How to stay to under capital limit

[Thirdchildjoy]

I need some advice on how no to breach the UC capital limit.

I work the required hours to quality for UC within my mates business. I get minimum wage but it is easy work. I get really good maintenance from both my babydaddies. One want to give us a bit more money but I'm strugging with the saving limit.

Does anyone know if I put the money into a pension whether it would be seen as deprivation of capital? I kind of see as the same as those people who put money into pensions to stop losing child benefit.

Are there any other ways to "invest" which wouldn't impact my UC money?

The particular piece of discouragement this thread discusses is a capital threshold for benefits that's been frozen since before Starmer was even an MP.

If you want to “save taxpayers money” maybe stop claiming UC and support yourself? You get high CMS as you’ve said and have a job. Why do you need money from the state?!

Why do those in high paying jobs need the free childcare hours? You can afford to pay for it. 🤷 If they are entitled then they aren't doing anything wrong by claiming it.

Those who worked hard and invested in their education to get high paying jobs maybe have no problem with paying for their own childcare but resent having to subsidise others so people like the OP can work part-time?! We’d all like more time with our kids, but only the morally ambiguous “entitled” can game the system so others can pay for it.

Starbucks is a completely different issue, of course they should be paying tax, the current government said they were going to close the loopholes that allowed large corporations to avoid this scenario, they’ve done nothing to change it. We have become a nation where many people, like yourself, take money they don’t actually need as they see themselves being ‘entitled’. You admit you decided you wanted children but didn’t want a partner, fine, your decision, but you and the fathers of the children should be taking full financial responsibility for them, you shouldn’t rely on those on the minimum wage in Starbucks who pay their tax to support your decision.

Third 'baby daddy' incoming? JFC.

we don’t need to vote in other politicians. Doesn’t matter what govt is currently in power, the finances don’t add up, everyone knows the welfare system is unsustainable and although it might feel a very short term ‘win’ to deliberately keep your hours to a minimum and rely on benefits, it’s a crap idea. The very best thing any adult can do for a secure life is to work to capacity, ideally in a job which pays well and where the employer is paying more than the legal minimum into the pension, as well as any personal contributions being made.

Basically, anyone who thinks the welfare system is going to remain as it is, is deluded! It’s unsustainable.

It isn't capped at this amount. The paying parent can provide as much child maintenance as they want.

"entitled to", I absolutely hate this attitude, we really need some pride back, not this entitled attitude which appears really widespread

I dont understand why you keep going on about “the little people” either. You have no idea of the background of anyone on here.

Please don't discard topping up your own pension contributions via your employer (where you give up some salary in exchange to bigger pension contributions).

I had no nice response to this so just didn’t answer, but it’s a pretty horrid attitude.

Well, it's not benefit fraud to do that as far as I know.

In the old days, lots of jobs were advertised as being 16 hours because that was the limit for getting the dole.

indeed but there is a minimum payment

It must be a work pension though that work are paying into rather than a private one. OP you can set up a bank/savings account for your children in their names and this is not taken into account for capital purposes.

It depends on the pension, some allow you to start drawdown at 55, some allow payments for ill health even earlier.

It is massively reduced if withdrawing at 55 and it’s extremely rare to get a private scheme that pays in full due to ill health. My point was that a pension is not easily accessible. If OP is happy to lock it away for decades (I can’t imagine she is very old yet) then fair enough.

Given that the OP is almost certainly younger than early 50s and doesn't work in the public sector or another major employer her pension, if she has one, will be a money purchase one, so no reduction for early withdrawals and she will be free to use from age 57 (currently).

I don't think there's any limits to how fast she withdraws from it, other than obviously if she takes all the money out on day 1, it's not going to provide her an income for life. Also, apart from the 25% tax free element, she'll pay tax on further withdrawals as if it's income so if she takes out £100k, some of it will be taxed at 40%.

I’ve only come to say that some pension providers accept third party payments. In other words you can set up a pension that someone else pays into. A workplace pension might not but I’d ask there first. In that scenario the contributions are paid direct from Dad to the pension. You can open another pension if workplace pension provider won’t facilitate - quick google will provide some answers. And then you can build some pension provision for beyond age 57.