What do you do with your child benefit?

pavlovs_dog

i think unless you are in a good, solid position financial, the best thing for the child is that the money goes towards maintaining a home. no use having £x thousand sat waiting for you in a savings account if mum cant afford to keep clothes on your back and food in your belly

System

I put £10 a month in her account and rest goes on household bills and her clothes, shoes, treats etc. It is amazing how £10/month plus Christmas and Birthday money etc adds up. She has £0000's now - more than us!!!! (She's only 3)

postingalwaysposting

if i had a child i would personally pay say £30 into a savings account but i would put the rest into you general bills fund as children need feeding/clothing/hot water etc etc... if you cant do this then i think its no loss... what the head doesnt know the heart wont crave for

seven-day-weekend

It's a long time since I got child benefit, but I was a SAHM/working only a few hours for 13 years and for the first four years of our son's life my husband was a student, so it went into the general housekeeping money. I reasoned that it was being spent on our son anyway as I had to feed, clothe and house the family out of my husband's student grant.

A friend of mine thought that EVERYTHING for the children had to be bought out of the child allowance and was ashamed and upset that she couldn't manage on it like 'everyone else did'! She was quite surprised and relieved when we told her that people were not supposed to pay for everything out of it!

stamford

Mrs_Sparkle wrote:

As the title says really- I'm interested to hear what other people do with theirs. I've always said I'll pay it into a trust fund for the baby but at £69 a month (I think) it could be an extra £828 a year off my loan.

Our baby is due in 6 weeks and we're not planning on spending a lot more than we do now. We've got "real" nappies and have stockpiled clothes and baby toiletries.

So, is it wrong not to use child benefit directly for the child?

They'll be some Chavs & Cheaplaughs spending it directly on their kids sorting them out with Tats & Piercings :rotfl:

spud30

Our Child Benefit goes into the pot.

The way we look at it is there's no point in our kids having huge savings, if we cant afford to feed them or take them out occasionally

taplady

Ours goes into the pot too! mine is just about to be reduced as DS1 is starting work!

Mrs_Sparkle

Thanks everyone! I like the idea of putting £10 a month into the CTF and using the rest towards household bills. It will help a TINY bit towards childcare costs anyway.

rainbowrisin

I save mine in an account for the littlies - mainly because I view "money from the government" with great suspician and am always convinced at some point they will want it back in some way, so never count is as part of our income.
That said, doing that doesn't cause any hardship to the littlies - if it did, I would use it. It's just my complete distrust of any form of "benefit".

doodah

wow i'm impressed, i thought this thread would be like the one about using the kid's christmas money to pay bills..... a slanging match!

when i have kids i'm hoping to be able to have a savings account for them. if i'm in a good enough position financially i'd like to put the child benefit in that account. if not... i think i'd use it on bills etc. as a lot of that would be going on the children anyway