Not eligible for benefits but struggling, what do we do?

[Nomoneyleft9743]

This is a lesson to always live well within your means.
My husband has had a good career for 15 years in senior management travelling across the world etc. His pay was enough to enable me to be a sahm raising our children and we bought a large home . We lived comfortably and could save a bit but not a huge amount (1st mistake)
Unfortunately my husband became very poorly and has been off work for 5 years now. He is still employed by the company but wont be going back anytime soon. They have been amazing and luckily for us they had group payment protection insurance so they were able to continue paying him 50% of his wage.
This was not enough for us to live on due to our large bills . We have never been frivolous, buy our clothes off vinted, no cars on finance etc. We reduced all unnecessary bills down . No holidays etc
I went back to work but due to me being off so long I could only get a minimum wage job. This has seen us through just about ok.
Now on top of everything else I have become disabled and cant work myself .I've had to leave. I am eligible and I am claiming high rate pip . This isn't even half of my previous wage.
We have 2 teenage children who need a lot of things paying for. Over the 5 years we have depleted our savings down to nothing and are now struggling . Our only option is to downsize our home but that cant happen overnight, due to the lengthy selling process.
We are not eligible for universal credit as earn over the threshold. I've got two kids at high school who want school dinners like their friends. That alone is £200 a month (£5 a day) and I can't pay it . I can hardly afford to buy us food . Is there any help for people in our situation?

But your son isn’t also then claiming carers…

How much is your husband receiving from work? Because I have worked out that you would be entitled to the following based on your husband earning £1800pm wages:
628.10 couple rate
631.81 kids
423.27 LCWRA - for your health condition
201.68 carers element
Total 1884 UC entitlement
minus work allowance of 684 (amount of wages disregarded due to owning house)
then wages taken into consideration on an 1800 wage would be £1116 - this is what uc will look at
then £1,116 x 0.55 =£613.80 = this is the amount your uc would be reduced by.
so total uc after deductions due to wages would be £1,217pm
the online calculators for benefits do always work it out correctly so should always do a manual calculation. Also I guessed 1800 wage because you said total income 2500 and I assumed this included your pip.
But I will also do a calculation based on 2500 wages: uc would be reduced to £885 so you deffo can claim. You need to ensure you apply for LCWRA when you set up your uc claim. I also based the calculation on you having 2 children. If I can help further, please reach out.

@Nomoneyleft9743 I have tried PMing you, but for some reason, it is not working. I have 2 unused laptops here I'd be willing to sell for a reasonable price, depending on what you use them for?

The ones I have would be fine for homework, household admin, etc, but would struggle as a gaming machine.

Alternatively, if either of your kids is handy, you can usually pick up broken laptops on eBay for a bargain, and often all they need is a new hard drive or screen. I know someone who picked up a gaming laptop worth £1000 when working for £100, all it needed was a CMOS battery, which are about £1 each.

Also the DC young carers potentially? Which could come with additional support at school, further down the line with uni applications etc?

The husband certainly won't be able to claim Carer's Allowance. Partly because he will, almost certainly, be receiving NS ESA as part of his permanent health insurance package, and you aren't allowed to claim both NS ESA and Carer's Allowance. It sounds as if his income is also significantly more than the £196 per week that you're allowed to earn and still claim Carer's Allowance.

If the husband is claiming PIP, and the OP isn't receiving NS ESA, she may be able to claim, unless the support he needs clashes with the problems for which she receives PIP.

Also there’s no specific earning threshold.
it goes off how much someone is entitled to based on element etc, some peoples elements on UC add up to 4-5k because it includes high rent and disabled children’s elements etc. they could have a take home pay of 4k pm and still receive over 3k UC. I know this as I work for them and I have seen it.

If neither of you are working, why do you need two cars? How often are you in two different places at once? And you both still drive, but neither of you can take the kids to/from school?

The more I think about this the more I think that the answer is downsizing (and getting rid of 1 car). I can't imagine that you would pass an affordability check if you need to renew when your current mortgage payments are almost half of your total income.

Outgoings:
Mortgage £1200

Council tax £211 change to 12 x per year for the rest of this year - that way if you council tax is £2110 it will be £175 over month

Energy £200 is this an amount you are paying to the utility company each month, or what you actually use each month? do you give monthly readings to ensure you are not massively overpaying? My utility company wanted me to pay £160 a month yet my usage is far less than that - averaged out at £105 per month. What is your credit with your utility company? You could easily be paying £40 too much each month and loaning the utility company money for free...

