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

Council tax
House insurance
Food
Gas
Electric water
Tv licences subs
Car insurance
Car tax
Clubs
Clothes shoes for kids
Birthdays Xmas
Holidays
Petrol
Mobile phone and internet

I can see how 3k won't last very long

My council tax and gas/electric is 800 a month alone

I think your children receive much more than the basics- days out at national trust, presents, clubs, swimming lessons, music lessons, birthday and Christmas presents- way, way above what any organisation would consider the basics.
The pleading poverty act is a little tiresome.

I think you’ll find I did pay tax for many years and will do again in the future and my employer is paying NI on my earnings, not to mention the VAT and other forms of taxes I pay on the things I spend my income on but if you want to state the mostly women’s unpaid labour does nothing for the economy then go ahead .. I’m all ears for your theories?? 😁
As I said in an earlier post, DH and I could restructure our work to better suit your ideological tendencies but we’d both be paying a much smaller proportion of our total income in tax plus be eligible to claim top up benefits, win for you, win for us and stuff the economy

@ShanghaiDiva Google what the JRF considers the minimum social and cultural participation levels they consider a child to be provided with and you’ll find our children definitely don’t have what is considered above the minimum

But Labour are moving the goalposts and breaking their promises. And for what? Not sure what the point of civil society or having a government is, if working people cannot afford to have and raise children. Looks like a massive failure to me. To imply she was daft to have three children implies our whole society is a failure.

After living through many budgets I don’t get stressed about them. Most are just tinkering around the edges. We are both retired on reasonable pensions but no mortgage now. My state pension pays out next year so the freezing of the PA will mean more tax paid so my occupational pension will reduce. We will cope as we are not on the breadline. As usual the poorest and public services will be worst hit is my prediction although they will dress it up otherwise no doubt. Plus the motorist will be clobbered again.

All this leaking and retracting has done them no favours. It’s been a pantomime as a PP said. And it’s made numerous people genuinely scared, which is appalling, especially if it turns out to be unjustified.

I voted Labour in July 2024 and I feel like a right tit now.

it’s about making informed decisions. The op has three children and therefore less disposable income and when the children are all in full time school there is an opportunity for the op to increase her earning potential. What’s daft is having three children and then whinging that you don’t have as much disposable income as you would like.

You do you.

But complaining that “most” of your income goes on tax (not true) whilst you aren’t actually paying any tax, and that there is no other way you could structure things (also not true) whilst complaining about a Budget that hasn’t happened yet is rather tedious.

According to your posts your children:
have swimming lessons
music lesson
cubs/beavers
participate in school events - dressing up
attend children’s parties
have national trust membership
and this is the minimum in terms of social and cultural participation?
if this is the minimum what are they missing out on?

Blimey OP, the vipers are out in force this evening. Don’t take it personally, they are just irrational bullies

They have already announced that the basic rate of Uc is rising by above inflationary rates over the next few years. Benefit recipients seem to be the best protected.

Fair enough, I was making assumptions. But £4.6k, and £2.8k after mortgage and childcare isn't an insignificant sum. More than enough for a couple with 2 DCs. It's not even that tight, unless you have 2 expensive cars on finance.

Come on..agree that you're not rolling it cash, but we all (well all with DCs) have the exact same costs as you. You just need to budget better.

It’s quite clear most of the posters on here have absolutely no idea at all how the tax and benefits systems work, let alone the economy. I have lived in true poverty and I am glad of the welfare state, I’m glad of the NHS and proud of the balance our country has tried to achieve between being a country with such provisions and its moderate taxation until recently. The commentators on here are so wrapped up in their radical left wing ideology that they’d rather mess the country up for the sake of it. Ie. Have DH and I change jobs to lower paying ones that would enable us to work an equal number of hours each, even though we’d be paying far less tax as he’d no longer be a higher rate payer and we’d both be in lower paid work. As for having children, how bourgeoisie in this day and age, although nothing compared to our extravagant national trust membership of £13.25 a month. It would be hilarious if such ideology did not risk totally screwing up
the country

Budget better?? I’m quite intrigued as to what you think is wasteful within our budget??

I think you’ll find an annual holiday and all
sorts of much more expensive things than my children have on the list. Our annual national trust membership wouldn’t even pay for 1 night of said modest UK caravan holiday.

That’s the equivalent of saying … I went out to a meal with a group of 10 people and I just had a £7 soup and bread roll and glass of water but contributed £50 but I’m not a net contributor as the bill came to £1000 🤦🏻‍♀️

It’s not equivalent at all, because your taxes haven’t come to £50, OP 🤷‍♀️

Left wing. 😂😂😂

My comments are mainly from a feminist viewpoint that you are making yourself extremely vulnerable by prioritising your husband’s career. You’re also (potentially) showing your children that women are more responsible for the domestics because men have BIG WORK to do.

There is an anomaly for those earning between £100k and £125k which sees them pay an effective tax rate of 60%. For anybody else, working more will have them take home the majority of the payment as tax and NI cannot amount to more than 50%.

And the irony that you are SO annoyed about the current level
of personal taxation when you currently pay zero into the pot is incredible.

I’m very sorry that you find facts so offensive.

I can't worry. It's a waste of the precious little energy I have. 3 children with SEN. DD1 now an adult and claims UC in her own right which stopped us from getting the child element for her but has all the needs she ever did (ASD, LD). At least she gets the full LWRCA element.

DD2 will move over to being an adult next year. She will miss the higher rate of LCWRA so we will be hundreds of pounds worse off overnight, added to which we'll lose 5 weeks of money while the switch from a dependent child to single person claim of UC takes place. She will still be as dependent as she ever was.

DD3 will be a 'child' for the next couple of years.

I can't work. My week is filled with calls and meetings and caring for DD1 who can't be left alone despite being adult.

DH works full time but his work isn't massively high earning and he works beyond his capacity so no scope for improvement.

So we are at the mercy of the Government and what they decide. It will be what it will be.

Very worried as pensioners with smallish work and private pensions on top of state pensions. Each year we have less left over after necessities as the inflation rate on food, travel, dentistry etc. is more than our pensions go up. Now the government regards us as cash cows and easy pickings. I laugh when they talk about taxing those with the broadest shoulders. I’m old enough to remember when Dennis Healey said he would tax the rich “until the pips squeak” surely a Labour government should at least look to some extra funding from the super rich?

Are you coming back round to wanting to say the 5k a year for our children’s schooling wipes out anything we are paying, our children are separate people for whom the state has decided it is in its own interests to educate so that they can become more effective tax paying members of tomorrows society in the modern world, just like my adult dc is. To say our family who pays 20k a year in tax in income tax and NI alone (probably more when the children are older and I am working more paid hours) not to mention the associated VAT on the things we buy plus the corporation tax paid by the businesses we use plus uses very little from the state does not more than pay our way is illogical, the economy would or collapsed years ago if that was the case.

You are not net contributors as a family because you don’t meet the financial threshold for that. The majority of people are not net contributors and this is why we need people on high incomes to stay in the U.K. as they are keeping the current system afloat. Your children may become net contributors but they may not.

In fact your 20K tax would all be eaten up by their school funding.