To think saving on Universal Credit is extremely difficult?

[FirmGreyMember]

It feels like Universal Credit doesn’t really leave much room for saving once basic living costs are covered. I know in theory people say to put even small amounts aside but in practice it seems very difficult when most of the money goes on essentials.

AIBU to think there’s very little opportunity to build savings on UC?

Not true actually - whether you receive benefits is very dependant on your personal situation.

I'm a single person with no children or dependants. I was foolish enough to buy a house on a mortgage when a half reasonable job earned enough money to pay that. I actually earn a small amount over minimum wage (local government, pays peanuts), they had to give us a pay rise this month or we would be earning on or below the new minimum. I am eligible to claim nothing via UC at all - all I can claim is the massive amount of a fraction over £100 a month PIP, which is significantly less than my disability costs me.

When people talk about "savings" at the poorer end of the income scale, they are talking about things like my 15 year old car with over 110,000 miles on the clock needing work done at it's last MoT - the car I need to get to work (full time). Or, as someone above said, a kettle that's given up the ghost after 10 years, or a fridge. Not things like a holiday, or a better car, or that height of indulgence a take-away twice a year.

Oh dear

Ummm most people on uc pay for the dentist. As for prescriptions get a pre payment thats what I did before getting a medical exemption

No it's because if that person works over 16hrs, they don't get UC. So rather than work eg. 5 full days and get more paid cash for working, they work fewer hours to claim the benefit. It's fcked up. Encouraging people to be on benefits instead of working.

I do agree with you on this single people without dependants really do get screwed over. I have a few friends in this situation and it is unfair that their is no help

Omg that is so old and not true anymore it hasn't been like that for years

Oh dear yourself, sarcasm flies right over your head!

You are very out of date, that’s not how UC works anymore.

Where on earth did you get the idea that people working over 16 hours a week don't get UC? Of course they get UC if they tick the necessary boxes e.g. living in rented accommodation, have children etc.

Wrong.

A person who works over 16 hours very much can get UC, it is simply tapered off depending on income. There are a hell of a lot of full time workers on NMW who get UC because their income is so low.

Try checking a benefit eligibility checker such Entitledto and you will see that.

Sad when people can't update their knowledge and still think they're in a position to tell the rest of us a thing or two! Mind, the same poster had no idea that the DWP and HMRC are separate entities. Tragic really.

It is 100% true, you can deny it all you like. You'd probably claim that PIP is immune to fraud or something equally ridiculous. Go ahead if it makes you feel better to tell yourself that. Human nature I guess.

Wouldn't you think with the daily benefits threads on here people would of learnt something by now its like just repeating yourself constantly. People just repeatedly assuming the wrong information and never actually listening

I do have a pre payment certificate because my medication would cost me 120 a month my point is on uc you don’t all have to pay for these things people I know get free prescriptions free eye test free dental so yes uc do have something more than a working person who does full time.

Bless. It;s never going to work when so many people claim benefits. What have Labour done.

I work over 16 hours and get uc

Apologies if this has already been posted.

Sam Vimes’s ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-economic Unfairness, propounded in Men at Arms:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

Cringing for you!

It really isnt true at all!

I pay for dentist as can't get an NHS one like a lot of people. I pay opticians like a lot of people on uc. I don't pay for prescriptions but I wouldn't anyway as I have a medical exemption

I think if you are having a cut, colour and blowdry that £200 is probably not far off the mark nowadays. I go to the cheap Poundshop version of the hairdressers cos I’m not paying that kind of money even if I can now afford it without worrying to much, though I suppose if I was paying that out I probably would worry a bit more

I don’t disagree with what you say overall but the person wasn’t talking about luxuries which all of them are but having a buffer for emergencies.

people on benefits really don’t have the luxury of saving for holidays/brand new iphones etc never mind wanting them now. So they end up buying things on expensive predatory finance & so further sucked in the trap

Yep

If you has a nhs dentist would you still have to pay though?

Listen I agree that big corporations should pay workers higher wages, and pay more tax, there's no doubt about that. But instead of enforcing change, Labour are just splurging the benefits bill. And people on benefits will never think they're 'not entitled' to said benefits. So here we are the sad tax payer funding the bill, for now. Unsustainable of course.

Or just plain stupid, but either way you are right that they are not worth engaging with.