An extra hubdred for OAPS?

[RaggedRocks]

The government wants us to keep cash at home for emergencies. Many pensioners are struggling to pay their bills and don't have a spare 100 quid.

AIBU to think that they should add an extra hundred onto the WFA in the budget, so oldies can have some spare cash to keep for the coming emergency. Also consider an extra hundred for UC recipients.

Absolutely not! I don’t think pensioners are struggling anymore than other groups are they?

Mortgages are the things that have increased the most due to inflation % wise.

Does MIRAS, more social housing, family allowance/child benefit not count as help? Are you saying there weren’t any benefits in the past? How far back are you going? Certainly my parents had help in various forms.

And plenty of today’s younger people don’t get handouts, top ups etc 🙄

But the outrage over means testing WFA was ridiculous & I agree it’s still to high. plenty of my older relatives still get it and they don’t need it, they live in very expensive houses and have holiday homes.

This.
my parents and in-laws have always had a lot of holidays and enjoyed large bank balances. They worked mediocre jobs but amassed money over the years by buying cheap council houses and selling them at huge profit. It’s working families that need the help.

I think this ignores how much things have changed, housing costs are a huge barrier plus wage stagnation and fiscal drag means a lot less in your pocket.

My immigrant parents came here with little & bought a family home in London in their 20s. My mum then had dc and stopped work for many years. Yes, the part of London wasn’t a nice one then but this would still be unthinkable for today’s 20 somethings unless there were very high earners.

How does the admin costs of means testing WFA compare to the actual savings?

The £10 Christmas money hasn't gone up in years, so its value has gone down in real terms.

Ah MIRAS, the often-quoted reason why today's older posters should be grareful for their lives of plenty. when one wage covered a big house, regular holidays abroad and even three lots of school fees (these are all claims i have heard recently on here).
MIRAS was worth an average of £2.50 a week. How much is free chidcare hours worth?

The outrage was over the level of means testing. The initial threshold was too low and the current one is too high. I suspect the revised one was rushed through in a panic.

Also Family allowance was £1.50 a week for years and wasn’t payable for the first child until 1977.

I am not sure if you confused my post with someone else because I didn’t say anything about being grateful or discuss amounts. I simply pointed out there were handouts in some form & you have agreed with me, great!

Childcare isn’t free, it’s subsidised and not something I benefited from, I don’t begrudge it for others though as the costs are insane.

I would like MIRAS to be bought back though. But it won’t because it cost the government billions.

Why though? There's no point in telling us how very well off your parents have always been and still are. These threads where posters always come on to tell us of the massive wealth in their families are distasteful and a form of bragging unless you actually believe that all have had these privileges. Some posters always assume that all pensioners have huge wealth and if not , then why not? After all, their relatives are all rolling in it. And all over a hypothetical £100.

But it was universal wasn’t it? And it had quite an impact on family income in the 90s vs today. Again just highlighting that hand outs were a thing, is that a controversial thing to do?

It would be possible in most of the UK outside of London and the SE.
It wouldn't be comfortable but then i don't suppose your parents' life was that luxurious either.
The issue with wages/housing is a London/SE problem but we are being brainwashed into believing it's a UK-wide issue. It isn't.
In most of the UK, you can buy a house for around £200k, needing a joint salary of £55-70k. That's no less affordable than it's ever been. It won't be the min 3 bed 2 bath semi in a good area that seems to be the bare minimum now, but then neither was your parents' home I bet
Not everyone lives in the SE, yet everyone seems to assume they do.

It also benefited the wealthiest with the highest mortgages the most. It was a regressive tax which should never see the light of day again. It was shocking that people with no hope of ever buying a house were subsidising those better off than them.

What are you basing this on? I heard lots of outrage at the idea of just means testing it in the first place. But perhaps we hear different things.

@Blossomtoes

But would you class it as a handout or benefit? That is the post I originally replied to…

Would I class what as a handout or a benefit? They’re just different words for the same thing.

The annual cost peaked in the early 90s at £9.8 billion!

Which would be 25bn today allowing for inflation?

I think the new extended subsidised childcare costs are approx 10.5 billion.

@Blossomtoes

MIRAS, family allowance/child benefit?

Oddly I cant tag you automatically, I have to type in your user name.

@KatyppAgain you are not actually reading my posts. My parents did buy in London and it was a large family home.
My parents didn’t have a luxury life and I never claimed they did but considering DH and I were both working f/t in good jobs there was no way we could buy a house and start a family in our 20s even in a bad part of London.

Housing costs are a fundamental difference and yes whilst there are cheaper areas to buy in there is often a lack of local jobs and commuting costs can be prohibitive. People have to live somewhere whilst they save and many have no option but to rent which is another high cost and delays saving for a deposit. My parents only needed a very small deposit. Things are different

MIRAS was neither a benefit nor a handout, it was a tax saving device that benefited the wealthiest most at the expense of taxpayers who could only dream of owning a house. Child benefit took over from family allowance in 1977 and was £1 a week for the first child. This was a time of rampant inflation.

😆

And i said the wages/housing issue is a problem unique to London and the SE, which is where you are.
Believe it or not, some people do survive outside London and build lives and careers successfully. We cope.

What in the world is amusing about that?

I count tax relief schemes as government financial assistance.
Child benefit wasn’t always £1 a week & but even a £1 a week it’s still government help…

“The chart below shows a history of the value of child benefit, adjusted for (CPI) inflation. Three past increases are particularly evident. In 1991, John Major introduced a higher payment for the first child, giving families around £140 a year more in today’s money. In 1999, Tony Blair raised the value of the first-child payment substantially, giving families around £220 a year more. And in 2009 there was a further boost of around £30 a year, “reinforcing the government’s commitment to child benefit as the foundation of financial support for all families”.
But in the decade since 2009-10, child benefit for a first child has only been increased by 3 per cent in cash terms, whereas prices have risen by 24 per cent. So its real value has been cut by around £210 a year. A family with two kids has lost £350 a year.”