Winter Heating Allowance

Goldiegirl

My husband will be eligible for his first Winter fuel allowance this time next year.

Every little helps so it will be most welcome.

rogcal

All the people who are telling us that they or a relative are using their WFP to buy an ipad or other gadgets are doing the rest of us who need the extra money for home heating no good at all.

Don't you realise you are playing right into the hands of the politicians who want to see the WFP scrapped!

If you are going to use this payment on anything other than what it's intended for, keep it to yourselves instead of broadcasting it to the world!

margaretclare

zygurat789 wrote: »

That only took 13 minutes to find out. Tax isn't really dificult is it?

Isn't it?

2 days later, I get the paperwork from HMRC explaining it all in detail. The cheque I received on Monday was related to an overpayment in the most recent tax year, 2011-12, but it appears that there are also repayments due from 2006-7 and 2004-5, so more cheques should be arriving. Not as straightforward as all that!

margaretclare

rogcal wrote: »

All the people who are telling us that they or a relative are using their WFP to buy an ipad or other gadgets are doing the rest of us who need the extra money for home heating no good at all.

Don't you realise you are playing right into the hands of the politicians who want to see the WFP scrapped!

If you are going to use this payment on anything other than what it's intended for, keep it to yourselves instead of broadcasting it to the world!

Well, it's certainly still in the wind.

A year or two back, I saw a posting from someone who works at DWP saying that, early November, they'd get irate phone calls saying 'where's my WFP, I need it for Christmas shopping to buy presents for my grandchildren'.

So they do know about this!

seven-day-weekend

The thing is, if you pay your bills by monthly direct debit, your bill is usually covered by your regular payment. So the winter fuel payment goes into the 'pot' with the rest of your money.

I too have used it to pay off a credit card bill with -because I had that extra bit of money - so it works out the same in the end, because it all comes from the same pot.

Jennifer_Jane

rogcal wrote: »

All the people who are telling us that they or a relative are using their WFP to buy an ipad or other gadgets are doing the rest of us who need the extra money for home heating no good at all.

Don't you realise you are playing right into the hands of the politicians who want to see the WFP scrapped!

If you are going to use this payment on anything other than what it's intended for, keep it to yourselves instead of broadcasting it to the world!

Completely agree with you, rogcal. It's just stupid for people to be bragging about this, and I believe has directly led for the call for it to be restricted. Now that's fine, except that many of these things get culled down to the Pension Credit line, and there are many of us who have income just above the PC level, or have savings above the level, but we rely on the winter fuel payment for help with our fuel bills.

Yes, 7DW, I do agree it goes into the 'pot', or at least mine used to, but actually my fuel direct debit is set below my usage rate, so I can genuinely say that the WFP gets set against my fuel bill.

Saying that it's for 'frivolous' items such as Christmas presents or iPads (I realise that some people won't find gift giving as 'frivolous' but that's a separate argument), indicates that people don't actually need it. Too stupid.

jennifernil

I don't think there really is bragging going on. Those of us who have been on here a while realise when it's "tongue in cheek", otherwise known as joking.

Like most, we pay our fuel bills by DD, so our WFA goes into our current a/c and is used for paying the bills.

But if we didn't get this £200, we would still have to pay the DDs. The extra £200 is appreciated and enables us to free up £200 for other things......like Xmas presents for our grandchildren.

Like SDW said, it's all one pot, you only have what you have.

chesky

The thing is they don't send it to us as a bunch of grubby fivers in a brown envelope, so that we can trot along to the Gas Board and hand it over. No, it goes into our bank accounts - so how do you separate which bit of money pays the bill and which buys Christmas presents.

iris

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

Iris, would you mind letting me know which bank account gives 4% every month, please? You could pm me, if you prefer.

Have sent you a pm.

Biggles

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

Iris, would you mind letting me know which bank account gives 4% every month, please?

You can rest assured that, if there were really a bank that pays 60%AER we would all have heard about it!
;-)