Unum Income Protection Challenge feedback thread

[AnnMumsnet]

This thread is for the 50 or so families taking part in the Unum Challenge.
For more information on Unum please visit the Unum pages on Mumsnet.

The families taking part in this challenge have been asked to see how they can cope if one wage earner in the household had their income dropped down to the level they would be entitled to if they became unable to work due to illness or injury and were receiving Statutory Sick Pay (SSP). We have a range of families taking part - those with only one income, those with 2 incomes, and a range of family sizes and income levels.

We'd like challengers to give feedback across the week. We'd like to see feedback at least 3 times (diary-style) plus a roundup of your thoughts at the end of the week.

The aim of the challenge is two fold:
~ to show how families cope with living on this amount - the challenges faced and to explore what families see as priority expenditure and what can be dropped. Those taking part also need to consider other resources they may have access to including savings, benefits, loans and family support. Obviously this varies from family to family so they will need to have a think about what would apply.

~ Unum say "above all we want you to think about how you and your family would cope if this was real life situation and it wasn't just for a week, but for a prolonged period of time. Does the challenge motivate you to put plans in place (if you don't already have plans)? Does it make you more likely to consider asking your employer about the sick pay policy and whether they offer Income Protection?"

Of course Unum know that every family is different and that circumstances will vary. They're asking folks to do this for a week just to get a snapshot of what their initial thoughts and actions are when faced with this challenge.

They want you to think about the following when adding your feedback...
~ What cost or expenses are easy to change and what's hard? What's impossible?
~ What sort of benefits do you currently get from the state / your employer?
~ What do you think you'd be entitled to (and when would they kick in) if this happened to you in real life?
~ What fixed costs do you have? Housing, childcare, utility bills - how would you cope with these in the short term and in the longer term if you had to live on SSP?
~ How are children affected by cutting costs? What do they think about the challenge?
~ What sort of family support do you think you could get?
~ Any other issues/ comments?

As a thank you for taking part there will be a prize draw of £100 of Amazon vouchers to 10 lucky challengers who add feedback as required

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

Monday was an inset day for DCs. There was a plan for mums to meet up and take children for lunch. We had to miss this as even if the DCs just had meals and drinks and I had a coffee this would take a huge chunk of the weeks money. Weather was bad so DCs didn't mind much and we made pizza instead.
Tuesday I did shopping for the first time. This took a lot of planning and also going through the cupboards to see what we already had. I shopped before school pick up and was pleased that the shopping came to £25, which is a lot less than usual.
Weds and Thurs didn't spend anything but am having to avoid usual flicking through amazon and ebay on Ipod when bored.

Thursday - Day 4 of challenge: Today was the hardest day so far. The children have 3 activities which I guess would have to go if this ever became our situation for real. The have a music lesson which works out at around £20 per week (and as they are home-educated, this is the only meaningful exposure they get to receiving the musical part of the curriculum as I can honestly say that i do not have a single musical bone in my body!), Karate works out about £16.30 a week for the 2 boys, and then my eldest goes to a special needs Drama group which is subsidised by a charity and we contribute £3 per week. As the eldest with ASD struggles with music, i also have to provide a 'reward' which today was a pack of stickers each so that was £1 (although that would have to go if necessary to be replaced with a trip to the park or something else that doesn't cost extra). All three of these activities are about a 30 minute drive from home and probably use up the most of the weeks petrol too. Because they are all very good with my ASD son and have experience with this, it is worth the journey to go to them rather than anywhere closer to home that could not meet his needs. This week, instead of making three separate journeys, we packed some sandwiches and hung around between the activities to reduce petrol costs. So todays activities alone came to around £40! Obviously if it came down to food or these activities - then they would have to be considered a luxury even though they have proved to be so valuable to my sons given their situation.

Last night, Granny babysat for us when we were round our friends house (this would normally cost us between £15 and £30 for a babysitter - but Granny stepped in to help out for free!). When we arrived home, we found out that my son had been telling Granny about how we have to live off £85 this week and that's why he is turning his light out at bedtime to save electricity because then we might be able to save up for a holiday! I hadn't quite realised how much they had taken notice of the challenge but i was very impressed with their commitment. Hopefully it also shows a level of understanding that if the situation were for real, they would understand about why certain things have to be given up.

