Universal Credit 16k+ savings transistional protection?

cattermole

tinkledom wrote: »

Why - it's the truth.

I more interested in your comments on my point about long term sustainability.

tinkledom

cattermole wrote: »

Assuming you have money spare to put into the AVC in the first place or can afford to loose from your monthly salary.

That's it - you don't lose, Your WTC award goes up because your income has gone down. So the pounds in your pocket are more or less the same, but you have a nice healthy pension pot as well!

cattermole

tinkledom wrote: »

I see you have added a bit more to your post.
.

Yes as you did

cattermole

tinkledom wrote: »

Well the OP seems to be doing OK. They both work, and earn £15000 a year and have two children, and manage to save well over £16000.


What the OP hasn't said or disclosed is the £11000 a year extra they get from HMRC in Credits + max HB & CTB.


Try putting that in a calculator and see what happens if they put just enough of that £16,000 into a private pension to bring their income down to the lower threshold in order to obtain max WTC.

As already pointed out they will need to work more hours to qualify for WTC with UC.

Even with an income of £26,000 and saving 16,000, that leaves 10,000 to live on, I find it a bit hard to believe to be honest with two young children to support!!. But if they can do that then good luck to them!!

zagfles

cattermole wrote: »

Although one could argue that long term it may be a way of saving on benefit payouts?

Because ultimately they will have to take their pensions and so if they are reasonable pensions and private it will ease the burden on the state. And we all know in the future we will not be able to sustain the state pension levels with an increasing adult ageing population and a falling birth rate.

Look at Japan!! With the highest national debt of any country in the world. It's birth rate is so low and it's ageing population is unsustainable. There are very complex reasons to their falling birth rate too and some of that is linked to little or no immigration.

CTC are not really a benefit as such they are giving back tax if you are working.

Child benefit was a nice idea when it started and the main reason was to give women some money of their own to help them look after their children. Without being totally dependant on their husbands (whatever their income!!). Times have changed since then but we do need people to have children (again I refer you to Japan) so it's a little incentive. In Japan they give big incentives to have a 3rd child

So if it goes into a private pension it will still make people less dependent on the state in the future. Assuming all the private pensions pay out.

Exactly. The contributions are disregarded now because when you take the pension income that will count as income towards any benefit entitlement then. It wouldn't be fair to count the same income twice.

MissMoneypenny

zagfles wrote: »

What do you mean?? You realise that under UC (unlike WTC) you don't need to work the required amount, you just need to seek work? So if there are no jobs people will still get their UC.

Except the big difference will be the Universal Credit Conditions. Fail to meet your income requirement and you will be treated the same as job seekers, if you want benefits. There will be no more of claimants just phoning up once a year to Tax Credits and then watching the money arrive in their account every few weeks. Those working the "I'm self employed, work 16/30 hours but only earn less than mininim wage" will lose some/all their benefits too.

zagfles wrote: »

Plus there won't be any Bulgarians coming here to take non existant jobs, just like the Poles didn't

To be fair, it isn't just EU immigrants claiming benefits in the UK. Lots of those using the EU route to the UK and access to full benefits when they are arrive, aren't EEA citizens. They use an EU citizen to get to the UK and bring their relatives. Plus non EUs use Labour's Human Rights Act to stay in the UK when they are too low educated to get a firm to sponsor them for a work visa.

Plus there were many very easy visas routes invented by Labour to import more voters, which means those "workers" too now claim benefits in the UK i.e. the visas known as

• Tier1 (General);
• Tier1 (PSW);
• 10 year a student route (even if they never got any/many qualifications during their 10 years of studying and very little checks were in place to check the places they studied at were genuine a "university");
• the 14 years an illegal route;
• the Discretional Leave route (which gave them instant access to full benefits;
• the Tier 2 (ICT) visa;
• the low standard of the Tier2 (General) visa which meant those visa holders work in low skilled jobs such as waiters, supermarkets, governmnet departments, call centres, taxi drives etc.

All the above visas routes to UK citizenship, now closed by this present government.

As you can see, it is unfair to say it's just the EU born citizens claiming in the UK.

cattermole

I don't know which is worse a Labour government or a Tory one that is about to stop everyone from campaigning in the run up to a general election. Read the Human Rights Joint Committee report on the Lobbying Bill quite an eye opener a cross party report from the Commons & Lords. Very worrying when even United Nations have spoken out about it. It comes to something when the Countryside Alliance and League against Cruel Sports are signing there name to the same petition. :eek: When one Tory MP calls the police when 10 peaceful people give him a petition. You might feel differently about HRA when you are unable to speak freely.

