Who is the safest in a recession - Home Owner or Renter?

silvercar

One other point is that the home owning twin will be able to stay in his home provided he can a manage the mortgage (with help if appropriate). The renting twin could be evicted by his landlord for no reason and then need to find another home while not earning.

PayDay

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

Tax credits are simply a way of giving a tax cut to parents.

If that were true, then child tax credits would be offered to every family, like child benefit is. Child Tax credits are means tested.

If the government were not so generous with our taxes in giving benefits to long term claimants, then perhaps a lot a parents would not need to claim these top up welfare payments.

I'm all for the system who helps those temporarily down on their luck, but it should have a time limit on it unless there is a genuine disability.

Oh...and yes, I do have children.

Dithering_Dad

PayDay wrote: »

If that were true, then child tax credits would be offered to every family, like child benefit is. Child Tax credits are means tested.

If the government were not so generous with our taxes in giving benefits to long term claimants, then perhaps a lot a parents would not need to claim these top up welfare payments.

I'm all for the system who helps those temporarily down on their luck, but it should have a time limit on it unless there is a genuine disability.

Oh...and yes, I do have children.

I actually think tax credits were one of the most ridiculous tax related ideas ever. They're hugely complex to administer, open to fraud (didn't they have to close down the web site due to the huge number of fraudulent claimants?) and place millions of people into the benefits system. Rather than take tax money off working people to then pay a large number of civil servants to adminster the system and do the calculations, to then pay the tax money back to the working people, you simply don't take the money off them in the first place! This could be achieved by simply using people's tax code - a mechanism already in place and already in use to adjust people's tax payments dependant upon their circumstances. It also encourages people to work because it's not a benefit handout but an income tax rebate.

I also think that the 'right to buy' sceme should be scrapped and that people's right to social housing should be means-tested on a periodic basis, say every 5/10 years. This will ensure that once people have a decent enough income to rent privately, they move along and free up the housing for those who need it more.

PayDay

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

If you take your 'those claiming benefits should be paying for themselves' argument, then surely it applies to your friends too? Shouldn't your wife's friend pay for her own treatment, shouldn't your work colleague pay for his own son?

You can't have it both ways.

p.s. I'm just playing 'devils advocate' here because I also have a disabled daughter and I know exactly how hard it is to get any sort of help, including support at school.

Her husband pays all the household bills and she receives some sort of benefit.I don't know which one. She also has an insurance policy that pays out monthly. When her husband isn't working, he looks after his wife who sees life as so black, she wants to commit suicide. She struggles to go out of the house on her own as she always looks for the worst to happen like someone might attack her. She even carries a blanket in case her dog dies and she had to carry his body home. If you gave her a silver lining, she would find the cloud. It's a whole different world.

Therapy treatment is very expensive and she would need extensive treatment at first to get her back in to society. The more she hides away, the worse she becomes. Therarpy could help people like this get back into the loop. Genuine claimants don't want to live on benefits.

A friend of ours works at a special school. She says that if society says that these children should live (by giving drugs) then society should pay for them. I agree with that. The parent that stays at home to look after their child, does a wonderful job and should receive the finnancial backing to make sure that they too have some sort of life. For a single parent with a disabled child, life must be a real struggle. If they abandoned their child and they went in a home, it would cost the state more money than the parents receive. Yet because they are a loving parent, we leave them to struggle

neas

There are too many variables to take into account to make any judgement.

I see this post as biased though, obviously wrote by a person similar to twin with equity but may lose his job.

Just a few quick points:

- If we hit a recession can you guarantee the system can cope with paying everyone the money you've counted on now? What if your mortgage rate goes up? What if inflation hits home and devalues the benefit you receive?

-What if legilation/law is changed .. so the system is scrapped i.e due to overload.

Living on benefit is never a good way to live, if it was meant to be a solution everyone would do it. As you get your mortgage paid on interest only, your house is devalued significantly because in a recession... nobody can pay large amounts for a house. The 'equity' in a house is only perceived wealth... its not money until its sold.