Hubby getting a bit nervous now about lack of food shopping going on. He is down to his last bottle of fizzy water (although it is own brand - a luxury in my view). I have to admit that I am glad that this is his alternative to coca cola which he has given up as his main drink though as it is cheaper and far better for his health. So might have to give in and do a bit of food shopping in the next couple of days!

Day four done (thank goodness).

I am in trouble. Went out last night and ended up spending £40, so I'm left with just £23.50 and I've still got three days to go.

Thankfully we don't need more food but I would have liked a bottle of wine and a nice dinner tomorrow rather than a cuppa and beans on toast!

I must learn to budget is a huge lesson I've taken from this exercise.

There are definitely things we should cut back on but we are tied into contracts. When they come to an end we need to think seriously about making such commitments.

We also need to save more money so we have a cushion. Hopefully budgeting and tightening our belts will mean we can do this in the medium / long term.

We tend to pay for things upfront where we can so that has helped as DS's groups/ classes have been paid for.

Here's to a cheap few days...

I think I can safely say that I have failed the challenge and busted the budget. Today I have spent :
£32 on new school uniform for Sept ( orders had to be in by today, should have done it last week, so it didn't count)
£8.80 on dd's school lunches for next week.
£40 on my cleaner . she would have to go if this was a real scenario.
£10 on swimming with my daughter, tea and cake in a cafe afterwards as I had by now given up for the day and thought s&^ it!
£90 on an online food delivery which will do us for the next 10 days as we have a freezer full.
Whoops!
In my defence, I did talk Dh out of a takeaway as I said I was trying to live off £85 for this thread. He burst out laughing, and said that the only reason heis not a rich man is simply because I cannot live off £85 a day let alone a week!

Grand total for today £180.80 which rather proves his point, unfortunately.

£83.00 so far
Today, no childcare, but the £3.60 for school dinners will put me over budget, and we will need some vegetables before Monday.
This week, we spent:
£14 on music clubs
£14 on afterschool (although this is childcare vouchers and we have about 6 months' worth surplus so I'm not sure if this counts)
£32.55 on food shopping
£7.05 on tea/coffee and cake
I didn't count bills as the maths is, but I assume that we'd get council tax relief and tax credits were our income to drop dramatically for a length of time, which would ideally cover them.
I'm away for the weekend so will be back online on Monday (but at least we've no more food or childcare costs).
Total £86.60 (although without after school it would have been £72.60)

Well day 5: we don't have many plans today. I have woken up with stomach cramps, so will have to spend some of our last money on immodium . Needless to say I will be staying home today! It's looking dry outside, so different day different park! It's good my kids are young enough to just like free parks, so dp will take them. They are also going for a chippy(but DPs aunty owns it) will will cost next to nothing. Will report back with actual costs later.

This has been a challenge though. Between food and petrol that is £85 pretty much spent. How you are meat to pay mortgage and utilities too is beyond me.

DW spent £8.30 on top food yesterday and then had to spend £4.60 on travel to DS's new secondary school which is a neighbouring town and not even walkable by her standards. So that leaves her with just under £10.00 but there's the issues of her meet-the-mummies-before-the-holidays-set-in dilemma today and not so sure she won't blow the rest of her budget on that.

As several posters, including myself, have pointed out I think this type of lifestyle, long-term, would really impact negatively on mental health. Think DW has actually been quite isolated at home this week and deserves some mummy solidarity. Besides she had already made the arrangements before the challenge arose and said she'd be just too embarrassed to cancel because "she can't afford it."

I didn't spend anything yesterday (so my money post still stands at £9.00) but I actually think it is a lot easier for me being at work and not having to buy household stuff personally. However, we are buying the Daily Mail (do I hear a collective groan?) at the moment at the weekends to save points to get a free Kindle, so newspaper costs will put a considerable dent in the rest of my meagre budget. If she does have lunch I get the feeling I will be subbing DW for milk at the very least over the weekend!

