Lone Working Parents - would you divulge your income/outgo and how you manage?

[Propinquity]

I really wish a single parent would post on here their exact income and outgoings, with children of similar age to mine, exactly how much they receive in childcare vouchers (?) and how they manage to also work fulltime and cope with school holidays off work, etc.

I know it's very personal information, but it's anonymous, and would give me some encouragement that I can do it too, because the Lone Parent Advisors are just not clear enough.

Two under four, one at school.
I don't work (couldn't afford the rent let alone anything else if I worked fulltime at the moment) so do live on benefits ; Income Support, Housing and Child Tax Credit) and everything really does add up. When my youngest starts school, I am absolutely dreading how I am going to juggle everything. I'd need a part-time job with fulltime pay (yah right!) else how can I drop them off at school and collect at 3.30 if I'm doing a nine to five job and what the heck happens during school holidays or illness days, I couldn't afford to pay for childcare.

I rent privately. The children receive no money from their father and CSA could not enforce anyway as he earns thousands cash in hand on fleabay, owns two houses, several cars, ... yet also claims benefits and has managed to play the system for around 20 years, so nothing's going to change there.

I explained all this to my Lone Parent Advisor at the jobcentre appointments and she effectively said, do some study, keep your head down, budget better and you'll never have to return to work. Eh?? Because I really want my children to grow up with this ethic, of their mother sitting on her fat behind scrounging benefits so they may as well do it too...

find a school which does morning breakfast club and after school club and holiday clubs.

find a job where if you have to take time off for illness etc it wont be so disastrous or one you can also work from home

hard yes.

My FT job income is enough to pay HRT, I get a reasonable contribution from DS's Dad and I qualify for CB. Despite the relatively high income, I budget carefully. For the baby years I used a FT childminder and supplemented my income from savings. For the primary years I used breakfast/after school clubs. For school holidays I would either use holiday clubs, DS would stay with grandparents for a few weeks or I'd take some of my holiday entitlement. If DS is sick I've always been allowed to take time off to care for him without loss, or I work from home. DS is now secondary school age and we don't use childcare at all.

You would get 70% childcare paid if you are working too. Illness days you have to take off work unless you have friends who can step in. The way I look at it though is what happens if you're unemployable when your kids are grown up & having to live on 67 pounds a week? If you work part time it will be topped up.

When I first became a single parent DS was at nursery 3.5 days a week - getting 5 of the sessions (ie half days) for free through nursery grant. DD was 9 months and went to a different nursery 3 days a week. I worked 3 days a week and took home about £1000 a month. Tax credits paid 80% of the nursery costs (it's now 70%) and also gave me about £100 a week to live on. Plus child benefit of around £100 a month. After housing costs, that left around £150 a week to live on, which was fine really. A little more than on benefits. Got zero from my ex.

Now 8 years on I work 4 days a week and my salary's gone up, and they're both at school so there's only small childcare costs, and I now get £120 a month from my ex too. I get less tax credits, but still £35 a week, so overall end up with around £300 a week to live off after the mortgage, which is a lot more than on benefits. So it's definitely been really worthwhile financially. Plus I've bought a house and paid off some of my mortgage in that time, which I couldn't have done on benefits.

To answer your questions - you don't claim childcare vouchers if you are on a low/middle income and eligible for tax credits - because you're better off with tax credits and you can't have both.

Tax credits should make you better off in work, though if your rent is high, the housing benefit will be reduced so that you're only very maginally better off. And this is excluding the costs of the 30% of childcare that you have to pay for, or travel costs to get to work, so you'd need to do the sums to see how well it pays.

Can you ask you ex voluntarily for a contribution, if you think he'll dodge the CSA? If not, then you might as well put in a claim as nothing to lose.

You need to choose a school that has an after school club, or otherwise find a childminder who will do school pick ups (lots do).

The other thing I did for a while when DS was small was childcare swaps with a friend. You could do this for the school pick-up too.

In terms of illness, your employer is supposed to give you time off for emergencies, but this can be unpaid or deducted from your holidays. I'm very lucky in that I'm usually able to work from home if I have a sick child. The real fall-back (that I've no often had to resort to) is to lie and say that it is you that is ill.

School holidays are a pain to sort out but not really a problem unless you're living in the middle of nowhere and don't drive or something - there are loads of private providers running holiday clubs. Again, you can get 70% of the cost back from tax credits. I also do the odd swap with friends or my sister in the holidays, and their dad has them a week or two each year.

