Soon to be newbie seeks advice.

[TheWeeWoman]

I am trying to see how I will manage financially when DP and I split.
We sold our house earlier this year and have £90 in equity in the bank. I am presuming we will split this equally. This will mean that I am not eligible for HB or IS.
I am a sahm atm and would like to stay at home with my youngest until she goes to school next september.
DP and I will try and split the childcare as equally as possible with me aiming to have them [3 of them] for 4 nights and him 3.
Will I just need to suck it up and live on my equity, renting privately until I can get a job? Or are there any other options?

um... did you miss a few noughts off, because ninety quid's not going to go very far?

Become self employed, set up a business on eBay selling stuff - either second hand taking a commission off people or buying and selling on.

This would enable you to claim child tax credits and working tax credits plus work around your childcare commitments. It would also enable you to get subsidised childcare if you find your fledgling business takes off.

You can play around with the numbers here

As you're the SAH parent is the child benefit in your name because this is valuable money if things are tight plus having it in your name protects your pension contribution years.

It is not unheard of for the working parent to pay spousal maintenance until youngest child is in full term school. Is this an option?

Sorry 90k.
DP is working yes so he would pay some money toward children but of course will need to have a place of his own where he can have childen too.
Thanks ANT that is usefull. I sell on ebay from time to time in a small way already. I will check out the site when I have more time later.

TheWeeWoman. I don't have any advice as such just wanted to say I'm in a similar position to you. We haven't sold our house yet but there's around 40K equity to be split. I am also a SAHM hoping to stay at home until youngest goes to school in Jan 2012. The agreement we've come to is that he will continue to fund everything until youngest goes to school. After that I'll get a part time job and we'll re-look at what to do with the house. My idea is that me and the kids stay in the house and the house in effect becomes a joint investment. We each pay 50% of the mortgage for as long as either or both us want to. The benefit for me and the kids is that we don't have to move and the kids aren't uprooted. It also means that the half I pay is substantially less than the cost of privately renting. The benefit for him is that he is effectively paying into a savings account whilst seeing that his kids remain settled. Whether this will work in actuality remains to be seen but it seems a sensible way forward.

Entitledto.co.uk is a good place to start for looking at what your entitled to.

Good luck with it all WADA. I will research sites tonight when DCs are in bed. Thanks.