DW did provide all my lunches this week which meant my canteen expenditure was zilch, but then she is having to find that out of the budget, whereas in future I should be probably increasing the amount of money in the joint account to cover those additional costs.

What DW has done this week is to stay at home and only hit the shops when she has needed to buy something. But she has not bought any luxuries out of her money at all - not even a coffee - and the money is dwindling fast. She considers herself to be good with money but even she's admitted that she thinks she would need to majorly readjust her mindset to undertake this long-term. She has also confessed to checking all her coat pockets for loose change and was jubilant to find 95p on her hunt!

Have just been thinking that presumably if one was on SSP, if a one income family like ours is a the moment, the children would then be entitled to free school meals etc... A lot of the top-up shopping expenses this week have been lunchbox related, so some of those costs would be offset by the FSM wouldn't they? Doesn't make much difference but what we are learning is that every penny counts!

When we went to DS's new secondary school we discovered that they are now asking for a voluntary donation of £25 pcm for the good of the school (it was going to be £90 for the year). They are having their monies cut for all but three core A Levels (it's a super-selective and apparently a lot of the boys do at least four As if not more!) so need funds to make up the shortfall. Can you imagine that additional expense out of SSP????

First post: Summary of our current situation.

Have been considering this challenge all week, so will start with the summary of my usual costs per month (family of 6)

Essential costs

Rent: 850
Food: 440
Petrol (for me): 250 - DH claims his petrol allowance back
Utilities (G/E/W): 250
Ctax: 125

Subtotal: 1915

Additional costs:

University fees: 150
Gym memberships: 66
Mobile phones: 65
Union membership: 15
Private dental: 15
Insurance: 15
Car 1: 249
Car 2: 100
Charitable donations: 15
Virgin Media: 65
Something always has to break fund: 100

Subtotal: 855

Total: 2770

Both wages & benefits (ish): 2736
Remainder -£34

We already go into -£34 debt every month (until the newer debts of £100 car and £150 student fees are paid off this year) and we will accumulate £238 of debt from this, I have not included the lads clubs which are one off payments 4 times a year, the extra costs of unexpected cinema dates, new clothes (I buy everything in charity shops for me and youngest, but our fashionable ones are not so certain) birthdays (6!) christmas, other peoples/families events, birthdays etc. I cant even think how we fit these in, because I always pay my bills first. We dont go on holiday.

So, if we remove all the additional costs and leave just the rent and food etc. we would be able to cover our costs and have some pennies left over.

For this exercise, I will remove my wages as I am the higher earner (my DH works part time to support my career development and our disabled DD) and sadly, see if we can cope with the struggle.

So, yesterday, took DD and DS to work with me and let them go to the co-op and buy their lunch as we didn't have any food left in the house to make packed lunches with! They went with £20 and I told them to spend wisely. They spent a fiver.

DD did get her ears pierced - £20 because of the earrings she chose. They do look v pretty though and she has agreed I can take £20 out of her savings account.

This pm I have to go into work again and DS1 is going to look after DD - she wants him to take her to the cinema. Again I wonder if I can ask DS to treat DD with his own money? He has a part-time job washing up in a pub. I will remind him of this challenge and see what he thinks and report back....

Now I have to go and buy dog food as they poor dog has run out. Unfortunately this entails a car trip to PAH, (the opposite direction from ANYWHERE) as they sell the only stuff the dog can tolerate. Another example of bad planning by me. I should have anticipated we were running low and factored in the trip when I was passing PAH earlier in the week. But I was trying not to spend money. Which has now turned out to be a false economy because now I have to spend the petrol to get there. Gah.

Second Post - So far this week.

Okay, so now we have removed my wages as I am going on the sick, and added in the SSP (although fortunately I work for a company that pays good sick, but this will not be covered in this exercise).

New wages and benefits etc (85,+ DH + Benefits) = 1317

As our essential costs total 1915, as you can see we are already going to struggle. I already buy Insert supermarket chain value brands for our packed lunches, fruit & vegetables, dried and tinned goods, sauces, meat etc. The only value I do not consistently buy is toiletries and cleaning products. Looks like a trade down is due.

