Partner given up work now cant claim a penny

Horseunderwater

There are still some around. My OH had one till sept 12.

dktreesea

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

Work attractive! What has this country come to when people would rather let other people pay for their children, than work enough hours to keep their own children.

And what an awful example to give to their children. I look back with pride at my father, who worked long hours to provide for us. Life really is a lucky bag.

Of course there are going to be people who value their free time over the money they could earn themselves, when the government is prepared to heavily compensate them if they both breed and don't take too much of the work on offer.

The government can't on the one hand make benefits so generous it pays not to work much, - 24 hours a week per household will do, apparently - then complain bitterly when some people take up what's on offer.

it's the same with renting. If you rent, and have a few children and agree not to work too much, the taxpayer will pay for most, maybe even all, of your rent.

But if you want to be "greedy", like the OP, owning your own place and working more than your fair share, i.e. 60 hours a week, so not even 35 hours a week, let alone the 24 hours a week the State would be happy with, well then, you're on your own. The State aren't going to let other taxpayers gift you a penny.

My question for the OP is why does she prefer to work 60 hours a week instead of working more reasonable hours and seeing her wee family more? I'm sure her son would prefer to see a lot more of her than he presumably does with those kinds of working hours. Because of the mortgage? Well, that just underscores what I have been saying. If you want to build your personal material wealth ahead of being with your children, with all the extra working hours that could well entail, don't expect the taxpayer to help you out.

Morglin

I think people have to work with what suits the family and the budget!

If people need help with mortgage payments or rent, well then, they need to claim it.

It's not for others to say, because it's nothing to do with them - personal choice.

Lin

duchy

I do wonder why you'd have one of you working sixty hours and the other nothing - especially as you both work in areas where shift work is common .
If you both worked thirty hours a week you'd be better off straightaway as you'd have two tax allowances instead of one and you'd both get to spend time with your child.

shop-to-drop

duchy wrote: »

I do wonder why you'd have one of you working sixty hours and the other nothing - especially as you both work in areas where shift work is common .
If you both worked thirty hours a week you'd be better off straightaway as you'd have two tax allowances instead of one and you'd both get to spend time with your child.

Exactly what I was thinking. Is it not possible to work regular full time hours with your job OP? It seems incredibly low paid if you consider the hourly rate.

You would most certainly be better of to both work around each others hours even both on minimum wage.

MissMoneypenny

dktreesea wrote: »

The government can't on the one hand make benefits so generous it pays not to work much, - 24 hours a week per household will do, apparently - then complain bitterly when some people take up what's on offer.

Two different governments. Tax Credits brought in as a "vote winner" by Blair/Brown (but correctly called "a poverty trap" by another Labour minister). Tax Credits going and being replaced by Universal Credit where claimants will have to work, with this government.

dktreesea

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

Two different governments. Tax Credits brought in as a "vote winner" by Blair/Brown (but correctly called "a poverty trap" by another Labour minister). Tax Credits going and being replaced by Universal Credit where claimants will have to work, with this government.

Both systems are flawed. If working full time on the NMW means you still need social welfare support just to survive, then there is something wrong.

The NMW is too low for the cost of living in the UK, so not fit for purpose. The LHA is just as bad, way too high. If it were capped to 70% of the actual rent AND the maximum payable was set at the current rates for social housing plus, say, 10%, that would go a long way to bringing rents down for everyone, including those who earn too much to be able to get any help with their housing.

BillJones

dktreesea wrote: »

Both systems are flawed. If working full time on the NMW means you still need social welfare support just to survive, then there is something wrong.

Yes, and it's people's expectations. Only twenty years ago, when I was a civil servant with a good degree, I did not earn enough to run a car, go away on holidays, buy new clothes, eat out, or do any of the things that people on here seem to assume are akin to rights nowadays.

This was not on minimum wage, it was in a professional job, with a first class physics degree from Oxford, working full time.

For some reason, just two short decades since, people now think that without qualifications,training, or experience, that they should be doing far better than was considered normal back then. That it is expected that they have a mobile phone, sky television, eat takeaway food, and so on.

Of course minimum wage doesn't cover all of these things. It's a bare minimum to survive on. If you want extras, then you need to find a way to pull yourself off the bottom, and for god's sake, this is Britain, one of the world's richest countries, with a world class education system, and a healthy safety net if you try and fail.

If you can't make it off the bottom here, you really, really cannot place the blame externally.

dktreesea

BillJones wrote: »

Yes, and it's people's expectations. Only twenty years ago, when I was a civil servant with a good degree, I did not earn enough to run a car, go away on holidays, buy new clothes, eat out, or do any of the things that people on here seem to assume are akin to rights nowadays.

This was not on minimum wage, it was in a professional job, with a first class physics degree from Oxford, working full time.

For some reason, just two short decades since, people now think that without qualifications,training, or experience, that they should be doing far better than was considered normal back then. That it is expected that they have a mobile phone, sky television, eat takeaway food, and so on.

Of course minimum wage doesn't cover all of these things. It's a bare minimum to survive on. If you want extras, then you need to find a way to pull yourself off the bottom, and for god's sake, this is Britain, one of the world's richest countries, with a world class education system, and a healthy safety net if you try and fail.

If you can't make it off the bottom here, you really, really cannot place the blame externally.

Britain claims to have a "world class education system", but in my experience, at least at state level, it seems very patchy. The Russell Group universities' intake these days seems dominated by students from private schools.

Even if you survive the education system and come out of school with at least an apprenticeship or a place in college, surely the whole point of any minimum wage is that it should be enough to live on?

Places like Australia don't seem to have a problem getting this right. There, the minimum wage is $16.37 an hour, and the dole is $255 a week. Even with the rent allowance, which is paltry compared to here and certainly doesn't cover the whole of the rent, you would still only get barely half of what you would receive on the FT NMW.

And yet over here, in what is, as you point out, really quite a rich country, employers get away with paying wages so low even the government admits that it's not possible to live on the NMW, let alone raise a family on it, without help from the benefits system.

With things like, broadband, mobile phones, pay TV and the like, these things become the "norm" over time. Ten years ago, a lot of people didn't even own a home computer, let alone have broadband. Nowadays, owning a computer and accessing the internet from home has become the norm. And all these things are relatively cheap. It's possible to have pay TV, a mobile phone, broadband and a landline thrown in from our current provider for around £10 a week.

Going back, I can remember a time when hardly anyone owned a car and many people didn't have a home telephone. But I also remember things like clothes and shoes being expensive but lasting a lot longer than today's clothes. And people having to save all year just to be able to afford a week's holiday in Spain. And food seemed so expensive back then, relative to earnings. Nowadays it's possible to feed a family of four on £50 a week, less than a quarter of the FT NMW.

FBaby

And all these things are relatively cheap. It's possible to have pay TV, a mobile phone, broadband and a landline thrown in from our current provider for around £10 a week.

Indeed, it is cheap, but when you pick the 3D TVs and latest iphone, then it is not so cheap any longer. My kids have been invited to birthday parties by friends coming from all different social levels and I have always been amazed to see the link between lower income and latest technology. Same with second cars despite only one member of the family working. I have also noticed the same link with the newness of sofas! We often hear about low paid families struggling to pay the bills, but I can't help wondering how many of these families fit under that category, where they end up struggling because they have loans to pay the above that have to come first.