House insurance £20

Car insurance for both £80 Do you need two cars? You could save by making do with one car?

Phones x 4 £80 Use someone like lebara sim only and save yourself £40 per month

School dinners £200 - packed lunches

Food £600

School bus and laptop rental £100

Fuel £100 again reduce your driving by having one car

Water £40

possible saving there of £381 per month

Do you need 2 cars?

Could you get rid of one for now?

Once you downsize, then you’ll have more money to buy a second car again.

Have you checked to see if you can get a disability car?

He told me it could actually break the tv keep turning it off and on at the wall, so maybe a disaster.

where is your MOT, servicing costs for the cars
Internet costs? phone line costs?

you could offer school lunches at school on a Friday as a treat rather than packed lunch. I teaches children appreciation

There is a lot of scope for lowering your outgoings - phone bills, reducing to one car, the food bill, the school lunches.

Have you looked thoroughly at the bigger picture of downsizing? The stamp duty and fees to pay. How long other houses in your area take to sell. The likelihood of your current house being sold at the price you want. The physical and mental toll on everyone. If you buy the smaller house, would that likely depreciate or appreciate in value?

If you contacted estate agents now, the house could go on the market in the New Year, just when lots of people think about moving and not so many of them have organised it yet.

In the mean time, maybe each child has the option of cycling to school and getting a week of school lunches each month, or getting the bus and having packed lunch every day.

Community fridges can significantly reduce the food bill. Lots of layers (and windows open for a while every day to avoid mould) can reduce the heating bill fur.

You've done amazingly well to cope for so long.

What is your health problem?

What is your DH’s health problem?

Is payment protection insurance ( which op's husband is claiming) treated the same way as earnings though ? just asking as I don't know the answer to this. If it's treated as ' other income' for UC purposes then they would not benefit from the work allowance and it would be deducted in full. Would be interested to know if you know the answer. Doing a bit of googling seems to suggest it is treated as unearned income which would be taken off pound for pound meaning your calculation would be significantly less although they would still be eligible for some UC.

If you buy the smaller house, would that likely depreciate or appreciate in value?
What has that got to do with anything?
They need somewhwre to live that is not costing half their income

I don’t think you need 2 cars if neither of you is working. Sorry this happened, it could be any of us in the morning. I hope you are ok.

Secondary school dinners are ridiculously expensive and not great (at least at my sons school they aren’t) . My son and most of his friends have packed lunches. I put about £10 on his card a month for the odd treat.
He always wants the school pizzas, so I make the odd one or add one to the shopping. Cheaper and healthier. My dd (20) got loads of good idea and prepared a load of cheap healthy stuff at the weekends for lunches for her and ds.
I think it fine to have chat to them and say we need to tighten the purse strings and have packed lunches. You don’t need to worry them but they are old enough to understand.
We’ve have a change in circumstance due to illness too and have had to have similar conversations.
If neither of you are working definitely get rid of one car.
Me and dh check everything going in and out of our bank account every week now. It helps to keep us focused.
If you are going to sell up declutter and sell everything now and get it on the market in the new year. Properties are taking longer to sell now.
It really can all change just like that, can’t it! We weren’t particularly prepared either. But it’s just me that’s unwell, I really feel for you. I hope it all works out x

It would depend how it’s reported from the employer to hmrc. Also OP hasn’t stated if they have any savings or other properties, assuming they don’t have other assets or savings and husbands income being reported as earnings should be fine. For example some people on long term sick depending on the company pay receive full pay for 6 months for example and this income is still treated and reported as normal income/wages

The £600 could mean OP spending a lot on ready meals. There are several comments on here that since OP is “time rich” she must have time to cook everything from scratch and batch cook. We don’t know the nature of her or DH’s disabilities and they may preclude cooking lots of meals.

It sounds like the half payment your DH is getting is hindering your ability to claim.how long will that go on for if he’s not going back to work?

There are a lot of meals that are not ready meals that don’t take a huge amount of effort to cook

most veg can be bought cheaply and pre cut from freezer aisle - through frozen stuff, tins of beans and tomatoes or coconut milk in a pan and leave to cook to make curry isnt more effort really than throwing microwave meals in

If you are both able to drive, is there no work either of you can do?