The rent isnt changing sadly. Its one of the cheapest properties in the area as most houses the size we rent are considerably more.

The water bill is pretty static, but I guess we are going to have to make the G&E plummet. As kids we had to share baths, I dont know if thats something to even consider with three boys. I have one of those egg timers already to say two minutes in the shower only, but my eldest certainly never listens and the middle two spend most of the time drawing on the glass. My DD needs a daily shower due to incontinence.

The electricity is going to have to come down too. We run computers, XBOXs, Wiis and TVs, so I think we are going to have to pull all of those and just watch the one TV with freeview in the living room. We dont use a dryer or dishwasher, so theres nothing to remove there, but with 6 people, and one who is regularly incontinent, the hum of the washing machine is never far from our ears.

Petrol, I can reduce this as I can get a season ticket for my travel to work for £95 a month. I pay off my insurance annually and have no MOT/tax disc due soon (thankfully!) However, as I travel for my job, I would have to lay out daysaver bus tickets and claim it back and wait two months. They also do not give you the full ticket, just the miles that you used the ticket for, and the season ticket to work would not cover the work travel (wrong direction). It would also mean a 35 minute walk to the station, an hour travel to the station I need with another 40 minutes to walk to work, which driving takes 25 minutes. BUT this would have to be done in the instance of this money shortage, and I wouldnt get precious time with my family in the morning or evening with all this travel I would be doing.

Can we do this.................................?

Rent: 850
Travel: 95
Water: 50
Ctax: 125

This leaves 197 a month for food, gas and electric. Less than 50 a week. I think Insert energy company are just going to have to send those red letters if this was real....

Going shopping tonight. Will keep you posted.

This morning DH went off to work with a sad looking lunch as we are coming to the end of the week and I need to do another shop but only have £20 left to last till Sunday.
I have been putting £10 a week in my DS bank account to save for when he is older. If I were really to live on just £85 a week that would leave us with just £10 till Sunday

Day 5 here ..... I have been food shopping this morning and spent the total of £31.99 which is alot less than my usual spend of £70-80. Sadly in my quest to save money today I have forgotten to get a chicken and some potatoes so will need to spend a few more pounds on those.

My spend total is now £76.76 so still under budget but I do realise that there has been no money spent on mortgage or utilities ???

I cannot imagine where the money for those would come from

I would try to save money with petrol/car usage. We already walk to school and DH cycles daily so I do use the car as little as possible.
I also pay a swimming membership which is £23/month and this would have to go I swim four times a week and love it, it has made me so much fitter in the last few years.

So far I have spent since Monday morning,
£8.54 in Lidl - Bananas, Spring Onions, Walkers crisps, Snack-A-Jacks x 2 multi bags, Beef Mince and Sour Cream and Chive. £2.00 in Iceland for Loo Rolls and New pototoes. £23.00 for DD's mobile Direct Debit. Total = £33.54
I always plan for the following week and buy the items for packed lunches/fresh fruit and veg.
Wed, Thu and Fri are usually No Spend Days as I am at work, very easy to not spend any money.
I have 4 pints of milk in the freezer which I got from M&S for 10p and I have enough ingredients to make a loaf of bread and some rolls for next week. DD is also going to make some cupcakes with the ingredients in the store cupboard to take to school on Monday instead of asking me for money to buy some.
I am also going to go to the local Veg shop before closing when they have bowls of fruit for £1 per bowl.
This is actually what I do every week in order to try and stick to a budget, sometimes any money we "save" goes on a treat. It has become a habit now to only shop when offers are on or to look for whoopsies. We have to have the odd treat to look forward to otherwise especially with the depressing weather life would be far too much grey and black and not enough yellow.
Tomorrow I am also going to update my freezer and store cupboard inventory and do a meal plan for the next two weeks to utilise the foodstuffs I already have, due to me having lost my purse last week and expecting a competition prize of £50 Aldi vouchers which were not in the envelope when I went to pick it up from the Post Office this has actually left me with not much money until I get paid at the end of the month.

I have spent another £6.49 today on chicken, potatoes and a reduced bar of Lindt chocolate.

Spend total is currently £83.25

Sorry, I have not answered the questions yet .....

