Inheritance while on benefits

jamesd

Contact any local housing associations to ask about shared ownership schemes. A 25% or 50% ownership may be achievable. You could also ask your current landlord about this possibility but a housing association is a better long term landlord prospect than a private landlord.

To make decent money consider peer to peer lending through places like Ablrate and MoneyThing. Raw interest rates are typically around 12% and I tell people to allow for 2% of bad debt. You will suffer some bad debts from time to time but even so the high interest rates should greatly reduce the rate at which your capital drops. You're in an interesting position where normally safe deposits lose you a small fortune and taking some risk can reduce the capital loss rate.

enthusiasticsaver

I would imagine the vast majority of that £1100 is housing benefit as you live in Devon so not a cheap area. I would agree that shared ownership could be something you could look at but if you have to pay a mortgage and or rent it may not be cost effective.

Certainly a SIPP for both of you would be useful in the future. How old are you both? Will you qualify for any pensions later on?

Read up on deprivation of capital as to how much you can spend on making life easier like a new car, home improvements, holiday etc and make sure you start claiming again once your capital reaches the level at which you qualify again. I agree you are doing the right thing in informing the benefits people when it comes in. It is not worth lying to them and there is no guarantee they would not find out so the people telling you not to say anything would effectively be fraudsters if they did as they are telling you to do.

Chris75

I am not sure how this would effect your benefits but you do, I believe, have the option of changing the terms of the will after the death of the donor. It might be worth finding out if that is of any advantage to you.

Mojisola

Chris75 wrote: »

I am not sure how this would effect your benefits but you do, I believe, have the option of changing the terms of the will after the death of the donor. It might be worth finding out if that is of any advantage to you.

A will can be changed after the death but, in this situation, it would be blatant deliberate deprivation of capital and the claimant would be assessed as if they had the money.