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!!

Irrespective the point is Thea's neighbour Ruth who is also a single mum with three kids and has the same rent to pay but earns 80k won't even get any CB will have a substantially lower income to survive on. And if she complains on Mumsnet she'll be told she's "rich" and "should be grateful" and "should have chosen a smaller flat" etc etc.

The system is messed up and we can all see it. Why isn't Ruth getting help too? Why is Ruth being taxed to the eyeballs?

Should a wage always be expected to cover whatever lifestyle one fancies?

That's never been realistic. We should make an effort to live within our means.

But if that's the case then why are people with much lower incomes than her (earned through work alone) being taxed at 40% on anything over 50k (50% if they have student loan repayments!)

No wonder we have such a massive productivity crisis

This.
The mother is not getting the UC to spend on herself. It goes straight to a private landlord and a childcare business.

The problem is a nation that relies on private renting instead of social housing, and that fails to provide state-owned childcare whilst expecting parents to work.
It just does not add up.

This problem is particularly bad in London.

Should we legislate that no-one in London is allowed to have children unless they earn over £150k?

How is she not spending it on herself? They are her bills. By that logic, we should all be writing off our childcare and housing expenses, since we're not spending that money on ourselves.

We know that!!
But her single mum neighbour earning 80k also has to pay the same amount of rent. And doesn't even get child benefit!!
I don't see what is so hard to grasp

Good grief.

On MN, if you earn £100k, you are scum
and and you must never complain that your hard earned cash doesn’t go far because you are paying for other people to live in luxury for free. But if you are on benefits and on £6k, you must be vulnerable and probably should get more.

This country is so broken, that it’s no longer worth saving. Any higher earners that can leave, should. And leave those living off their money to figure out how to get by, preferably by actually trying to work rather than having kids as a way of making a living.

Exactly. Maybe that the solution. That people can deduct housing costs and childcare from their income and only pay tax on the remainder (and only then on any income above what someone on benefits receives)

Thea Jaffe has been popping up in the media for years. She bleated about being a single mum with one child, but interestingly went on to have two more, regularly getting on her soap box to bore on while (unforgivably) splashing her children all over the media as part of her agenda.

it’s a fucking joke. Many people move out of London because it’s unaffordable to them , they limit their family to a size they can support and basically take some personal responsibility.

yes, a chunk of this money goes to pay the landlord but other people have to find that money out of their own earnings.

quite aside from the absurdity of the situation, she’s a shit excuse of a parent exposing her children like this and not allowing them their right to privacy. I wonder how they’ll feel about it in future years… could go two ways, they’ll either hate the fact she did this and resent her for it, or they’ll swallow all the bullshit and grow up to in turn believe they’re entitled to live in North London and have as many kids as they want at the tax payers’ expense

Someone needs to go back to school.

I don’t know who found Thea but they did a great job… benefit porn at its finest!!

Exactly this!

We need as a country to agree a way to asses what is " vulnerable" and "poverty" and apply it consistently

Ah but then how do we fund all the benefits?
We can't have a system where someone like Thea gets so much, unless we also have a system where others pay so much.

It’s no longer worth working hard and saving any money in the UK!

Do tell MrBrown. You can have your cake and eat it too! Why not! One doesn’t need to only blame and shame single mothers for all of 21st Century Britain’s economic woes ! That is just the beginning! One must also deny their realities of single mother’s experiences!

Thea found them. This isn't her first time.

Yes we should. If you can’t afford to pay for yourself, live somewhere else. And yes that applies to low paid workers as well. Londoner can pay the going rate for services.

But if you don’t work at all, there is absolutely no need for you to live in London, and at taxpayers expense at that. You are adding literally zero value. You could live anywhere.

And yes value is measured in earnings. Because despite the platitudes, no one anywhere in the world, ever has lived for free. Someone has to pay. So those paying are creating and adding more value.

There are plenty more examples out there.
I was shocked to learn that my 60k salary gives me the same net income as someone in the same town with the same number of kids who works PT and claims UC.

Your posts really are lacking in any kind of empathy.

Apparently she’s American, the kids dad is Brazilian and in Brazil where she had the kids. Why are UK taxpayers funding her existence? If she was from somewhere like Albania or Pakistan they’d be uproar. Send her home.

There is a very good case to be made for being able to write off childcare against tax. But a better solution would be state-owned childcare free to all.

I would not favour write-off against tax of private rent. I would favour social housing - if they can't build fast enough then buy back the ex-social housing from the private landlords.

Utopia I know, but I can dream.

I have read a few of these threads and find it all quite confusing tbh.
It seems to me that housing is the biggest problem. It can be traced back to right to buy. The fact is there is nowhere near enough social housing. Councils should be building more and buying up others. Yes it will cost a lot but long term it will save. So many political and economic decisions in this country seem to be made with no long term planning.
I also think ( and this will be unpopular) that there is nothing wrong with expressing the opinion that some people make poor lifestyle choices. Having three kids when you aren’t that well off is crazy. Having four or five is downright negligent. When you have your family you should consider the what ifs. What if I lose my job, what if it’s twins etc.
Perhaps the benefit system needs to be simplified. If it was clearer that if you are unemployed and single you get x. If you are both unemployed in a couple you get x. If you have children you get an extra x per child people might learn to budget better. Then have social housing with set rents paid directly from the family. There needs to be more money invested in supporting people getting a job and providing childcare.
I don’t know - just a thought. But something has to be done because the current system just isn’t sustainable and nor is it fair.

I agree with this.
I would like to see us switch to universal free childcare and a huge delivery (through purchase and construction) of social rented housing.

That's the kind of labour government I could get behind.

But squeezing people harder with taxes when they may well have much less disposable income than their neighbour on UC. That's messed up

I don’t understand how she is allowed to claim. When my cousins foreign born wife joined him in the uk with her dc she was told quite clearly she couldn’t claim anything. This was 20 years ago so I guess stuff has changed.