Presume you're on the council list? If not, worth doing so as rent is a lot cheaper so makes it more withwhile to work. Depends on where you live how likely you'd be to get anywhere though.

Use the time you're at home to study allowing you to get a reasonably well-paid job. don't know where you live in the country so not sure how easy it would be. There are lots of employers out there who would consider flexible working options including working at home, flexible start and end times etc.

Ask the help of other parents to drop your child at school and organise a child minder to pick up and keep for a couple of hours. Should cost you no more than £7 a day. See if your child can go to a friends house once or twice a week after school. Repay the favor by inviting their kids over on the weekend, treating to a Pizza or a visit to the beach/park.

School holidays are a killer. I use my days off creatively (usually around the bank holidays so I get more holiday). There are summer camps which are quite reasonable when the kids are older (£40 - £120 per week). See about family taking them for some of the time.

I am a SP, work full-time, no close family but great supportive friends who I couldn't live without. XP takes kids for a month in the summer which gets me over that hurdle otherwise I'd have to take unpaid leave or quit my job and get creative with something working from home. I have a mortgage to pay so don't have the luxury of DSS paying my rent but stick in there and just take a leap into the unknown without over thinking it.

When my XP left us, my DD and I had nothing but the clothes we stood up in. Four years later, I have a job, car, house and some money in the bank at the end of each month. It can be done!

Have you thought of thinking long term, rather than short term and studying an Access course and then a degree? Everyone on an Access course is an adult and all have the goal of improving their education and their job prospects. All further education colleges run Access courses.

This would put off the problem of paid work, which can be a nightmare when your children are small, and will show your children that you aren't just sitting about, you're investing in your future. It's very good for children to see their parents studying and children whose mothers have a degree are far more likely to go on to study at university.

What kind of work did you do before you had children? Is there a particular career you'd like to have?

I did the studying route when the children were younger and I agree it's a better option than jumping into low-paid work. I got a lot of financial support through various grants/loans (loan system has changed, but I know there is still support offered) and still got benefits during the holidays. It all added up to more than I used to get on IS so we were better off (though I had more to pay out for books, travel etc).

Much more flexible than work too as I would just skip a class if the children were ill and could just copy notes and catch up later, the lecturers were always sympathetic. University holidays are often longer than school holidays too, so no problems of childcare there.

I got a studentship afterwards for an MA as well which meant I could get a decent job with prospects at the end of it, and also met DH there so we are all better off now as a family .

im a single mum and want to train as a teacher. I did a Ba course and passed it all but last assignment, so have a degree but its not a Ba or a QTS one. i work in a bar for a very good hourly rate, but they arent understanding of my childcare comitments. my mum has DD while im at work (currently 18 hours a week; im dreading the increase to 24 hours to tax credit qualify!). they change my shifts at no notice and wont let me finish at the speciied time. she wont have her for anylonger; so how do I go back to study?! Am i better off not working an claiming some benefits? if so..what??! DD father wont contribute.

I don't have any childcare costs as mine are both in high school and I'm a primary teacher. I have a reasonable income but a huge mortgage and plenty of outgoings so I still budget very carefully. Apparently my legal fees for the divorce so far amount to a little under £10,000 - I had deliberately not worked it out but my solicitor had to submit it to the court!

Most months I have less than £100 left at the end of the month. If I'd been able to hang on to that £10,000 of legal and court costs I'd have been able to afford to take my girls on holiday.

surprisearrival - the increase to 24 hours does not apply to lone parents, it is to couples.

Surprisearrival - I did a teacher training course and got student loans/ childcare grant/ parents' learning allowance/ tda training bursary/ tax credits. Not sure what your original degree was in, but it might be worth looking into whether you can do a PGCE (post grad certificate in education) or GTP (graduate teacher programme) in toder to get QTS (qualified teacher status).

Although the hours might be even worse than in the bar, there's huuuuuuge amounts of preparation/ marking time and when you're on the course there are assignments on top of that, so think carefully.

----just wanted to check, you know that if you're on a low income as well as working tax credit and child tax credit you are likely to qualify for housing benefit (if you're renting) and council tax benefit? You should be slightly better off than I.S. as long as you don't have travel expenses (etc) to get to work?