MSE News: 'I'm on benefits but I'm no scrounger'

Solly_Atwell

£11K for doing nothing? and he says unenvieable postion?


I only take £15k home for 42 hour week so ineffect I work for £4k a year.

My heart bleeds for the guy.

dtsazza

Solly_Atwell wrote: »

I only take £15k home for 42 hour week so ineffect I work for £4k a year.

That's £1.90 an hour, to give it some context (assuming two weeks' holiday).

Conan_the_librarian

Derivative wrote: »

Is this some sort of joke?
I am being completely serious, are you kidding me?

Do people other than me actually budget? I really do not understand at all how anyone can consider £11k a small amount of money after rent, even for four people. Really. Can't do it.

I'd rather have more - so would anyone - but it is easily, easily doable.

Thank you! I was starting to think everyone had gone mad. £11,000 after rent/mortgage isn't just easily doable, it's totally normal in my family and we're not poor.

Flyboy152

Derivative wrote: »

Is this some sort of joke?
I am being completely serious, are you kidding me?

Annually, as budgeting monthly bothers me

Food is the major expense there and that depends on how frugal you are. I would say £4000 as an absolute upper limit unless you are really being ridiculous, that comes out as ~£80pw.

Energy is second. Let's say £2000 to be generous.

Where do you want to spend the other £5k?

Mentioning clothes is just daft. Clothes are so cheap nowadays as to not really be worth mentioning in a budget. Five pairs of jeans and five shirts from Primark cost about £60 and will last you a year.

That's if you even want to buy new clothes, the only clothing I bought in the past 6 months was a pair of tracksuit bottoms and some running shoes. Total £35.

Kids are going to cost a bit more, but a few hundred quid a year tops.

Transportation - if you own a car it's hard. If you don't it's not. Pretty simple one there. Keep in mind noone is working, so noone is commuting - that makes transportation completely optional other than perhaps once or twice a week.

Do people other than me actually budget? I really do not understand at all how anyone can consider £11k a small amount of money after rent, even for four people. Really. Can't do it.

I'd rather have more - so would anyone - but it is easily, easily doable.

:T:T:T

Well done for NOT actually reading the article. :wall:

One doesn't just buy food at the supermarket and clothes, especially school uniform really is not as cheap as you are trying to make out. For two growing children, shoes alone can be almost a hundred pounds in a year.

Why don't re-read the article and then comeback and explain how they can do without the car!

Disabledmumof4

Does nobody consider the extra costs of being disabled? I have prepayment meters for gas and electricity and it costs £50 & £40 a week repectively for electric and gas. Family of 6 plud the extra washing incurred by my incontinence and struggling to dry washing as I live in a particularly rainy area. Groceries cost between £150 and £200 a week (6 people, 2 cats and a dog) because of special diet requirements, having to buy ready prepared sealed packs that can be put in fridge beside me for when family is out all day.
Government/council cuts mean money not available for all equipment/adjustments or services required.
You cannot walk to shop if you need something you have to get transport or pay for delivery. There are many extra costs associated with being disabled and that is what DLA is for; it is not a means tested benefit and this should not be counted when trying to 'predict' someones living costs and supposed disposable income as nobody knows what the individual needs to pay for to help their disability.

Flyboy152

Disabledmumof4 wrote: »

Does nobody consider the extra costs of being disabled? I have prepayment meters for gas and electricity and it costs £50 & £40 a week repectively for electric and gas. Family of 6 plud the extra washing incurred by my incontinence and struggling to dry washing as I live in a particularly rainy area. Groceries cost between £150 and £200 a week (6 people, 2 cats and a dog) because of special diet requirements, having to buy ready prepared sealed packs that can be put in fridge beside me for when family is out all day.
Government/council cuts mean money not available for all equipment/adjustments or services required.
You cannot walk to shop if you need something you have to get transport or pay for delivery. There are many extra costs associated with being disabled and that is what DLA is for; it is not a means tested benefit and this should not be counted when trying to 'predict' someones living costs and supposed disposable income as nobody knows what the individual needs to pay for to help their disability.