Be interesting to see the knock on effect of this bill, it could be that the discussion you are keen to get your political point across on now Miss Moneypenny in 12 months time will no longer be allowed under the law. I'm sure MSe's income must be way over the permitted amounts. Martin will be gagged :eek:

cattermole

tinkledom wrote: »

Well the OP seems to be doing OK. They both work, and earn £15000 a year and have two children, and manage to save well over £16000.


What the OP hasn't said or disclosed is the £11000 a year extra they get from HMRC in Credits + max HB & CTB.


Try putting that in a calculator and see what happens if they put just enough of that £16,000 into a private pension to bring their income down to the lower threshold in order to obtain max WTC.

In addition they must be living in a rent/mortgage free house because at the moment if the OP has been saving the amount they claim then they are over the limit for HB.

I'm also concerned that as the OP says they have been "asleep" that the division of the income between them and their partner of £15,000 per annum is equal. Otherwise one of them is unlikely to have the correct NI contributions in order to qualify for a state pension, so they definitely do need to start thinking about their pension(s) for the future.

I think living very frugally on £10,000 a year (assuming you have no rent/mortgage to pay) would be more or less impossible for any length of the time with two children, I can't see it lasting over 10 years!!

I tend to think it is a little exaggerated! your scenario that is not the OP's, who yes has saved 16k but this not much towards a pension and how long has it taken them?

cattermole

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

Except the big difference will be the Universal Credit Conditions. Fail to meet your income requirement and you will be treated the same as job seekers, if you want benefits. There will be no more of claimants just phoning up once a year to Tax Credits and then watching the money arrive in their account every few weeks. Those working the "I'm self employed, work 16/30 hours but only earn less than mininim wage" will lose some/all their benefits too.



To be fair, it isn't just EU immigrants claiming benefits in the UK. Lots of those using the EU route to the UK and access to full benefits when they are arrive, aren't EEA citizens. They use an EU citizen to get to the UK and bring their relatives. Plus non EUs use Labour's Human Rights Act to stay in the UK when they are too low educated to get a firm to sponsor them for a work visa.

Plus there were many very easy visas routes invented by Labour to import more voters, which means those "workers" too now claim benefits in the UK i.e. the visas known as

• Tier1 (General);
• Tier1 (PSW);
• 10 year a student route (even if they never got any/many qualifications during their 10 years of studying and very little checks were in place to check the places they studied at were genuine a "university");
• the 14 years an illegal route;
• the Discretional Leave route (which gave them instant access to full benefits;
• the Tier 2 (ICT) visa;
• the low standard of the Tier2 (General) visa which meant those visa holders work in low skilled jobs such as waiters, supermarkets, governmnet departments, call centres, taxi drives etc.

All the above visas routes to UK citizenship, now closed by this present government.

As you can see, it is unfair to say it's just the EU born citizens claiming in the UK.

Import voters what a lovely political phrase. Do they sign to say how they will vote in the future before getting a visa?

One small historical fact Miss Moneypenny in the 1950's we had to advertise to bring commonwealth citizens to this country to fill the gap in the Labour market, post war due to lack of men and those willing to do the lower end jobs. This happened in 2003 as well particularly for Nurses, now given that Labour didn't get back into power until 1997. The gap in training for much needed Nurses must have occurred under the previous government?

The French (let's face it they don't like us!) allowed camps on their borders from migrants/asylum seekers. I do agree that the Labour government at the time should have played merry hell in the EU about this. The rules are clear the first country of entry into the EU is the country they have to seek asylum in.

I tend to think it was more to do with being too soft than some elaborate plan to import votes.

And many were sent back to the point in which they did enter the EU.

You also have to demonstrate that long term these people who have stayed do not contribute to Society and that they claim more benefits than anyone else. So you will need all the facts and figures to support that argument as well.

DevilsAdvocate1

CRITCHK wrote: »

thanks for your replies. I am really miffed about this. We are told to save for our retirement and now they want to take this away from us. Did not want to put this into a pension as they are too restrictive.

If you have a mortgage, could you start overpaying your mortgage rather than saving more? This is what we do. We save more in interest that we were receiving on savings.