Husband maybe dismissed from work-advice please

beckseven

Thanks madras79-sorry to hear that you've been having a hard time. I'm going to go through our finances with a fine tooth comb to cut back and out anything uneccessary-I know I've been previously spending a lot on the food shop so that needs to come right down. Also luxuries like sky and mobile phones will go-to be honest we never really watch many of the sky channels anyway. Me and dh are focussed on getting through this and with this site's great advice we will.

pebbles88

hi beckseven,

i know its been mentioned before - but to get the best help on here you really must do a statement of affairs....and list your income/outgoings. http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

trust me, there will be lots of things you can cut bk/get rid off.

without an SOA you wont get best advice,

good luck. xxx

bestpud

Do you receive child tax credit now, OP?

Your OH should be able to claim contributions based JSA for 26 weeks, although they may sanction him if they think he is to blame for being sacked.

Gather any info you can that proves/suggests he has done nothing wrong as he may well need this to avoid a sanction.

As for the childcare: how likely is he to find another job soon?

If you withdraw your child immediately, you may lose that place and then be stuck if he finds work soon...

Maybe keep that as an option but wait and see how he gets in with job hunting first?

In the meantime, can you sell anything to try and clear some of your CC debts without touching your income? Or can you gain anything by shuffling the debt while he is still in work?

Child tax credit is the only benefit you may be entitled to but you may already have earned too much this year anyway. If you already get it then I'd advise against altering it.

Good luck - I hope your fears aren't realised but it's sensible to get the info together just in case.

beckseven

Hi I only qualified for tax credits when dd was under a year old so don't have anything. will grab dh and we will sit down and do a soa together today so that people have all the info. Luckily we ebayed quite a lot of stuff last month as we were saving for a new tv as our's has broken so have that stashed away-so that could go on other stuff. I've also put loads of stuff on ebay on Thursday so hopefully will get some money from that. I'm not sure how easily he will find another job-it's not the greatest time to be out of work but he is very determined and focused and it has actually brought us closer together-his current job was high stress and long hours and for the past 3 years he worked there he became a highly irritable, snappy person that sometimes i didnt recognise as the man I married and he's admhitted that he changed for the worst whilst working there. Time to dig out the statements now so I can get everything down on paper

hippygran

Becky,
DONT PANIC!
Try to get sleep and rest, you need it.
I got made redundant 18 months ago, and it was a huge shock.
For reasons I wont go in to fully (I am now a f/t carer), I didnt go back into the jobs market, so couldnt even claim JSA.
As a partnership, my hubby gets £6.49 a week IS for me!
But, having downsized and adjusted our expectations, we have come out the other side, poorer financially, but far richer in terms of quality of life.
These things often have a habit of improving your life in the long term.
Sounds like you OH's bosses are quite an unpleasant bunch, so maybe the next ones will be better?
If he is not dismissed, sounds like he should be looking elsewhere anyway!
If he is dismissed, then I am sure he will find something else shortly (and this might even be better!).
From your post it sounds unlikey that he will be dismissed, as without evidence, they are leaving themselves wide open for a tribunal for unfair dismissal. If he works for a multi-national outfit, they will definateley avoid this at all costs!
You have my heart felt sympathy, and all I can offer in the way of advice is a pep-talk!
So, try to enjoy christmas with your family, and if finances are tight, concentrate on quality time together instead.
I sincerely wish you all the best and hope you get a positive outcome from this stressful time.

FBaby

Bec, I understand perfectly how you feel. I too am going through a disciplinary and it is very scary. Thankfully, I am very unlikely to be dismissed (and if I was, the tribunal would have a laugh), but I know the worry about suddenly finding yourself without the main salary and realising you are not entitled to any help.

Chris, I found your initial post very annoying. £21K might be an amazing salary for some, but for others, it isn't, that's just the way it is. You live up to your means, otherwise what would be the point in trying to earn more if all you did with the money is put it aside in case you might need it one day. Some savings for rainy days are good, but that doesn't mean you are not going to panic when you suddenly find yourself with a lot less than what you've gone by with. The OP was asking about immediate support, not what will happen long term, she could guess that if her husband didn't find another job soon assuming he is dismissed, they would have to seriously review their lifestyle. The anxiety is in regards to short term. Most of the bills you've got are not the one who can disregard immediately. You can't stop paying your mortgage, your car loans, the childcare etc... Saying that £21K is easy to live on to someone who is used to £40k is like telling someone on £21K that it is easy to live on £10K, it is not about living on a certain income but how to downgrade to that income without incurring serious debts.

Bec, good luck hope all goes well and it does come to this.

chris1973

Chris, I found your initial post very annoying

Well i'm really sorry about that, but its my opinion which is just as valid here as yours. I also find a vast amount of posts here to be annoying, but I don't have the energy or time to post and highlight the fact on each thread or feel that i'm important enough for the entire forum to be run around only the opinions which i'm fully in agreement with. If I do encounter anything annoying, I simply go and find something more to my liking.