Some people don't give a damn, because it doesn't fit with their agenda for their cowardly attacks on those who claim the benefits.

Eowyn

ses6jwg wrote: »

I don't think people who work are just angry at people who are fraudulantly claiming, if they are anything like me they are also getting sick and tired of genuine benefit claimaints - especially those claiming sickness benefits - moaning at how little they recieve and how they "struggle to make ends meet".

I'm a 24 year old single father who has shared care of his daughter.

I do not receive any tax credits. I do not receive child benefit.

I pay for my own council tax, I pay for my own rent.

I earn around 12k per year after tax and work 40 hour weeks. People can "earn" the same amount as me without lifting a finger or doing any work at all. I refuse to believe that most people on disability benefit cannot perform some sort of work such as office work.

And there are people out there who are on even lower incomes than I am.

Why should people on benefit be able to afford to smoke, go on foreign holidays and have Sky TV, at the expense of the state, when those who work for minimum wage struggle to put food on the table.

I am a genuine disabled benefit claimant. I have cerebral palsy, I have trouble vocalising my thoughts and hearing what others say, I am unable to walk and use a wheelchair and my body writhes with spasms every waking hour. I have problems eating as i have a tendency to choke even when food is mashed up for me . As i get older my body has developed osteo arthritis from the contant moving of my limbs . I have Stenosis of the spine and cervical spondylitis. And I now suffer from sciatica and am in constant pain. I am telling you all this not because i want your pity. but because I want you to realize how lucky you are. You may not earn much money but you have the luxury of life choices. You can choose to have a relationship, have children ,go fo a walk go out , eat what you want, dare i say it, work for a living. I do not have this choice. I rely totally on my carer for my needs and on the taxpayer to help support me and i am very grateful to them. However if i had the choice between the benefit i get and the life you live I would choose yours every time . PS It has taken me 3 hours to type this so i doubt any employer would be willing to pay me for my typing skills in spite of having an IQ of 135

dtsazza

I'm fairly sure that it's a universal cap, i.e. the upper limit for the total per person/household, and that it wouldn't get pro-rated to individual claims.

Surprisingly though, I can't find a link to the actual bill/proposal to get a definitive answer. There are plenty of news stories that mention a universal cap but none of these actually link to the underlying source.

Edit - Found it in the Welfare Reform Bill section 97 (2):

For the purposes of this section, applying a benefit cap to welfare benefits means securing that, where a single person’s or couple’s total entitlement to welfare benefits with the exclusion of child benefit in respect of the reference period exceeds the relevant amount, their entitlement to welfare benefits in respect of any period of the same duration as the reference period is reduced by an amount up to or equalling the excess.

So the cap just applies to the total, and not to each part individually.

Flyboy152

zigzigzag wrote: »

Umm because they're my friends and relatives, as I said. I certainly don't like what they're doing, but that's not the same as shopping them to the authorities. I don't know what others would do - would you? I would feel pretty crappy. (Anyway, in relation to a few of them, you can't report someone for 'not looking for a job'.)

So why are you complaining? You are clearly as bad as they are.

~Jem~

krisskross wrote: »

I expect the main problem with the man in the article is the one we see so many times on these boards. People tend to only count the money they get in their hand and forget about the rent and council tax they don't have to pay.

Also forgotten will be the free school dinners, free prescriptions etc.

Assuming he has his rent and council tax paid then he has £1000 a month to live on, which is well doable.

I MASSIVELY agree with this post! He says he has just over £11,000 to live on. That's to the same as a person earning minimum wage. Yet the person earning has to pay full price for everything.

If you're getting £11k in benefits though you get housing benefit, tax benefit, free prescriptions, free dental, subsidised this that and the other, therefore making you better off for it.