What cost or expenses are easy to change and what's hard? What's impossible?

I have realised that my food spending is the easiest to change and that I would need to alter my habits considerably. I do look for bargains now and for example only get frozen pizzas when they are reduced/2 for 1 etc.
The utilities - gas/water/elec/council tax/mortgage are much harder to change but we will endeavour to save money as much as possible by turning lights off, TV off.
The gadget that gets used the most is probably my laptop - perhaps I should limit my screen time too!

What sort of benefits do you currently get from the state / your employer?

Child Benefit.

What do you think you'd be entitled to (and when would they kick in) if this happened to you in real life?

Not sure, as we are only one income family.

What fixed costs do you have? Housing, childcare, utility bills - how would you cope with these in the short term and in the longer term if you had to live on SSP?

We have no childcare bills but I find it hard to imagine having only £85 long-term.

How are children affected by cutting costs? What do they think about the challenge?

They are fine, I have explained that its for mumsnet. They are also very used to not always getting what they ask for. It would definitely be even more difficult in the school holidays.

What sort of family support do you think you could get?

My in-laws are very kind but I doubt that they could help us long term financially.

Any other issues/ comments?
Just that it is much much harder than I expected it to be

Haven't spent anything today. Although an expensive book order arrived today.

I'll answer the questions instead of doing a diary entry

What cost or expenses are easy to change and what's hard? What's impossible?

I personally find food fairly easy to change. So we can live on fairly basic food. We tend to cook form scratch anyway, so we just reduce the amount of meat/buy cheaper cuts when we need to. I would find it very hard to drop the kids (and my) activities. We would have to if we were on SSP.

What sort of benefits do you currently get from the state / your employer?

Not sure what dh gets (he's the main earner). I am self employed. I get child benefit (not for much longer), higher rate DLA care and higher rate DLA mobility for ds1. We get some direct payments for ds1, although they don't usually provide childcare - ds1 too complex - just an extra pair of hands to help me out

What do you think you'd be entitled to (and when would they kick in) if this happened to you in real life?

I can't remember dh's benefits but we do both have critical illness cover.

What fixed costs do you have? Housing, childcare, utility bills - how would you cope with these in the short term and in the longer term if you had to live on SSP?

All the usual costs. Mortgage, utilities, car etc. Some repayments from loans we took out for ds1's therapies in the early years. We would struggle to cope with any reduction in salary - which is why we have critical illness cover.

How are children affected by cutting costs? What do they think about the challenge?

They haven't noticed. But this is a pretend situation, in the real world they would have had to drop the majority of their activities - which would affect them.

What sort of family support do you think you could get?

I expect my parents would help out with children related costs.

Day 3
Had to pay for summer clubs for kids £89.00.
Bought fruit and vegetables from Aldi £7.00.
I would find living on this budget really hard.
Day 4
Took the kids strawberry picking today £3.20, although they probably eat double that before getting their baskets weighed.
No other costs.

Day 5
Off work today,
Lunch £2.40
Hair £48.00, I managed to reduce the cost by not having it blow dried and having gone a shade darker I dont need it doing so often.
Need to buy chicken food £7.00 but we do get 4 fresh eggs everyday.
Husband came back from from being away all week having a bottle of wine £8.00.

This post covers Wednesday and Thursday, since DD doesn't like me having a life

Wednesday was a low spend day. I didn't end up having to put petrol in the car (but it maaay be running on fumes!). We went to doctor's, DNan's, town (to see friends in my work) and then came home. My DNan made lunch so didn't spend anything, and I didn't have dinner as I picked a bit in the evening on bits and pieces.

Thursday, went to doctor's again. It's only about 5 mins away in the car, but can't walk it because part of the road is a dual carriageway and so not safe. Came back home and didn't have lunch because I wanted to sleep instead. Made up for it with dinner, using frozen chicken from the freezer and using a tomato sauce jar, with mashed potatoes and frozen vegetables. We still have a lot here, enough to last us over the weekend so not planning any more spending.

DP has cut down to spending £5 a day, since realizing that us trying to cut back will work. That's just on food from the cafeteria, tea is provided free of charge. Also forgot to mention he cycles back and forth to work, which stops any spending.

