Missing out on benefits and general help?

[StellaBrillante]

Ok, so I am a bit bitter about the whole thing but as far as I am aware I earn too much to be entitled to any assistance or benefits and that's considering that I am not a higher rate tax payer. So as a LP, money has always been very tight.

So how can it be that a married couple whose children get free school meals can afford to rent a villa abroad for their summer holiday and organise a lavish party for their ds' birthday when I'm telling my own ds that we will have to keep it simple and organise a little sleepover for his birthday? And we most certainly cannot afford a holiday abroad, nevermind renting a villa!

I don't get it. Am I just not playing the system right?!?!?

but Stella,how on earth can you afford a 'little sleepover' for your ds when i can't?

see,all relative isnt it? different situations etc.....

maybe they SAVE,you know,a tenner a week or something??

I see what you mean although I should be able to rent a dvd and feed 4 boys some beans on toast.

But even saving, it doesn't make any sense as you supposedly can't afford the basics such as feeding your children yourself but you can save up enough to go on holidays and throw a big bash for a large group of people. I just thought that free school meals were for those in real need?

You could look at it another way and taking away my own inability to pay for our holidays, say that I'm paying taxes to provide somebody with benefits which they obviously don't truly require.

It's the system Stella

What you need to do is give up work and knock out a few kids (at least 4).

What you then should be entitled to (per month) is roughly:

Housing Benefit £600
Council Tax £100
Child Tax Credits £813
Income Support £284
Child Benefit £262
School Dinners £150
Total £2209

Or an equivalent annual salary of £36,000. All without having to actually work or have any expenses like commuting!

But that's just basics. To really excel at playing the system, what you then need to do is develop a disability which you makes you entitled to claim incapacity benefit (which is more than IS) but isn't so bad that it stops you from knocking out the kids, having sex or going abroad to your villa (thats the objective yes?)

Real experts will then find a partner who will then have to be their full time "carer" so you can get the carer's allowance too.

If you fancy a bigger house then just pop out another couple of kids. If any of them have a "special needs", be sure to make sure they get their disability allowance too!

Before you know it, you are "earning" more money than most families in the UK. Then the icing on the cake is to get your face plastered in the Daily Mail looking all indignant and hard done to because the council won't move you into a 6 bedroomed house but make sure you mention how many plasma TV's & Xboxes you've got though just for added effect.

wow, had no idea those benefits even existed!
stella, what i have also noticed is there are a lot of people going into debt to "afford" these luxuries using credit cards

Have you actually applied for any benefits? I'm often stunned to find that people haven't claimed what they're entitled to, in terms of tax credits and other benefits. You can get HB if you work (on a low wage) and you should get a reduced rate of CTB for being the only adult in the house.

Put your details into turn2us as you might be missing out on something.

you dont know who is actually paying for the villa/party. could be granparents/stolen goods/ebayselling/whatever.

there will always be people on diff lifestyle/circumstances.

but "equivalent annual salary of £36,000." well that is one reason why a cap of 26,000 doesnt sound so unreasonable in theory....

Scary thing is that a cap of £26k is about the equivalent of earning £36k.

Plus the cap doesn't include the cost of the soft benefits such as school dinners, free dental/opticians etc which still add up. Neither will it include DLA (rightly so).

So in practice I don't think much will change. Even the Tories admit that it will only affect about 50,000 people.

Errrm, I'm not sure about classing a parent of 4 children or more as not working ... I prefere the term paid work .

I think the problem is that a lot of benefits (like council tax benefit) only look at certain things (eg. income and not outgoings). I can give you a good example of how two people earning the same end up with completely different incomes.

I earn £14,500. So does my friend, Becky.
We work the same number of hours (don't qualify for the '30 hour tax credit rate' but do qualify for the 16plus hour rate).
My mortgage costs me £550/month. Becky's rent costs £530/month. Neither of us has childcare costs anymore. We both receive around £60/week tax credits. So far, she's only about £20 a month richer than me because of the difference between her rent and my mortgage.

BUT She qualifies for Housing Benefit because she rents. I qualify for nothing because I have a mortgage (I've looked into applying for council tax benefit but because it only looks at income (including tax credits) and not outgoings (eg. mortgage payments) I'm deemed to be too rich to qualify.

Now, here's the clincher: her ex pays £600 a month towards his kid's upbringing and mine pays a big fat zero. Child maintenance (or lack of) is not counted when consideration is given to claims for tax credits, housing benefits, etc.)

Therefore, Becky can to to Greece on holiday twice a year and I get to eat baked potatoes for dinner every day!

Wooly: you're not seeing the big picture here. You get to own a house at the end of it. A house you can sell, a house you can leave to your dcs. Becky doesn't have that.

A house you can lose money on, a house the government will tax to the hilt when you die so your children don't see that much of it, a mortgage you can default on..not that I'm hoping any of these things happen to you Woolly.

It would definitely be better financially for myself and my husband if we got divorced, and blew all the money we've scrimped and saved over the years on New Look clothes and holidays in Majorca. We'd be entitled to so much.

Er kissingfrogs... not exactly. Not if you are paying an interest-only mortgage, which is all a lot of low earners can afford. I'm hoping there will be a little bit of equity for my DD to inherit (perhaps 20% of the eventual sale price of the house?), but actually there's no chance of me ever paying the mortgage off. When I retire I will have to sell up and live in a mobile home somewhere cheap, like Bulgaria.

The point of my post wasn't to say I'm hard done by compared to my friend, it was just to point out how people who 'seem' to be in very similar circumstances can actually be wildly different in terms of disposable incomes.

Are people really this obsessed about what others have that they don't?

W.T.F?

Are people really this mean-spirited, spiteful and bitter about their own lives in a developed nation?

Blimey. Was that aimed at me?