NOW OPEN: the MSE Forum 'Ask An Expert' event. This time we'd like your questions on TRAVEL & HOLIDAY DEALS. Post by Wed and deals expert MSE Oli will answer as many as he can.
Winter Fuel Payment - I'll be 63 when I get it
This discussion has been closed.
Latest MSE News and Guides
Replies
I thought I'd already answered this but I can't find it. It definitely is possible because that's the situation with my husband and me. And no, neither of us get pension credit or any other means tested benefits.
If you look at post 53 you will see that it contradicts what you are saying, so there is STILL some confusion.
The £10 Christmas bonus is not comparable in any way and just shows your confused thinking. Margaret Clare has made up her own questions to answer and has not read my questions which is very frustrating. Shae also has a bee in her bonnet about women doing totally their own thing. She needs to understand that some coupes want to live as a single unit for all their own reasons.
Yes, of course the people in my hypothetical example want to receive one lot of £200 it is so much easier. If people each want their own £100 fine they can do that but why stop others from receiving one lot of £200.
But here
http://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/guides/winter-fuel-payment/
Third situation down, it states that you only receuive £100.
How did you manage to get a £200 payment?
The penny has FINALLY.....
Because the system is set up so that the payment to linked to the SP.
If one of a couple wanted to give up their right to their £100 and have it paid to their spouse, they would have to fill in forms and someone would have to alter the software which pays out and there may be unforeseen problems in the future if any other benefit gets linked to WFA.
When we got together, DH was very much against the idea of having a joint account. There had been traumas in the past and he felt very strongly that individual finances was the best idea. I persuaded him of the merits of having a joint account for bills only, since I had recently seen a very sad case of a woman who'd been widowed suddenly and been left in a parlous state with no access to her husband's money and unable to pay the basic bills. 'Women doing their own thing'. Well, some of us have had to, and that poor lady hadn't done her thing at all, had left it to her husband. 'She thought he would look after her'. Well, maybe he would, but only after probate, and in the meantime she had only her 60% SRP to cover everything.
We have a system which works well for us, runs like clockwork and requires little or no attention. I really think that the recent argument has been a complete waste of time and is all about nothing. No one is 'stopping' anyone else from doing anything. As others have repeatedly explained, it is down to the system. Mojisola has just said it. 'It is because the WFP is linked to the SRP'. That's how it works. Making snide remarks and nasty comments to others will not change that fact. I cannot control the way the system is set up. It's down to software and not clerks working with ledgers as in Dickens' day.
I did not approve of the WFP, bus pass or any of the little 'sprats to catch a mackerel' when they were introduced. I saw them as cynical vote-catchers, because older people are known to be more likely to vote than younger people. It even goes back as far as the Christmas bonus. 'That nice Mr Heath' was what my mother said, and she was so grateful. Because of the political implications, these things are untouchable even if they are now unaffordable. They could, of course, all be linked to pension credit and the other means-tested benefits, or even to the disability benefits. That would make far more sense, but would probably be too costly to administrate. It's not true to say that the 'Christmas bonus is different'. No, it is not, it is exactly the same. The only difference is that the amount of WFP has sometimes been varied. The Christmas bonus was originally the same as another week's SRP so was really worth something back in those days.
I am really not interested in how zygurat's bank statement looks, and I think this argument has simply gone on and on with no real basis or reason behind it.
Before I found wisdom, I became old.
There was and still is a perfectly good reason for the question. You however, brought up all sorts of tangents and red herrings, generally obscuring the point. Your irrelevant posts caused all of this.
I am left with two posts, one saying that they receive 1 X £200 for a couple and a DWP form saying (but not quite definitively that if there are two qualifiers then it is 2 X £100 (but not that 1 £200 is verboten).
The rules are the rules. I just want to know what they are. What's so very wrong with that?
The WFP is linked to the SRP, therefore it is paid to an individual who qualifies. The Christmas bonus is the same.
I cannot for the life of me see why it matters if you receive £200 x 1 or £100 x 2. The total is the same, or is my arithmetic wrong?
It must also be realised that some couples choose to receive their SRP differently. One person may prefer to have it weekly and the other 4-weekly. Both people pay the same amount monthly into the joint account.
You have really made a long-drawn-out argument, with some unpleasantness, about absolutely nothing.
Before I found wisdom, I became old.
No, my husband is older than I am and he gets £200 and when I reached the qualifying age I didn't bother claiming so he still gets it. (This is what I thought you were asking about)
We certainly don't get £200 each!
Sorry, not true. See my post above.