Unemployed, not seeking work, eligible for anything!

paulbeard

Good afternoon and thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give.

I recently resigned from a permanent full time job and I am currently not seeking work (I plan to return to post graduate education in the autumn and am currently preparing for my course) so for both those reasons I know that I am not eligible for JSA.

My wife is in full time employment, we have no children and we have savings. In effect, for the next few years while I am a student we will be living off my wife's income.

I have just gone through a EntitledTo benefit check and it says we are not entitled to any benefits.

What I am wondering is between now and starting my post graduate course whether there is any point in my registering with the Employment Service as unemployed?

THe kind of things I am thinking of are: would this get me my NI stamp, entitle me for any Council Tax reduction or have any other advantages ie discounts for tickets etc for the unemployed, do I need to be registered as unemployed to take advantage of these.

Whilst we have done our sums and can live off one income for the time being, it would be a shame to miss out on anything we are entitled to.

Thanks again.

pmlindyloo

paulbeard wrote: »

Good afternoon and thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give.

I recently resigned from a permanent full time job and I am currently not seeking work (I plan to return to post graduate education in the autumn and am currently preparing for my course) so for both those reasons I know that I am not eligible for JSA.

My wife is in full time employment, we have no children and we have savings. In effect, for the next few years while I am a student we will be living off my wife's income.

I have just gone through a EntitledTo benefit check and it says we are not entitled to any benefits.

What I am wondering is between now and starting my post graduate course whether there is any point in my registering with the Employment Service as unemployed?

THe kind of things I am thinking of are: would this get me my NI stamp, entitle me for any Council Tax reduction or have any other advantages ie discounts for tickets etc for the unemployed, do I need to be registered as unemployed to take advantage of these.

Whilst we have done our sums and can live off one income for the time being, it would be a shame to miss out on anything we are entitled to.

Thanks again.

Not sure what you mean by 'registering with the Employment Service - could you clarify?

Based on what you have said you cannot claim JSA because you are not job seeking.

In any case you have resigned from your job so would be liable for a sanction on your JSA.

Your wife working full time would mean that you would not be entitled to income based JSA (i.e means tested) as would any savings over £16K

So, that would leave contribution based JSA (have you worked full time for the last two tax years?) which is not means tested.

I am not sure if your NI credits are paid whilst on a sanction (will try to find out) but if you applied for contribution based ESA you would be expected to adhere to your claimant commitment - signing on, looking for jobs etc and in effect would have to say that you are job seeking at the present time even when serving a sanction.

The fact that you are unlikely to get any money because of your sanction and would have to adhere to your claimant commitments means that the only positive would be receiving your NI credits for a few months.

Contribution based JSA would not entitle you to anything in the way of discounts etc. You would have to be on income based JSA to be eligible.

Good luck with your studies.

TELLIT01

NI Credits are intended as support whilst job seeking or unable to work due to sickness. I don't think you can get them if you don't fall into either of those categories.

You will however get NI Credits once you return to full time education.

TELLIT01

Penitent wrote: »

Are you sure about this? I thought uni students didn't get NIC.

I may be wrong, but my reading of the info on Gov.uk suggested they do.

Darksparkle

https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance-credits/eligibility

elsien

Someone has to ask so it might as well be me.
Whatever preparing for your course in 4/5 months time involves, surely it doesn't preclude some temporary full or part time employment in the interim?

TELLIT01

To clarify my earlier comment - I'd misread this part of the qualifying conditions "If you are aged over 18 and in full-time training, you will get credits. This is provided the training is approved and does not last longer than a year."

paulbeard

Thanks for the info on NI, and yes it does make sense that I'm not eligible for credits as I'm voluntarily not part of the system.

How about council tax reduction?

paulbeard

elsien wrote: »

Someone has to ask so it might as well be me.
Whatever preparing for your course in 4/5 months time involves, surely it doesn't preclude some temporary full or part time employment in the interim?

TBH it does preclude full & P/T work. I could go into it but really it's off topic.

I don't intend to pretend to job seek to falsely claim JSA, I'm just seeing if I'm entitled to any discounts or reductions as I'm currently not a wage earner but have paid into the system for 23 years 😊

Sncjw

The answer is no . You need to sign on to get any help. Why did you resign

paulbeard

Sncjw wrote: »

The answer is no . You need to sign on to get any help. Why did you resign

As stated in the intro and reiterated above, to give prep time for an MA.

I repeat, I am not trying to replace the income I no longer have but seeing if I can save on some outgoings.