£25,000 benefits cap

[Xenia]

Average family has £26,000 to live on including housing. So from 2013 the most benefits available for one family will be £26,000 including housing benefit. Sounds like a sensible plan. Well done George Osborne. How did we ever get to a contrary position in the first place?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11463435

Tell you what - if they scrapped the Tax credits system this country would fall on it's knees - then we'd really have a problem.

There are a lot more people relying on state handouts than you can possibly imagine - many of them are key workers too

Theres a scheme like that Riven, near to where my mum lives..no doubt because all the lazy fucking scroungers have spent their benefits on flat screen TVs

god I feel for that poor woman in that article Riven. The shame must have been awful. I can actually empathise with her - thankfully we never had to resort to a foodbank - but 5yrs back when we were in dire straits as the business crashed around us before it had even taken off the ground I felt like that. £15 to feed 4 of us for a week and buy nappies. Yet to the outside world we had a nice car, a nice house of our own (wlel mortgaged), and were doing well.

That feeling of knowing how everyone on the outside thinks you're doing ok, but actually you're living on pennies and struggling is awful. You can't tell people you're struggling - if you do they look at your house, and your car and you just know what they're thinking.

we have a scheme like it in town - thought I only learned about it last year when some of the schools' harvest donations went to them. It's been running for 20yrs apparently - and is busier now than it's ever been

Feel for her? give me a fucking break - she could've sold her car/house. Problem was she had an unrealistic expectation as to what it was "worth".

Excuses excuses. :(

Some people can roll their sleeves up and get on with things, some can't.

alpine Pony there was a thread around here not long ago about people who had the house, the car and for appearances, a desirable comfortable lifestyle being secretly poor, just hanging on to paying the massive mortgages on their overpriced houses. Maxing on credit cards hanging on just because interest rates are kept artificially low.
So may people where sold a lie and bought it willingly, the poor sods. safe as houses they could not loose.
Interest rates are still low yet houseprices fell 3.6% in September.
The house of cards is unravelling, there's gonna be carnage out there.
"UK property bubble definition:
A gigantic pyramid scheme aided and abetted by weak, indifferent governments, reckless and lawless banks, rapacious mortgage brokers, servile estate agents, and a foolish, credulous public. And let's not forget the media, which helped to blow up the bubble with all its might (for the sake of advertising revenue).
And now we have the beginning of the collapse. Let the apologists point out the "lack of supply," the "weak pound," the low interest rates, etc, etc.
None of it matters. Bubbles all eventually disinflate. Anyone who has the most superficial knowledge of history knows this. And I believe people will soon be showing a renewed interest in the lessons of the past.
The UK property market is currently 35-43% overvalued according to the 100-year median line. There has never been a bubble like this--ever. Ergo, there has never been a crash like the one that is now imminent."
What NuLa did in the last 13 years was evil, so many were sucked in.

ER - you're preaching to the choir here about property prices. But... I do believe if you price something right you'll get a seller. Seeing this shitstorm coming, I sold my house in the summer of 2008 - I got a buyer within 10 days - maybe I priced it too low in retrospect. But, I wanted to sell - and I did. FF 4 months and I wanted to sell my car as I couldn't afford to keep it. I decided my price, advertised it and received over 30 phonecalls within 4 hours. It was sold within 12 for the full asking price cash. Where there's a will, there's a way.

• we had a house and a car that we couldn't sell.

House was in negative equity - plus needed work doing to it and no-one wanted to buy it, we had car that we couldn't sell either - it had been on HP when we were doing well but it wasn't worth enough to pay it off.

If you read the article you'll see that they have since sold the house and moved into rented and managed to find work.

Sometimes you really ARE stuck between a rock and a hard place - I know - we were there. £15 to feed us for a week plus nappies, for weeks, mortgage not being payed, bills not being paid. We had the house and the car - but no-one wanted to buy those

We rolled up our sleeves, and got on with it - the only reason I never went and got a food parcel is because I didn't know about them.

No - we didn't "over stretch" ourselves - we were comfortable and then it all fell to pieces when a business failed. We lived like that for about 9 months without claiming a single penny in benefits either.

It was attitudes like yours that made it all the more harder. People looking at us from the outside thought we were making excuses. I can assure you there were no excuses,just a hell that we couldn't escape from

Yep DP and I saw the shit storm coming too, we downsized and are living in a house with a v comfortable amount of equity in it which should get us through the storm.

Thing is now I think it's too late for many who bought Gordo's lie "the recovery is locked in" It of course was never locked in, the pain was deferred for the Tories to take the flak.
I smell fear, even without interest going up the bubble is deflating, it might even burst.

It's going to be an interesting few months.

I should add this was back in 2005 that we were in a very very similar position to the woman in the article. 2004 was so positive too with buying the house and the money rolling in >>

MaMoTTaT - I take it you're now out of that? Hats off to you for surviving. I know it's not easy - that rock and hard place. How do you put the house on the market when it's going to cost 50 euros to put it online, but 50 euros is your monthly food bill? Believe me, I've been there. But some people are fighters and don't/won't give up and always seem to come good in the end.

well - I am. Exh is still saddled with 30k of debt (including mortgage arrears) and the house. We did eventually get rid of the car - but only when we weren't desperate for the money.

I'm on benefits now as a LP, exH as just come off 1 1/2yrs on benefits after losing his job (JSA, then ESA.

I sometimes wonder how differently things would have turned out if he we hadn't been so "proud" and had claimed the benefits we were entitled to at the time.

Not been an easy time for me either though, and have decided that life begins at 32 not 40, so next year (if the government doesn't pull the rug too far out from under my feet) might start moving upwards.

Have to say though - if I'd know about our local foodbank I would have used it. With great shame as I walked back to our lovely end of terrace house

I don't think that is the case tbh