Spending up to Thursday - £62

I'm finding it ok, but I am sure if DD was older, it would be a lot harder. She only wants for milk, entertainment (she loves foil), and hugs. When children get older, they want for more and are harder to be entertained. We also miss meals a lot, what with trying to catch up on sleep/lack of time/forget.

This challenge has made me and DP re-think our savings altogether, and we are going next weekend to the bank to open up savings for DD and renew mine. We would like for DD to go to university if she wishes, so if we start saving now we can have something to help her.

The weekend may be a bit harder, but I am hopeful that we will make it to the £85.

What sort of benefits do you currently get from the state / your employer?

Child benefit for 2.

What do you think you'd be entitled to (and when would they kick in) if this happened to you in real life?

Having given work up for 3 years when the kids where little I know I am entitled to nothing!

What fixed costs do you have? Housing, childcare, utility bills - how would you cope with these in the short term and in the longer term if you had to live on SSP?

Husbands wage would cover these. Lifestyle would change dramatically no clubs for kids, they don't ask for much as we have never been a family that are always consuming, but we do enjoy good holidays and meals out so they would stop.

How are children affected by cutting costs? What do they think about the challenge?

In the real world they would have had to drop the majority of their activities - which would affect them. They think its funny that I am even trying to stick to a budget.

What sort of family support do you think you could get?
I would never ask my family for support, unless we were going to starve or be made homeless. Although they would help, I feel they have worked hard all their lives never having got into debt and as such have taught me the same values, don't spend what you've not got.

I have been looking at DirectGov to see if I can try to work out what money I would be eligible to if my employers did not have such a good sickness package. I suppose this would be if I was classed as not being able to work.
If I imagine that I have not earnt anything since the start of this tax year and cannot get a job as I am too ill. After I input :
Last years earnings £10591
Rent per year £8460
Council Tax £1140

It didn't ask me for any existing benefits but it did tell me that I would be eligible for :

Incomings
Child Tax Credit of £62.09 per week
Housing Benefit of £135.00 per week
Council Tax Benefit of 0.92p per week
Child Benefit of £20.30 per week

Weekly total = £218.31 per week + SSP of £85.00 = 303.31 per week.

Outgoings
Rent £162.69 per week
Council Tax £21.92 per week
Gas&Elec £15.92 per week
Sky £7.09 per week
Plusnet £3.80 per week
Mobile phones £7.15 per week
School lunches - free as would not be eligible for Working Tax Credit
Uniform - free as would not be eligible for Working Tax Credit

All the above comes to £218.57 and that is without clothing and food and any other essentials such as Contents insurance or Pet Insurance or any Debt Repayments.
There would have to be some major cutting back of utilities and luxuries but hard if you are under contract e.g. Sky, Plusnet, Mobile phones.
Either that or I would have to consider asking my Mum if I could move back in with her and her husband therefore uprooting my daughter and moving back up North. Originally when I was looking for somewhere to rent I did not have enough "points" to rent through the Council which would mean a lower rent.
I was always under the impression that if you didn't work that you got your Rent paid and your Council Tax paid but the figures above tell me that I would still have to find the majority of the Council Tax and part of the Rent.
I am not sure how reliable the figures are as there was some information I could not input.

As a round-up it would be very hard to sustain any sort of existence when there is only one income for a household and then that person is unable to work for an indefinate length of time and SSP of £85.00is the only income they would have besides benefits.

I am lucky enough that my employers offer a very good flexible benefits programme for it employees. I had to take six weeks off last year due to having two operations and received full pay for that time. Looking at this has made me appreciate my employers more.

I haven't added everything up yet.

To be honest I feel like abit of a fraud doing this because in reality we would be sunk before we even started, on the basis of our fixed outgoings.

Was at a conference today. Free lunch! Made me think back to when I would put the individually wrapped biscuitson my bag so I could have "treats" for a few days.

It is my DN's birthday this weekend. I feel I have to spend what I would have done anyway (£15-£20). I remember one Christmas where we were really, really skint and it didn't feel good not being able to give "proper" presents. p