How are you feeling about the upcoming budget?

[Bess34]

Just wondering how others are feeling about the upcoming budget? I’m feeling quite nervous as my DH is a higher rate tax payer (approx 70k pa after overtime and bonuses) I work part time (wouldn’t be any better off working full time anyway) with 3 children and expensive mortgage (rent wouldn’t be any cheaper) we’ve not been able to afford even a week in a caravan in the UK and had to cancel DC school music lessons and modest Christmas presents are all on having to be put on credit cards. As it is when my DH tries to earn extra doing overtime most of it goes in tax and a reduction in child benefit. Just very frustrated at the thought we might be seen as ripe for a tax grab, just because most people without children on 70k live very comfortably on that amount

Genuinely you have options. Maybe work more. Then you can afford your choices.
Comparing yourself to a friend is pointless.

So this is just a benefits bashing thread then? Your DH might not have been able to ‘bother’ to earn what he does if he was a single parent without a partner working part time helping to support his career. Your friends situation is different to yours, if she got less benefits you’d still be spending your money in the same way. Better to focus on your own situation rather than your friends.

Laughing because the childcare for me to work full time would not be cheap, only someone who has no idea how childcare funding works would assume that. The reason why it is £350 is because all parents where neither earns over 100k are entitled to 22 stretched hours of childcare per week for their preschooler, so basically you get the 1st 2 days heavily subsidised but the next 3 days you have to pay at full cost (except for the 20% tax free childcare discount) the childminder is also £40 a day for wrap around care for the other 2 children and £110 per day for them during the school holidays. So please explain your logic of how I’d be better off working full time after tax, NI and petrol?

I have 2 kids, I do know how childcare works. In the holidays you and your DH take separate annual leave to cover it, and once your pre schooler is in school your costs go down further but you are still working full time. Interesting you are happy to explain childcare at length in such a defensive manor but have ignored everyone’s questions about your spending when you have just under 3k a month left over after mortgage and childcare but can’t afford a holiday or Christmas presents.

Just curious about why she has no housing costs? Has she paid off her mortgage? That obviously makes a big difference.

Well tell your husband not to bother, he can quit his job and you can claim benefits and see how you get on. Trust me if you think 3k after your mortgage is struggling you will be in for a massive reality check.

Worried.

If Rachel Reeves raises taxes through anything but broad and shallow income tax raises coupled with commensurate benefit cuts. i.e. 1% income tax rise with 1% UC drop, the economy will distort further, and the shrinking of the economy will accelerate.

A few people will be briefly shielded, but we will all fall together quite soon.

Kids are expensive, and you chose to have 3. 🤷🏻‍♀️

you’re also shooting your pension in the face while your husband’s keeps growing. That’s a big risk.

You could structure this differently - your husband d reducing his hours to bring his income down to £60k (after pension contact) to retain child benefit and that would give you the opportunity to work more as well. And you could earn a fair bit more before you even pay any tax at all.

Hasn't Reeves now ruled out income tax rises? Personally I thought that was the fairest thing to do.

I can't see Labour cutting current levels of benefits. Perhaps they will freeze them. I think the Tories did that for several years running until the pandemic? But I might be wrong.

Eta: what do you mean by "we will all fall together quite soon?" An IMF bail out?

Same. On PIP and ESA. Any benefit changes could rock the boat.

Worried incase the pension 25% tax free maximum lump sum is reduced from £268k

I wish she'd get on with it and stop spooking the markets unnecessarily.

Yes we chose to have 3 but also worked really hard to achieve the income we have now, my DH going back to uni and studying and retraining and working his way up, working long hours while I’ve held the fort at home. Doing bedtimes on my own while he’s studied after a long day in work etc. It seems a bit of a joke when they take most of it off you in tax anyway.

It signifies alot of what’s wrong with this country when there is this kind of attitude towards a family who had worked really hard to achieve earnings of 3x the minimum wage to then be told you don’t deserve anymore than if you hadn’t of bothered and you should be fine about even more tax being taken from you and no consideration of the fact you’re raising 3 children.

My DH can’t do his job part time with predictable hours so yes we could restructure and both earn much less, we’d be paying much less tax as a family, have a lot more free time and possibly even be able to claim UC. I am genuinely glad that’s an option for those with no other choice but to be told we should be doing that suggests people’s ideology is more important than really being interested in what could be a fair system, reduce public spending and raise the most tax.

