Scamming EMA!

Spendless

Isn't there blanket rules for EMA? My tutor keeps coming down like a ton of bricks on the 2 16 years olds on my 16 hour per week course mentioning their EMA. One has said she doesn't get it but the other that does says she only has to attend 12 hours a week, so it doesn't matter when she skips some classess.

Also is it just household income taken into account, no other factors. Does that mean an only child whose household income is £29K could get it but someone with 4 other siblings and a household income of £31k can't.

turkish

I feel very angry about EMA, my family as a whole earn over £30,00. I think it is unfair that as a married couple both incomes are taken into account. If we were divorced we would be able to claim some money for our son as our single incomes would fall into the EMA payment bracket. Despite our reasonable earnings we do not have £30.00 a week to give to our son. He does a 'free paper' round which earns about £11.00 per week. The government do nothing to support married people, we have been married for 20 years! a life time to some people.

aliavavodka

Hi, my son is staying on for 6th form, i have been told he will not qualify for EMA as our joint income is above the threshold, the reason for this is my husband works over 12 hours overtime a week to ensure we can pay all our bills, morgage etc, can you deduct overtime (it is not quaranteed at all) from your income? (overime is not counted when you aply for a morgage)

Thanks for any help

Alison

Masomnia

turkish wrote: »

I feel very angry about EMA, my family as a whole earn over £30,00. I think it is unfair that as a married couple both incomes are taken into account. If we were divorced we would be able to claim some money for our son as our single incomes would fall into the EMA payment bracket. Despite our reasonable earnings we do not have £30.00 a week to give to our son. He does a 'free paper' round which earns about £11.00 per week. The government do nothing to support married people, we have been married for 20 years! a life time to some people.

My parents are divorced, and I live with my mother. Her is income is way below the threshold and is very low, only just enough to run the house. So I qualified for EMA, £30pw in fact. If you included my father's income we'd be over the £30k, yet he contributed nothing except the minimum he legally had to, which came to a couple of hundred a month, which we heavilly relied on.

So how would including his income be fair? His income is something along the lines of £30k, yet we saw about £2/3k of that year.

I can guess at which position you'd rather be in.

jase951

BusinessStudent wrote: »

yet despite my dad having his own accountant, she wont get round to adding up his earnings from last year!! - so he has no proof of his income.

You are allowed to use figures from previous years - just get your accountant to include a latter.

ChocolateMonkey

Sassy_Student wrote: »

But did you know that It's been proven that if you work more than 10 hours a week then you will probally drop a grade... worth thinking about.

Dammed if you do and dammed if you dont.

Helix

aliavavodka wrote: »

Hi, my son is staying on for 6th form, i have been told he will not qualify for EMA as our joint income is above the threshold, the reason for this is my husband works over 12 hours overtime a week to ensure we can pay all our bills, morgage etc, can you deduct overtime (it is not quaranteed at all) from your income? (overime is not counted when you aply for a morgage)

Thanks for any help

Alison

No, you can't deduct overtime for anything to do with student finance. EMA or Student Loans. Much of my dads income is made up of overtime which took our household income over the threshold but I phoned up and they said even though the overtime is not guaranteed it can't be deducted from the income.

Stinkybell

Means testing is always going to be a disaster - and it gets worse when you get to uni and student loans. I got minimum loan as my parents earned just over the threashold but they didn't give me anything towards uni costs. My housemate got maximum loan as her Mum's business was fiddled to make it look like they were making a loss when actually they were making a lot of money - so much so that she got everything paid for and an allowance - and we lived in their house which her mum had bought but put in her son's name for tax reasons. All very dodgy which meant that she got about 2 grand a year more than the rest of us, and lived rent free with an alowance!

That said, she's now in a panic as she's just got married and her parents have finally cut off her allowance at the age of 25!

mug51

if you don't get ema, i know it can be hard for some people, but on the bright side you will have better money management and if you get a job it will be a bigger plus in the future than those reliant on ema.

i did get ema in sixth, although i never made it to registration on time so didn't see any of it going into my account, i just wish i had a part time job then, got no-one to turn to for a second reference

that didn't really help anyone did it?

poet123

I believe EMA should be calaculated on parental income regardless of divorce or separation. Just because you divorce your spouse should not mean you are divorced from the maintenance of your kids.