Benefits & a baby!

Jo4

Scarlett1 wrote:

Oh I didnt know you were married, it was the use of the letter 'I' that you used quite a few times in once sentence that made me think you were going it alone, rather that using 'we'

As curry_queen explained the £107 figure would be what a single parent got

Got luck in your plans, relax and it will all fall into place :T

I take it you meant the word I and not the letter I as you stated. However, I should have used the word we twice and the I was correct the other eight times. The following is what I should have stated

"I am currently in receipt of income support and was wondering if we had a child would the amount change? I phoned CAB and they said if we had a child I would get £17 Child Benefit and £38 for Child Tax Credit a week. She never mentioned any other entitlements so I asked her about the Sure Start Maternity Grant. She said if I was in receipt of the same benefits as I am now then I would be entitled to the £500 grant. The advisor was in a hurry and didn't have much time to speak.

Is £55 a week the total I would get a week or is this wrong? Hope the figures recently published on the television about the cost of a child in their first 5 years, maybe it was 4 years, is wrong!"

Thanks for your kind words.

I am a bit stressed out at the moment. Hubby and I were at a party at the weekend and had just sat down when 2 other married couples joined us at the table we were seated at. Hubby knew the 2 men but did not know their wives. I did not know any of them. The conversation about children arose with the 2 women. One asked if we had any children, to which I obviously responded "no". She then asked how long we were married and when I said "7 years" I was told that I was a very selfish person for not having children by now. I never met her in my life before. I was gobsmacked. She dictated to me for approximately 3 hours. At the end of the night she told me she had been watching hubby and I from the dance floor and that all we done was gazed into each others eyes over the candle which was on the table. She also complained that my hubby did not drink while hers was a ******* ****** because she did not know where he was half time. She put her arm around my hubby and then tried to chat him up. The other woman said she had only met her that night and to ignore her as she had a screw loose.

This person had 4 children which she thought all belonged to her husband but was not sure, he was hard on the drink and so is she. They split up and got back together again and are now thinking of breaking up again. How do I know this, because this is what she told me!

Am I selfish for planning a baby as advised by doctors or am I right?

Fran

Jo4 wrote:

Am I selfish for planning a baby as advised by doctors or am I right?

Have doctors advised that you have a baby?

Re woman at the party - she is the one that should have been gobsmacked - by you!!! I hope the next time you get invited somewhere you meet better people than that!!

jellyhead

what a dreadful woman at that party, obviously unhappy with her own life. when you have children is entirely up to you.

does entitledto.org tell you what you'd get if you had a baby? i was talking about the rate for one adult and one baby, i also assumed you were single, sorry lol! there's someone down the road on IS, she gets some kind of disablement allowance and hubby gets carer's allowance for looking after her, then they get IS on top of that. IS has changed since i was on it, so i have no clue about the child tax thing, all i know is that there was extra for bringing up the child, child benefit was taken into account though so it was knocked off the amount i got.

Jo4

Fran wrote:

Have doctors advised that you have a baby?

Re woman at the party - she is the one that should have been gobsmacked - by you!!! I hope the next time you get invited somewhere you meet better people than that!!

Doctors have advised us to have a baby. I have diabetes 17 years on the 21st of this month, which according to doctors make it harder to conceive. I was involved in a hit and run accident 3 years ago in March and as a result I lost the vision in my right eye. My surgeon lasered my eye 8 times and as a result I was then left with a detached retina. Therefore I had to go for another operation to reattach the retina in January of last year, it was a 4 in 1 operation. If the operation had been a success I would have noticed a difference the next morning and would have regained vision within 3 months. As you can gather the operation was not a success. The surgeon watched my other eye just in case I would develope any problems with it, he has lasered it 10 times now, the last time was 23 February last year. I had been going for laser every 4 to 6 weeks for almost 2 years. I still have vision in my left eye, enough that I can still drive and I have reported everything to my insurance company and to the DVLNI.

