Can anyone help me work this out?

Iwani

Please be gentle with me... am feeling quite fragile and have never claimed anything other than £15 CTC and don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Basically I'm thinking of leaving my husband, or rather asking him to leave. Not the place to go into it but sick as I even feel thinking about it, I don't think I can carry on living like this.
I need to work out if I can actually afford to stay where we are, we're only one month into a 6 month lease and I've moved my oldest 3 times in the last year now so I really want to stay, but I'm painfully aware the rent and house size is ridiculously large for just me and two small kids (1&3).
I work two days a week, 14 hours and it's about £550 a month pay. No childcare costs as my mum has them when I work.
I did the entitledto checker and it says I'd get about £345 a week if it were just me & kids. That seems really high, or am I wrong? That added to me wage + child maintenance (I know he'd pay without a doubt) would leave me with quite a lot monthly.
Which I wouldn't complain about as it means we could stay here but it seems too high? I daren't even think about doing anything if I'm not absolutely certain we can still afford to live here, otherwise I think I'd need to wait unless things really escalate.

ETA: I will be going back fulltime when both the kids are in school but obviously that's a few years off yet.

Caz3121

Iwani wrote: »

I did the entitledto checker and it says I'd get about £345 a week if it were just me & kids.

The table here seems to imply £115 per week for child tax credits then you would have your child benefit, wages etc on top

As far as housing benefit. If you are in private rental you need to find your LHA rate for a two bedroom property (even if your property is larger) this is the figure to use in the benefit calculator rather than the actual rent

Iwani

Thanks. I did put in the actual rent as it asked me to, it already put in the LHA rent for me? That changed it to £282 a week. Leaving it at the LHA rent in both boxes gave the £345 figure which must be too high.