Help Needed, what are we entitled too

gemmajones1221

There must be other options out there, life has changed considerably for us, we were in London for the last 10 years and single bringing in a good salary each (about 4k household income), now we moved to the south west due to the kids to give them a better life and are only clearing £1500 a month with 2 extra mouths to feed. you thought there would be more incentive to keep a full time job but after talking to a couple of local people they all say stick to the 24 hrs rule which id never heard of. Would you get housing benefit help on the 24 hour rule?

Darksparkle

It’s not a reward! :wall:

David_Aston

SOA= Statement of Affairs

gemmajones1221

whats not a reward?

Darksparkle

gemmajones1221 wrote: »

whats not a reward?

“we may even get some housing benefit and council tax reward”

Happier_Me

As others have said, it was you choice to have children, live on a single income, live so far from work and run two cars.

I doubt anyone on this forum will verbally support your train of thought, it's morally wrong to reorganise your life to access benefits. Our benefits system is already exploited by so many.

In your situation I would seriously consider:

• relocating closer to work
• losing a car (two cars are a want not a need)
• looking for better paid employment (husband)
• securing two incomes (you were a good earner, why not use your skills to increase household income?). Kids can benefit from a mix of paid for childcare.

Claiming benefits longterm will impact your earning potential and effectively puts your life on pause. If you want to own a house at some point you won't get that from being on benefits, nor will you get a promotion or the chance to pursue a career.

Gecko10

I feel sorry for the OP personally, she's not trying to exploit anything just wondering if there's any help she can get. It's families like Gemma that should get a little help to encourage them to be in work, unfortunately we see every day a certain demographic having as many kids as possible whilst never working and living a far more comfortable life than Gemma. Hopefully you can find a solution.

gemmajones1221

Its not like we are looking to exploit any system, we are both late 30s and never claimed anything and been hard workers throughout our life, my partner took a risk to get a business off the ground and put all our money into it which unfortunately failed and led to a chain of event to put us in this situation. The way I see it is the fact we have never claimed, been ill or anything whatsoever so which the amount of money we have put into the system its about time we finally used it for the 3 years the kids are at home anyway (until school) we may as well just do the 24hrs betwon us both and watch the kids grow as opposed to us both killing ourselves and the kids spending god knows how many hours with a stranger in childcare.
Its a sore subject I know with many but what do you expect people to do, we are 1 family of 100'000s facing the same problem

Darksparkle

What will you do though if tax credits change the criteria and requires at least one of you to work full time? Wouldn’t it be better to earn the money for yourselves rather than take from the state just because it works out the same amount? Just because you can work a minimum hours doesn’t mean you should. Don’t you want to show your kids that you’ve worked hard to provide for them rather than supporting them on minimal hours and money from the state?

Why do you not already claim tax credits and child benefit?

gemmajones1221

We do get Child tax credits but not looked at anything else as I dont think we are eligible, After the 3 years we would both defo go back to full time its just at this present time we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, I just posted on here to see if anyone else had a similar experience