ADVICE URGENTYLY NEEDED! what should I do?

Jowo_2

kredkaonline wrote: »

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Ive never asked for JSA, just help with my rent or c tax. I do understand when you saying that if I cannot afford 1 bedroom I should rent the room but why then councils give housing benefits at all? .

My reference to JSA was in response to your argument that you could be better off not working at all. If you don't have health/disability issues, then this is the only benefit you would qualify for, apart from HB and council tax. I wanted to know why if you walked away from your earnings of up to £500 per week, you thought you could live on £65 JSA (or nothing at all if you weren't eligible or inclined to claim this).

You also haven't given your age. For those under 25 (soon to change to 35), they are only eligible for HB to the equivalent of a bedroom in a shared property, it is not sufficient to cover the rent on a self-contained property for the tenant's exclusive use.

Without your additional new job and your lodger's income, you appear to have saddled yourself with a £800 per month rent, when you only had an income of £1150. Paying around 70% of your income in rent alone is simply not affordable, a budgeting impact made much worse by the expense of running a car and supporting your mother and the debts that you speak of.

What state support did you think is available for people whose lifestyle (debts, car, accommodation costs, personal family obligations) can't keep pace with their earnings?

Deal with your debts. Draw up a proper budget. Consider whether it's more effective to bin the car and use public transport to get to work, including finding new work closer to where you live.

A travel card is probably going to cost around £100 per month or so but you might pay this alone in petrol, then there's the MOT, the insurance, repairs, repayments on the car loan, parking permit, congestion charge - how much do you pay out for your car?

You could also look into whether your mother is eligible for any benefits in the UK. It's not clear if your mother has rights to receive UK benefits but if she does, then perhaps you should find a property where she can have her own room and get HB to pay her share until she can find work to pay her way, or get her into her own place.

It's a shame that the money that you owe her is also being exacerbated by having to support her, too, as this increases the expense on you whereas if she lived somewhere else, you could focus on just paying her back the money she lent you rather than her entire lifestyle costs.

You don't have a benefit problem, you have a problem with spending too much - your financial commitments are very stretched across the rent, car, debt, parental support so it's these 4 things you have to tackle as there is no magic state purse that is going to pay for your high living expenses. The Debt Free wanabee board is a great place to start.

You could also identify your maximum LHA allowance on the LHA direct website, taking into account the new changes proposed to HB which could affect you (such as the shared accommodation rate for the under 35s, for example, and the caps that are being introduced, and the change from calculating LHA rates based on the bottom third of local rents as it is now currently based on the average so LHA rates are getting depressed). This MSE link will show you the change to the current LHA rates.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/housing-benefit

Then you could play about with different scenarios in the Turn2us online benefit calculator (no job, part time job, low paid job of 30 hours, well paid job of 30 hours plus, etc) to see when LHA, CT and tax credits kick in. That way you get to understand that is your income that determines eligibility for LHA, not your outgoings, plus you may identify a big shortfall in LHA versus your rent - many people on benefits have to top up their rent from their benefit income because the LHA isn't enough.

If you model different scenarios in the Turn2us online benefit calculator, I think you will soon understand that a single person without disabilities and dependents who pays rent of nearly £200 per week in London does not live the life of luxury on benefits as you assume. Even if LHA covered your rent and CT in full, a sum of £65 per week from ESA/JSA or similar will barely be sufficient to pay your grocery and utility bills, may not even stretch to cover your telecoms/broadband bills and most certainly won't keep your car on the road.