I get the idea of this post, saying that all the savers for a house will be screwed... maybe but if they are screwed we are all screwed. I find this post 1-sided.

As I said... too many variables.... just got lose your job.. in both scenarios its bad.

SingleSue

PayDay wrote: »

A friend of ours works at a special school. She says that if society says that these children should live (by giving drugs) then society should pay for them. I agree with that. The parent that stays at home to look after their child, does a wonderful job and should receive the finnancial backing to make sure that they too have some sort of life. For a single parent with a disabled child, life must be a real struggle. If they abandoned their child and they went in a home, it would cost the state more money than the parents receive. Yet because they are a loving parent, we leave them to struggle

You have just made me cry....not a joke.

You have so accurately described my position and to have someone who understands is very rare indeed.

Dithering_Dad

neas wrote: »

There are too many variables to take into account to make any judgement.

I see this post as biased though, obviously wrote by a person similar to twin with equity but may lose his job.

Just a few quick points:

- If we hit a recession can you guarantee the system can cope with paying everyone the money you've counted on now? What if your mortgage rate goes up? What if inflation hits home and devalues the benefit you receive?

-What if legilation/law is changed .. so the system is scrapped i.e due to overload.

Living on benefit is never a good way to live, if it was meant to be a solution everyone would do it. As you get your mortgage paid on interest only, your house is devalued significantly because in a recession... nobody can pay large amounts for a house. The 'equity' in a house is only perceived wealth... its not money until its sold.

I get the idea of this post, saying that all the savers for a house will be screwed... maybe but if they are screwed we are all screwed. I find this post 1-sided.

As I said... too many variables.... just got lose your job.. in both scenarios its bad.

I'm sorry you feel that the thread is biased but I certainly didn't intend to make it that way; I even changed the equity to be the same as the other twin's savings - not that it made any difference what the equity was.

I thought that they would represent an average of people. I know that there are a lot of people who have mewed their equity away, but for every one of these there will be 10 people who have no mortage at all and 100 people like me who simply have equity in their houses because they have a) never removed it and b) have had HPI combined with lon-term mortgage repayments.

I disagree that the thread proves that renters are worse off than home owners, instead I think that instead it proves that both are subject to inequalities in the current system. It would be much better if the government simply provided Housing Benefit to all who needed it, with the same criteria and limitations and that paid the same.

If the HB doesn't cover the mortgage, then it's toufh - much in the same way as HB may not cover all the rent. Certainly it'd be a fairer system.

The thread has achieved what I wanted, I now have a better understanding of benefits from a home owners point of view. Sorry if it offended you in any way.

fiodyl

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

All we can go on is what happened during the last recession when we had 3/4/6 million (depending on whose statistics you were reading) on the dole. The government didn't close down the benefit system then and I doubt it will during this recession.

They didn't close benefits down but I think if I could find some information on the benefit rates during that time, it would show that the increses where very small and certainly didn't keep up with the high inflation (7/8/9%?) at that time, so effectively benefits were cut. Child benefit was frozen for a year or 2 around 1989-1991.

New rules were also introduced for Unemployment benefit in 1989, which meant your dole money could be reduced or stopped if they considered you were not actively seeking work or refused to take up any job offer.

Benefit rates are usually set in October for the following April, so it will be interesting to see what happens next month and could show how the government thinks this recession is going to affect us.

witches_cauldron

As far as I know people only get around 60 quid a week if they're unemployed. They're supposed to buy food, pay gas and electric, basic hygiene needs and so on out of that. It's not exactly generous is it?

WTF?_2

witches_cauldron wrote: »

As far as I know people only get around 60 quid a week if they're unemployed. They're supposed to buy food, pay gas and electric, basic hygiene needs and so on out of that. It's not exactly generous is it?

There are lots of other benefits and allowances that you can get though, if you know what to ask for.

If you know what you are doing you can make quite a comfortable lifestyle for yourself.