Yes, ruling out income tax rises is worrying. She will potentially raise other taxes on a narrower base. This is very distorting and bad in the long to medium run for us all because it was cause further stagnation, lack of growth, loss of opportunities, and less security for us all.

On almost £60k and mortgaged I won’t get any UC! No child maintenance payable to me, we are doing 50/50 but I may still have to pay him some if anything, I earn the most. He even gets the child benefit so I will get precisely fuck all.

2 houses to sell but that has to fund 2 houses for us to live in so we will both have maximum
mortgages.

How are you losing “most of it in tax”? That’s not possible unless you’re earning £100-125k.

(I’d tax those that use “of” instead of “have”.)

I’m not saying we can’t afford to feed our children but we were on UC years ago with our first 2 children and the joke is we could afford alot more then then we can do now, despite working hard to significantly increase our income. So £2970 we have left after our mortgage and childcare just about pays for

Food, groceries, nappies and wipes for 5 people
Electric, gas and water bills
Loans on 2x 5+ year old cars
car insurance
£200 a month fuel to commute to work
car tax, servicing, MOTs and repairs
buildings and content insurance
Broadband
cheap mobile phones
Life, critical illness and dental insurance
Clothes and shoes for us all, including school uniforms
school trips and donations and endless dressing up outfits required
swimming lessons for children
school meals
Clubs for the children
A budget birthday party and £100 present for each children their birthday (usually next size up bike)
miscellaneous - card and present when attending classmates party and small present for children in family, every month something like repair to boiler or equivalent
professional fees for employment
£100 per child at Christmas
Petrol to visit elderly parents
Interest free loan for furniture (although most 2nd hand bought off marketplace)
Beavers and cubs
National trust membership
Boiler service

There will be lots have not included, but I can assure you £2900 doesn’t go far and I don’t know any friends with 3 children and 2 adults on UC who are on significantly less than this (not that would want them to be). Forgive me but I will be dam well frustrated if they decide to take even more than the 20k a year tax and NI off us than they already do, we shouldn’t be having to cancel our.DC school clubs and put their school lunches and a modest Christmas present for them on a credit card at the same time as having that amount of tax taken off us

You’re taking an awful lot out of the system overall. 3x births (although I don’t know where the child you refer to as working on another thread fits in as you’re complaining here about young children), child benefit, schooling, free childcare hours and the 20% tax free. You are far from being a net contributor no matter how much you are paying in.

Once tax, NI, student loan payments and the CBHIC are taken off we are, that’s not to mention pension contributions (which are a set % of earnings) and extra commuting costs are taken into account e.g taking on a huge new project which requires a day extra working each week plus many late nights wfh earns 10k extra for the year but we only get to keep 3.5k of that. That’s before the extra commuting costs and childcare if the extra working hours fall during the holidays on a day when I’m working when DH would have otherwise have been off.

But most of these additional expenses are because you have three children. Surely you realised how expensive that would be in terms of childcare costs and the impact on income.

That is hilarious, I had homebirths and the midwives were here for less than 2 hours each time as I delivered within a few minutes of them arriving 🤣🤣🤣 we didn’t get childcare support except for TFC with the older children, until the age of 3 then they were at school at 4, with the oldest one we didn’t use any childcare and our 2nd not until he was older. I did agency work nights and weekends my DH was home.
So if you want to take all the tax we’ve paid and do the calculations I think you will find we are very much net contributors, even more funny as our oldest Dc wasn’t at school for a good while during the pandemic.
My older dc works full time and pay tax thank you very much edit - he was a quick homebirth too but if you wanted to tot up the midwives time 2x 5 hours including pregnancy and postnatal care I’m sure he paid that back within his first couple of months of working

Of course but if we weren’t paying so much tax it wouldn’t be an issue would it?

I do have a friend in similar circumstances and is quite rubbish for her, she’s ended up with a lot less than other friends I have on 25- 30k who get UC top up and child maintenance, is a crazy system

but. You knew what the tax rates were and the costs associated with having children when you decided to have three children. How did you think it was going to work?

You still seem pretty comfortable to most people, is he paying extra into his pension looking to the future? More tax is ging to hit us all, but rises in income tax is looking less likely, but there will be something sneaky somewhere, and even keeping the tax thresholds the same is increasing tax revenue.