Just as a polite reminder, in future you can just choose to skip reading anything with my alias next to it, or better still, do me a favour and add me to your 'ignore list' as you have already expressed that you may not like the advice I post, so there is no point in you reading or refering to it in future....I really wont mind, as I'm really not here to make any prima donna friends.

And for the record, I earn significantly less than £21k a year, about £7k less in fact, however I still somehow manage to keep a roof over my head and pay my way, which is a good thing really, because as a single person, other than a council tax single occupancy discount, I wouldn't get or be entitled to diddly squat, and so if any single person here was ever in the same position, lets be honest, they won't have any luxury of a safety net!.

I don't pretend its [been] easy on a low single income, and I could probably spend about 2 hours writing a detailed post about the sacrifices I had to make and changes I encountered in order to juggle things but it would be a complete waste of time, as its history and wouldn't have changed a thing. Suffice to say, i'm speaking from personal experience when I say that i'd be perfectly happy to swap places with somebody on £21k, and i'm clearly not alone in expressing that.

You live up to your means, otherwise what would be the point in trying to earn more if all you did with the money is put it aside in case you might need it one day. Some savings for rainy days are good, but that doesn't mean you are not going to panic when you suddenly find yourself with a lot less than what you've gone by with

You are about 10 years in the past. Times have changed, the live-on-credit party is over and now there is being a reckoning. Anybody, on any income who is currently living well beyond their means are playing a dangerous game with their flexible friends. Pick up a newspaper or turn on the news sometime, most jobs are under threat and for most industries its not 'if' but 'when' the axe falls on their line of work and cut backs are made and redundancies announced.

A few people seem to rapidly forget that Benefits exist to give people a minimum standard of living and enough to feed and cloth their kids when they fall on hard times and all other options have been exhausted. It is not intended to be a substitute piggy bank to pay off years of living beyond your means and picking up the tab for shopping bills and credit card spends on luxury items.

Needless to say,out there in the real world, most credit / finance companies and banks are far less sympathetic than people on an internet forum, and people will always find this out the hard way, and seem to think its a new thing. However the plain and simple point i'm making has been around since Dickens', yet centuries on, people are still struggling to 'get' it!

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

DUTR

FBaby wrote: »

Bec, I understand perfectly how you feel. I too am going through a disciplinary and it is very scary. Thankfully, I am very unlikely to be dismissed (and if I was, the tribunal would have a laugh), but I know the worry about suddenly finding yourself without the main salary and realising you are not entitled to any help.

Chris, I found your initial post very annoying. £21K might be an amazing salary for some, but for others, it isn't, that's just the way it is. You live up to your means, otherwise what would be the point in trying to earn more if all you did with the money is put it aside in case you might need it one day. Some savings for rainy days are good, but that doesn't mean you are not going to panic when you suddenly find yourself with a lot less than what you've gone by with. The OP was asking about immediate support, not what will happen long term, she could guess that if her husband didn't find another job soon assuming he is dismissed, they would have to seriously review their lifestyle. The anxiety is in regards to short term. Most of the bills you've got are not the one who can disregard immediately. You can't stop paying your mortgage, your car loans, the childcare etc... Saying that £21K is easy to live on to someone who is used to £40k is like telling someone on £21K that it is easy to live on £10K, it is not about living on a certain income but how to downgrade to that income without incurring serious debts.

Bec, good luck hope all goes well and it does come to this.

This post concerns me is 'everyone' really living their lives on credit? :eek:
Folk will strive to earn more to achieve a basic standard of living.
We have recieved an email to say OT is being cut to 14hrs per week (I choose not to do OT anyway) .
Yes people do earn more and save anything above their basic living costs and make a purchase once they have saved the funds to do so :beer:

real1314

chris1973 wrote: »

And for the record, I earn significantly less than £21k a year, about £7k less in fact, however I still somehow manage to keep a roof over my head and pay my way, which is a good job, because as a single person, other than a council tax single occupancy discount, I wouldn't get or be entitled diddly squat, and so if any single person here was ever in the same position, lets be honest, they won't have any luxury of a safety net!.

Suffice to say, i'm speaking from personal experience when I say that i'd be perfectly happy to swap places with somebody on £21k.

Living on £14k when there is just 1 mouth to feed is a bit easier than living on £21k when there are 4 mouths to feed. Perhaps someone with £14k per person should think about how they'd manage on £5.25k per person?
As for not having any safety net, that's wrong. There is a safety net for everyone in the UK whether single, a couple or with kids, you don't get any assistance as you plainly have enough income. A family of 4 have greater financial needs.

DUTR

real1314 wrote: »

Living on £14k when there is just 1 mouth to feed is a bit easier than living on £21k when there are 4 mouths to feed. Perhaps someone with £14k per person should think about how they'd manage on £5.25k per person?
As for not having any safety net, that's wrong. There is a safety net for everyone in the UK whether single, a couple or with kids, you don't get any assistance as you plainly have enough income. A family of 4 have greater financial needs.

It's not as you describe though is it?
The heating , water mortgage/rent remain about the same, pro rata a single person is paying more for CT and water.
when there are other mouths to feed as you put it, then the tax credits etc become active, so it is not as you describe at all.