Redundant but with savings

eamon

SCRIBES wrote: »

I got made redundant last year and applied for contribution based JSA and they wrote and told me I wasn't eligible. I had informed them that I had saving of £16k and an armed forces pension. Should I have contested this? First time in my life I ever claimed anything!

Yes, they are wrong!

Your pension may affect the amount you get but they must allow you to claim for your NI contributions to continue to be paid up

Commandante

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

If I were her parents I would be gutted at handing over money to my "child" only to find the Government took it instead.

Absolutely! And yes it is the Govt taking it, they take tax and NI throughout your working life ... and more if you earn more ... if you're not allowed to use it when you lose your job then what is the sense?

RichardD1970

Tax and NI aren't a saving club that you can call on when you feel like it.

You have £110,000 sitting in a bank account and still want the tax payer to help fund your life.

I'm sorry that your plans for it have to change, but life is like that.
I planned to be mortgage free by the time I was 50, but life gets in the way of plans and priorities change.

somethingcorporate

That tax and NI goes to pay for a lot of services that run this country.

Thank god we have people more intelligent than you running the country :j

jobbingmusician

Is this any consolation?

If you'd bought a property, you would doubtless have a mortgage (and probably no savings). If you are on JSA, you get no help with your mortgage for NINE MONTHS! So you would be at risk of losing your house.

(I do appreciate you're in a horrid position. Yes, the benefits system stinks).

ALIBOBSY

jobbingmusician wrote: »

Is this any consolation?

If you'd bought a property, you would doubtless have a mortgage (and probably no savings). If you are on JSA, you get no help with your mortgage for NINE MONTHS! So you would be at risk of losing your house.

(I do appreciate you're in a horrid position. Yes, the benefits system stinks).

As far as I was aware and the gov website the waiting time is 13 weeks, but the OP would have to be on income based JSA anyway so they would be stuck paying a mortgage out of their JSA cont based. Then again hopefully he would have had insurance for redundancy to cover at least some of the mortgage payment.

TBH its like ev1 who is made redundant or has a major life change, its tough and you have to shake your life up and live to your new budget.

As a parent can I just say if I was in a position to give my children a large amount of cash like that for say a deposit and they ended up having an emergency and using at least some elsewhere I would be just happy I had been able to help and support them through a difficult time.

Good luck with the job search OP.

Ali x

jobbingmusician

Apologies, I'm delighted to hear that mortgage payments kick in quicker than they used to.......Still a long time, though, isn't it!

Voyager2002

somethingcorporate wrote: »

Is that you, Gordon Brown?

You think we should give benefits out to people with over £100k sat in their bank? How do you think we'd pay for that (as a country).

The number of people in this situation is going to be fairly small, so not a significant cost.

The welfare state is like an insurance system: if my computer gets stolen I expect my insurer to pay to replace it, and not turn round and say that my salary is high enough for me to pay for it myself. Equally, if I fall ill and require expensive hospital treatment I expect the NHS to provide this without charging me, and without looking at my income and bank balance, since I have paid for this coverage over many years of tax-paying. So why should insurance against unemployment be any different?

RichardD1970

Voyager2002 wrote: »

The welfare state is like an insurance system:

No it's not.

The welfare state is there to provide support to people who have no other means of supporting themselves, not people sitting with £110,000 in the bank.

Voyager2002

RichardD1970 wrote: »

No it's not.

The welfare state is there to provide support to people who have no other means of supporting themselves, not people sitting with £110,000 in the bank.

Except that the 'welfare state' includes state pensions and health care, both of which are provided to people regardless of their bank balances.

Anyway, this board is for discussing the law as it is rather than policy (what the law ought to be). We can all agree that people with large bank balances are not allowed to claim means-tested benefits.