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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

How can it be right that you can get so much money on benefits?!?!

193 replies

TerrazzoChips · 27/12/2025 21:17

How on earth can this be right? Link

it doesn’t include disability benefits but does include housing allowance and childcare costs. But a single earner will also have those?

I despair and could honestly cry. I am genuinely considering having another child and dropping my hours. I would be better off. I hate this so much.

Forget working, how you could be better off on benefits under Labour!

Benefit-claiming parents who work as little as a day a week are set for bumper pay packets worth the equivalent of £140,000 next year - and it's all thanks to Labour's 'Benefit Street Budget'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15388599/better-benefits-labour-analysis-graphic.html

OP posts:
Joeninety · 29/12/2025 21:16

And the ridiculous government still pay to the tenant instead of the Landlord. Hence the wide screen TV's and deposit on the Range rover, whilst getting kicked out of their slum after a couple of years, to start the whole sorry process again..

Ifeellikechickentonightchickentonight · 29/12/2025 21:49

@Joeninety
If you really want to address housing problems, look at asset price inflation caused by extreme wealth concentration. Blaming tenants for buying TVs distracts from much bigger threats we are facing as a society.

C152 · 29/12/2025 22:05

God I get so sick of these threads. You know what, OP? If it's so easy to get benefits, and they pay so well, then by all means quit your job and live on benefits - you can buy a mansion with all your unearned cash, sip champagne in your pool of pounds and dine on steak prepared by your personal chef.

Or you could come back to the real world and be grateful you're not disabled or sick enough to require PIP, that you don't have a severly disabled or sick child, or you're not frantically trying to figure out how to survive when you're made homeless because you're 6 months late with mortgage payments/rent and no possibility of making the payments up.

Why don't you start a thread discussing how we raise everyone up rather than constantly bashing those at the very bottom because they're not quite as destitute as you think they should be?

AndSoFinally · 29/12/2025 22:07

Tumbleweed101 · 29/12/2025 20:50

Haven't read the full thread but surely most of that goes back to landlords and childcare providers, even it if it was true? You need to be looking at what isn't an outgoing to see what people get as a useable amount. Generally this is £400 per single adult and £300 a child per month. Any earnings are deductable. UC rent payments only the landlord gets to see. Childcare - parents have to pay this in advance and UC only pay the basic costs, not meals or consummables.

Well yes a lot will go to landlords and childcare providers, but where do you think most of a non-benefit claimant’s wages go?? It’s still comparing like with like

ColinOfficeTrolley · 29/12/2025 22:34

OP drops a benefit bashing Daily Mail thread, doesn't respond to anyone and gets lots of replies. It's a bot. Please stop replying. I realise the irony of me replying.

Ifeellikechickentonightchickentonight · 29/12/2025 22:43

ColinOfficeTrolley · 29/12/2025 22:34

OP drops a benefit bashing Daily Mail thread, doesn't respond to anyone and gets lots of replies. It's a bot. Please stop replying. I realise the irony of me replying.

Given the response (90% exasperation and daily mail hate), I suspect it may actually be a spectacular double bluff by a leftist bot 😂

SleeplessInWherever · 29/12/2025 22:50

AndSoFinally · 29/12/2025 22:07

Well yes a lot will go to landlords and childcare providers, but where do you think most of a non-benefit claimant’s wages go?? It’s still comparing like with like

The very obvious difference is that without that contribution, they wouldn’t be able to afford their rent or childcare and would end up unemployed and homeless.

TaraRhu · 29/12/2025 22:59

@JustAlice exactly! It's not fair. If you can 'afford ' a child in nursery or your own rent your remaining g cash is more or less the same if not less than someone on nothing.

OonaStubbs · 30/12/2025 00:11

Nobody should be better off on benefits than someone who is working, Regardless of the "circumstances". The benefit cap should be set at 75% of NMW.

UserFront242 · 30/12/2025 00:15

OonaStubbs · 30/12/2025 00:11

Nobody should be better off on benefits than someone who is working, Regardless of the "circumstances". The benefit cap should be set at 75% of NMW.

A single person who is not working gets far less in benefits than a single person who is working in a NMW job.
Maybe look up the figures before spouting nonsense.

SleeplessInWherever · 30/12/2025 00:20

OonaStubbs · 30/12/2025 00:11

Nobody should be better off on benefits than someone who is working, Regardless of the "circumstances". The benefit cap should be set at 75% of NMW.

75% of NMW is not a liveable amount of money.

Fedupmumofadultsons · 30/12/2025 00:35

Ffs not the amount of people who get 26k for rent is miniscule. Well certainly in scotland anyway .if you getting 10k in a salary you certainly don't get all that childcare paid .because that's only about 10 -15 hrs a week .everyone gets free nursery .in that same view why should the childless pay tax towards other folk nursery fees family allowance .it's never fair fir sonefolk but you get things when younger and hopefully get a pension. So then folk pay for you .this is only benefits bashing

OonaStubbs · 30/12/2025 02:06

UserFront242 · 30/12/2025 00:15

A single person who is not working gets far less in benefits than a single person who is working in a NMW job.
Maybe look up the figures before spouting nonsense.

And so they should. But the cap should apply to everyone, single or not. People who work for a living should be significantly better off than those who do not work and claim benefits.

UserFront242 · 30/12/2025 13:08

OonaStubbs · 30/12/2025 02:06

And so they should. But the cap should apply to everyone, single or not. People who work for a living should be significantly better off than those who do not work and claim benefits.

There are people who work who also get benefits. How does that work in your head?

elliejjtiny · 31/12/2025 19:52

I did some calculations and there is a massive gap between what UC will pay in housing costs and the amount private landlords are charging. So most people will be paying a huge chunk of their UC that is meant for food on rent.

UserFront242 · 31/12/2025 20:03

elliejjtiny · 31/12/2025 19:52

I did some calculations and there is a massive gap between what UC will pay in housing costs and the amount private landlords are charging. So most people will be paying a huge chunk of their UC that is meant for food on rent.

That is not unusual at all. There is £150-£200pm difference between the LHA and what a private rental costs where I live. If you are on UC, that is a massive chunk.

Nevermind17 · 01/01/2026 14:16

JustAlice · 27/12/2025 22:58

There's social housing everywhere in London, including Kensington &Chelsea and they get it for a fraction of market rent. Working people will have to pay for smth similar 25K after taxes out of the pocket.
Plus 2K in council tax, again after taxes.
Plus 2.5K for public transport.

Social housing isn’t solely for the unemployed. Plenty of working folk live in council houses.

Nevermind17 · 01/01/2026 14:19

UserFront242 · 31/12/2025 20:03

That is not unusual at all. There is £150-£200pm difference between the LHA and what a private rental costs where I live. If you are on UC, that is a massive chunk.

It’s the same everywhere. LHA for a 3 bed is £600 pm here, market rates are £1200. A £600 shortfall that has to be found out of meagre benefits.

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