Now Totally Confused by redundancy/Benefits

toffeegirly

Hi All...Have got totally confused...Want to take Voluntary Redundancy(the company will be gone wihin a year anyway)...this will give me 45,000 after tax due to time served etc...My aim was to Pay Off Creditcards and pay a Lump Sum off the Mortgage...but have been told that apart from £65 Job Seekers we wont get any other help with a wife an young child in the house as we will be seen to be paying off debts in order to claim Benefits??????? The fact is I need to retrain via University ...and obviously thought the ideal thing to do would be to pay off debts initially...The woman i spoke to in the benefits office told me not to pay off my mortgage...and not to pay off my credit cards but to plod on using the redundancy money to live on...this is fine but in a year or so we will be in a HUGE financial hole and the mortgage will require a large payment...the credit cards will still be there when i could have paid them off (and will still have those interest rates to deal with!)

If i do pay off as much of my debt as possible can they really leave us with no food on the table???? The Implications of doing it how they advise
Could leave us homeless in a couple of years......

Please can someone advise??????? Many thanks any advice greatly appreciated....

Debt_Free_Chick

If you don't pay off the debts, your benefits will still be limited as you will be deemed to have savings of more than £16k.

To be honest, a redundancy payment is intended to compensate you for loss of earnings - so it's intended to give you "earnings", hopefully, until you find another job.

Paying off the CCs may well be beneficial - what's the outstanding balance?

Paying off your mortgage is optional, though. Personally, I'd rather have a cash cushion now, rather than have it tied up in the property.

When are you starting Uni? Can you not work until then? Must you go to Uni - or is it a wish, rather than a dire need? Had you planned to go before you lost your job? If so, what was your plan to finance this as you would have had no job and no redundancy money either.

To be honest, none of us have the right to see redundancy pay as a "windfall" or "lottery" win - it's compensation for loss of job and therefore loss of earnings. You've lost your job, but you have £45k of earnings to tide you over. That's much, much more than the average wage.

If i do pay off as much of my debt as possible can they really leave us with no food on the table???? The Implications of doing it how they advise
Could leave us homeless in a couple of years......

Perhaps it might be helpful to see what you can do to help yourself and your family out of this position? Much depends on the Uni need and whether you can work at the same time.

getmore4less

You should do a proper financial analysis.

High cost debt probably should get paid off.

Mortgage probably best to go interest only, if they will let you, keep paying the minimum you can.

Reduce ALL other expenditure to the minimum
(you have debts so have been living beyond you means that has to stop)

work out how long te money will last, this will tell you if you can go to Uni or just need to get another job.

deprivation of assets to claim benifits is not allowed.

They will eventualy pay but you need to show that you did the best to make the £45k last.

sammiboo

when i was made redundant 4 months ago, i wasnt entitled to anything aprt from jsa. I didnt have any redundancy payout. Just a months wages and because i live with my boyfriend and he works full time again i wasnt entitled to anything. I had to live for 4 months paying the mortgage all the house bills and my personal bills with my o/h wage and £64 a week. It was really hard. A payout would have helped us quite a bit.