"16 Kids and Counting" - how do they afford it?

silvercar

southcoastrgi wrote: »

so lets get this straight & some very rough figures, £30k a year, self employed 20% tax = £6k tax bill, take off expensises etc his tax bill is prob £0
upwards of £20k a year c/b plus any other credits they get
So who is supporting this family ?

Supporting themselves mainly.

Until this year c/b was a universal benefit, so no point including that in your comparison.

Surely you can see the difference between a family where one parent works hard to earn money and a family where no-one has any intention of earning.

Apart from the financial benefit, what message are they giving their children?

flashnazia

silvercar wrote: »

Supporting themselves mainly.

Until this year c/b was a universal benefit, so no point including that in your comparison.

Surely you can see the difference between a family where one parent works hard to earn money and a family where no-one has any intention of earning.

Apart from the financial benefit, what message are they giving their children?

Yes there is a difference in the fact that at least one of them works but they are hardly paragons of virtue. They are still getting a pretty hefty chunk in benefits; I don't believe for a second they aren't claiming tax credits in addition to child benefit.

Callie22

Treevo wrote: »

I don't know what kind of bakery you have knowledge of but my mother's family have had bakeries for generations and it would be easy for a seemingly small shop to make £30,000 I'm profit.

Most seemingly-small bakeries no longer just sell bread and cakes for sale in the shop. To give you an example - my uncle runs one of the bakeries in our family which you would probably decide was small and profit-less. It has eleven staff. What you don't see is the trade orders that it fulfills six days a week for nearly every sandwich shop in a large area, as well as providing sandwiches, pastry goods, cakes etc for many companies in the area for their staff and local events. Before you've even looked at the products sold in store, the business has already covered all it's costs and made a very decent profit.

The point I was trying to make was the one that you've just proven here - that you cannot make a big profit in a retail bakery on your own or with one other member of staff, which is what people have said this bloke is doing. Your uncle had eleven staff, and my mum probably has a similar number (lots of part-timers). But she still has to get up at 2am to turn the oven and proover on. There is no way on earth that you can do everything yourself, and there's no way you could physically do the graft needed to make a wholesale number of rolls, pies, loaves etc etc on your own. Baking commercially is incredibly hard, physical labour - I've done it myself for a few years so I do know what I'm talking about. Lifting a tray of a dozen rolls out of your own oven is easy, lifting a tray with ten times that number out of a commercial oven is not quite so easy (I have the 'baker's rash' of burn scars up my arms to prove it!) You simply cannot do that by yourself in a small bakery, seven days a week, and turn a big profit. The profit in bakeries comes from volume of product and I don't see how you can do it with just one or two people.

southcoastrgi

silvercar wrote: »

Supporting themselves mainly.

Until this year c/b was a universal benefit, so no point including that in your comparison.

Surely you can see the difference between a family where one parent works hard to earn money and a family where no-one has any intention of earning.

Apart from the financial benefit, what message are they giving their children?

I agree about the lazy !!!!less, why is it pointless inc c/b ? he works yes but his tax bill will be really low if anything at all, so where is he paying into the system to even help towards the massive handouts he is getting, their benefit should have been capped yrs ago & then maybe that would have stopped the riduculas baby farm

koalamummy

Are we not supposed to teach our children to be self sufficient in every way? If you want something then you work hard for it and save until you can afford it regardless of how long that may take, and if you can't afford it you do without. Or have I been getting it wrong all these years?

HappyMJ

koalamummy wrote: »

Are we not supposed to teach our children to be self sufficient in every way? If you want something then you work hard for it and save until you can afford it regardless of how long that may take, and if you can't afford it you do without. Or have I been getting it wrong all these years?

You've got it wrong all these years...fertility in women is highest when they are in their 20's it's ok in their 30's and vastly reduced in their 40's....if you want a family you don't want to be waiting too long...to have enough money to support a family parents need to earn money and not be raising children. It is in my opinion very difficult to do both....I'm 38 no kids and I still feel I can't afford children even though I own my own home with no mortgage.

koalamummy

But if you want a family before you are financially able to afford one then should you not still be willing to pay for that family by yourself even if that means taking a second job or living in a smaller house than would be ideal? I know my own dad did this from time to time when I was a child to cover unexpected overheads back in the days before state subsidy for all seemingly became the norm.

We had one child in our 20's simply because that was all we could afford. Later in our 30's when we were more financially secure we went on to have more children, but only when we knew that we could afford to provide for them properly. It never occurred to either of us to do anything other than this. We couldn't adequately provide for more children in our 20's therefore we did not have any more regardless of how much we may have wanted to.

FBaby

Indeed, there is a difference between one child in your 20s and just about managing it because you are still young and therefore not totally financially stable yet and deciding to have 16 that you definitely know you will never be able to afford yourself.

Many parents choose to stop a 2 kids or so, not because they don't wish to be parents to more children, but because they can't afford more themselves, and without being able to offer the best possible life to the two they already have. I have many friends who have stopped at 2 (surprisingly more willingly when they've had one of each sex!), but gone through the stage or 'do we have another one or not, I would love another one, but not sure we could really afford it' before deciding to move on.

Spendless

MerlinMags wrote: »

Good tips - thank you.
Although I will need to consider the extra petrol needed to get to these farm shops in addition to Tesco. Don't tell me I ought to go to a butchers as well?

Yes! It does say on their blog that they shop at a butchers and ask what the best value/cheapest cuts are. I live in a large market town with plenty of butchers stalls and have bought 90% of my meat there for years. It surprises you to see what the supermarkets charge in comparison. In addition the butcher can give you advice on cooking your meat if you are unsure and will be able to trace his meat back to the source. Possibly even work out which field it usd to stand in and the animals name..which won't have been Black Beauty.:p

Alchemilla

shoppaholic_returns wrote: »

Whilst I understand your viewpoint, we can't be held responsible for the fact that people need to start and take RESPONSIBILITY for their actions.

Look at it from the point of view of the people who pay for these people to breed.

While of course I agree that people should take responsibility for themselves, there are always failures of contraception not to mention human error. I am very worried about the babies produced in this way and what may become of them.
For what it is worth having worked full time all my life in my profession I have always contributed handsomely to the national purse.

sassyblue wrote: »

It would force people to think and take control over their lives. If you're having sex you take precautions if you don't want a pregnancy, if you're not doing that then you may have a problem.

Lots of problems in the world could be solved if people took control over their lives, it's no bad thing!

Of course one would be crazy to disagree with that but it is a little simplistic.