I’m up at 5.30am looking after my one child who has woken up early coughing, planning with my 6-figure-earning dh how we will manage the day since dc needs a day off sick and I couldn’t update dh last night (he didn’t get home from work until 11pm and I was asleep already). I have to get to hospital for an appointment later and wondering if I can take poorly dc with me or not. So I’m a little distracted!

So....no question as to where the father is and the choices he made?

And what would your accountability look like? Not having a roof over their heads? Not eating 3 meals a day? Self flagellation whilst wearing sacks and bare feet?

This woman works. What else is she supposed to do?

The pregnant mum of 4 was financially struggling but still decided to have another child. It is utter ignorance and arrogance. When are people going to take accountability and cut their cloth? How can it be fair that someone not working is taking home more money than someone working full time?

So you still haven't read the article properly, or you're failed to understand it, because the woman being discussed in this thread works full time. So slashing her benefits and getting her back to work...is not the solution. Slashing her benefits would in fact mean she had to give up work because she wouldn't be able to pay the childcare bill.

I agree with you about the DCs father - the taxpayer is picking up the cost of him abandoning his responsibilities.

But this situation illustrates why the argument 'employers should pay more so people don't have to rely on benefits' doesn't work.

Look how much a single parent needs to earn to pay their basic living costs. Over £100k pa and it barely covers housing and childcare, let alone food, bills, travel and heaven forbid anything nice/non essential. No employer is going to pay that for most jobs.

Say what you like about people claiming benefits, but at least it targets help at those who need them because they have higher costs. Otherwise employers would either have to pay their employees according to their costs, so someone like this woman would be paid far more than a child free person who could live in a smaller property and has no childcare costs or they'd employ someone without DC who can afford to work for much less, so either way illegal discrimination.

There's lots of issues here. Concentration of jobs and opportunities in a tiny overcrowded corner of the country has disproportionately raised the cost of housing and essential services, due to basic supply and demand.

She's a single parent but probably didn't plan to be. The DCs father isn't on the scene but without UC she might have had to face the choice of dire poverty or stay in an abusive relationship. Do we want that for her children?

I would also say that probably people shouldn't have such large families unless they know they can afford to raise them, but seeing as that's likely to lead to more terminations, because contraception is not 100% reliable and not all sexual encounters are consensual, many would disagree with that as an option/expectation.

Of course in an ideal world housing would be affordable, childcare would be affordable, families would stay together in loving relationships and they'd be able to cover the costs of the children they chose to have but it's not an ideal world and without benefits, children will suffer as poverty will increase.

Have they never heard of birth control and saying about their poor kids, why have them when you know you can’t support them yourself. It is a piss take and will open the doors to people have more kids and stopping work, after all it’s better now to have five kids and stay at home and get handouts left right and centre.
what happened to if you want the best for the kids you can afford you work ? Or is that just me ?

Absolutely this @Sartre
Many billionaires also own the main media and social media companies, so are also manipulating how we receive information.

Instead of our anger growing at the increasing gap in wealth between the very wealthy and the rest of us. Our anger is turned on to other poor people - whether they’re a different colour or a single mother.

All
these single parents with five kids , did you not cotton on the dad was shit after no1 ? Just a thought , instead of having another four 😉

I had all kinds of insurance before my accident.

They refused to pay out on the grounds I might get better at some unspecified point in the future.

we had to take them to court. I got 20k which helped towards a wheelchair and physio but hardly covers the costs of not working anymore.

most ill health insurance is shit.

I also think we are going to see mass immigration as it looks like a great place to live here with loads of kids , no work ext come on all welcome, I don’t mind getting up at 5am to support you all, btw I’m a single mum on no handouts , lucky to have a good job , I could have gone the easy way but no , now I’m wondering why. 😏

The article attached to this thread said she was an unemployed Mum-of-four with a partner. They receive UC and struggle to make ends meet with £200 a month for her family of six with another child on the way.

So why for goodness sake have another child when already struggling ?

So people are so stupid it beggars belief.