I also have retinopathy, magulopathy, sciatica, meniers disease, vertigo, IBS, .... My GP told me to start trying for a child when I went home after I seen him on Wednesday of last week. The doctor I see about my diabetes asked me to bring my hubby into the room when I had an appointment with him in September of last year and he told my hubby to go home and get me pregnant. Just like that!!

I knew hubby when I was 11 years old. We started going out when I was 15, got engaged when I was 16, married when I was 21 1/2 and we are still very very happily married and we will be married 7 years in September and I am now 28!

You have put my mind at rest about the woman at party.

Bet you regret asking about the doctors!! lol

Jo4

jellyhead wrote:

what a dreadful woman at that party, obviously unhappy with her own life. when you have children is entirely up to you.

does entitledto.org tell you what you'd get if you had a baby? i was talking about the rate for one adult and one baby, i also assumed you were single, sorry lol! there's someone down the road on IS, she gets some kind of disablement allowance and hubby gets carer's allowance for looking after her, then they get IS on top of that. IS has changed since i was on it, so i have no clue about the child tax thing, all i know is that there was extra for bringing up the child, child benefit was taken into account though so it was knocked off the amount i got.

Thankyou about the woman at the party! As long as we get more money for having a child rather than get money taken off us which would not surprise me with the dhss. lol!! It seems that it is possible to bring a child/children up while in receipt of benefits and that i what I really wanted to know. I suppose I will have to be a good moneysavingexpert.comer and we will survive on the benefits.

jellyhead

have to admit i'm curiuos though lol! when he said to get pregnant did he mean that it would improve your health in some way? or just that if you wanted to do it it was best to start sooner rather than later? hope you don't think i'm being too nosey lol!

i did survive on benefits, luckily i don't smoke and i don't drink, i'm allergic to smoke so i'd already stopped going to clubs. my social life was in the daytime really, mum and toddler groups, having visits from friends before they went out for the evening, etc. babies outgrow clothes very quickly so second hand clothes are often like new. ebay is good. the £500 grant would go a long way i'm sure, especially if you shop around. kiddicare is a good website, cheap cots, prams etc. at a push when working out our budget for the baby we thought that we could buy all the equipment using the extra £545 tax credit we get for having a baby and could feed the baby and buy any clothes, equipment, etc. needed after that with the child benefit of 11-ish a week. that's assuming i breastfeed, make my own food instead of buying jars, and don't use disposable nappies. you should be better off than that, with the £500 grant, child benefit plus some more on top in either IS or tax credits, i'm not sure which, but you certainly won't lose any money. i don't mean to sound unkind but the couple down the road have 2 children and i don't think they would have done if they'd lost out on their existing benefits by doing so, they spend 4 thousand a year on cigarettes so if there had been any loss in carers allowance, disability etc. i don't think they could afford the children. good luck :-)

Lyndsay_21

Yes we where on JSA when i was pregnant with DS i got whats called the sure start maternity grant its £500 you have to eith phone up your local DSS og go into jobcentre to get a form and u fill it out and get doctor/ midwife to sign it and the money comes through about a week later.
Another good tip is have a look on ebay they've got loads of good quality stuff cheap and also https://www.kiddicare.co.uk are normally cheaper than the high street and deliver for free.

Lyndsay_21

duh just realised the post above mine says about kiddicare, im in the corner with a dunce hat

tiger

hi
i get one chald and get income support got £113 a week.
If ur get income support u will get £113 a week.
£55+42, because u have a child under 16 + £17 cheld benefit.

Curry_Queen

People who get the child element of IS will be switched over to CTC some time this year (apparently!) so those figures won't apply anymore, which incidentally are not strictly correct anyway

Lone parent (over 18) = 56.20
Child = 43.88
Family Premium = 16.10

Total = £115.50 minus £17 child benefit = £98.50 Income Support

CB is of course paid on top of this but I have no idea how the CTC system will work as I've not yet been informed about it. Not that this is strictly applicable in the OP's circumstances as she's married, but might be useful for someone else reading