Income support and savings

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I've been in receipt of income support for a few years. I'm not working while I'm a full time carer.

I gather savings up to £6,000 are ignored. Savings between £6,000 and £16,000 affect how much income support is paid. Savings over £16,000 disqualify you from IS.

I have a fairly steady but slowly increasing current account balance of approximately £3,000. It's only reached this level because I've not been paying for respite care during lockdown. I didn't have that much before when I first applied for income support.

I've also got some shares which are fluctuating wildly. Their value is swinging between £2,000 and £5,000.

Do I declare these shares and have my income support adjusted? Some days my combined savings will be over £6,000 but other days, they won't.

What should I do? Thank you!

You need to declare them

I would declare them. Not declaring can come and bite you in the bum in the long run

Long term you are better using savings for things you need. It’s not enough to make you more than they will take off your IS

If you are working age the government assumes you receive £1 per week for every £250 (or part of £250) of savings you have above £6,000 and any actual income these assets generate is ignored.

Which is laughable. So for savings of £8k they disregard the first £6k and assume that you will be earning £8 per week in interest. That’s £416 a year… you be lucky get £41 at the moment.

Unless your savings are making you more than this a year they are losing you money over all. You may be really luck with stocks n shares but more likely to keep going over limit get blasted for thousands till you are lower than limit and repeat.

Best thing you can do is pay the maximum you can into a pension annually. That is not counted as savings.

Income support not paid today and no letter to say it was been stopped

What are these shares in? Because if they are in a Self-Invested Pension(SIP), they don’t count towards savings.

Do ISA's count toward the UC savings level? A quick Google suggests this might have changed recently, but I don't know and have done no more than the quick Google.
If the don't, can you put your shares into an ISA wrapper?

ISAs do count towards savings

Zombie thread

ISA does no count towards saving I’ve just researched this as I’m in UC and have more than £6k for my daughter and the only way my UC don’t get touched is having the money in a junior ISA