help with benefits, pensions, child tax credit, everything really!

[steppemum]

I have never claimed benefits before and so am clueless. I have been looking at the websites and doing on-line clculators to see what we are entitled to, and I have a couple of questions I am hoping someome can answer

1. my dh doesn't have a pension, so when he inherited some money he put it away for when he retired. That now takes our household savings over the limit. Is there any way to make that into a pension, and if so does it then need to be declared still? (dh is not english and will not accumulate enough NI credits to receive state pension here, and we are getting on a bit, so without this we would be really stuck)

1. when I did the Child tax credit calculator, it didn't ask for savings. Does that mean it doesn't take that into account? Would we be entitled to CTC even though we have this savings pot?

1. The free school meals is unclear. If we receive working tax credit, but our income is under 16,000 and we receive CTC, do we get free school meals or not?

Please understand, my dh works full time, we have annual income of 10,000, we have never claimed anything, we have no desire to cheat the system, but we are now at the point when we need to seriously think about claiming. I am also looking for a job etc, but times are getting pretty tight here!

1. Best to talk to an independent financial advisor about 'retirement planning' rather than simply buy a pension. There are various options available depending on your age, the amount of money you have and your attitude to risk and it's worth taking time to find the right one for you.
2. If your savings are over £6000 it affects some means-tested benefits like Income Support but it does not affect Tax Credit awards which are based on household taxable income. If your savings are high enough to generate a significant amount of interest then the interest is classed as income.
3. Tax Credit awards are separate to free school meals so you'll have to apply for both individually.

HTH

BTW... don't be anxious about 'cheating'. Cheating is only when people are committing fraud and telling lies to get money. Has your income recently dropped because, if it's been at £10k for any length of time, you should have been claiming already. You may be able to backdate your claim a few months

thanks cogito
yes it has been that low for some time. We know we could have claimed before, but have not wanted to for lots of reasons, now we think we need to but don't really know where to start.

After today I realise we are entitled to more than I thought. My dh has promised to get the paperwork together this week and then I will fill in all the forms!

When you ran the online calculators you check the benefits checker on the www.turn2us.org.uk site? If you put in your details and run the results it also gives you pointers where to apply.