Low Income - No Benefits or Tax Credits Allowed!!!

Neil_Jones

Consider yourself lucky to have access to £16k in savings, there are no end of people in this country who don't have two pennies to rub together for one reason or another.

However I dare say that that the two key figures (£6k is the taper off point for a lot of benefits where it ends at £16k for nothing at all) are very old reference figures and haven't changed in many years.

[Deleted User]

ROldfield wrote: »

I have felt almost punished all my working life for things outside my hands and this just tops it off!

Because me and my Wife have been careful and saved up we aren’t entitled to help to raise our child when I’m self employed and my Wife is a teaching assistant, we again feel extremely let down and frustrated.

So you've always had work.

Try keep losing jobs/working for the wrong people and ending up 6-9 months on anti-depressants.

Don't truely wish you were out of work.

Admittedly my kitten is way lighter then that of a baby, but I'm not convinced it's up to the tax payer to feed her. I could not wait to get (any) job so I could get a new kitten/go to a rescue centre and pay back the ashes of my rags who died unexpectedly days after job gone under what now feels like a mighty terrible premonition.

ROldfield

I agree that on the face of it it may seem like I'm ungrateful or greedy but that isn't the case.

We have a number of reasons for our savings being high:
- I'm self employed and my savings are also my pension
- I'm self employed and my savings are if work drys up
- We are careful incase we need to buy anything or fix anything in an emergency
- We don't splash out on luxuries, cars, holidays etc

And because of the above we aren't entitled to the money our very low income says we are allowed.

I see people earning more than us but instead of saving up they spend and spend and they have all the holidays, cars etc and entitled to child and tax credit.

It seems off to me.

poppy12345

ROldfield wrote: »

I agree that on the face of it it may seem like I'm ungrateful or greedy but that isn't the case.

We have a number of reasons for our savings being high:
- I'm self employed and my savings are also my pension
- I'm self employed and my savings are if work drys up
- We are careful incase we need to buy anything or fix anything in an emergency
- We don't splash out on luxuries, cars, holidays etc

And because of the above we aren't entitled to the money our very low income says we are allowed.

I see people earning more than us but instead of saving up they spend and spend and they have all the holidays, cars etc and entitled to child and tax credit.

It seems off to me.

Low Income or not, you still have savings over the maximum amount allowed, which means you're not entitled.



You can't expect the tax payer to give you extra income when you have all those savings.



Tax credits were completely different and savings didn't affect it, unless you had interest of more than £300. Tax credits no longer exist for new claims.

TELLIT01

What seems to me to be a major failing of the benefit system is that you could have 2 people with identical work histories and personal situations who become unemployed at the same time. Person A has been careful and put money away for the proverbial rainy day. Person B has spent every penny they earn as they earn it. Person A is effectively penalised for being careful whilst Person B will be given state support for spending everything they earned. How does that scenario encourage anybody to save?

LilElvis

The announcement at the top of the board still says:

For help and support NOT JUDGEMENT

I'm very disappointed that some regular posters on this board have felt that they can ignore this simply because someone is not entitled to claim under relatively new rules. It reflects poorly on those posters and does the board a huge disservice.

tacpot12

TELLIT01 wrote: »

What seems to me to be a major failing of the benefit system is that you could have 2 people with identical work histories and personal situations who become unemployed at the same time. Person A has been careful and put money away for the proverbial rainy day. Person B has spent every penny they earn as they earn it. Person A is effectively penalised for being careful whilst Person B will be given state support for spending everything they earned. How does that scenario encourage anybody to save?

Person A is not penalised. They are not helped because they don't need help. They are in a much more fortunate situation that Person B in that they have save for their own welfare and can choose how to spend it. They don't have to undertake Work Capability Assessments, 35 hours a week of job hunting, fortnightly visits to the Jobcentre, etc.

You can guarantee that Person B has not spent the money they didn't save on income-producing assets. People that spend all their money usually have very little to show for it at the end of the day.

ROldfield

It seems so far you are the only person to understand

TELLIT01 wrote: »

What seems to me to be a major failing of the benefit system is that you could have 2 people with identical work histories and personal situations who become unemployed at the same time. Person A has been careful and put money away for the proverbial rainy day. Person B has spent every penny they earn as they earn it. Person A is effectively penalised for being careful whilst Person B will be given state support for spending everything they earned. How does that scenario encourage anybody to save?

Flugelhorn

... or if you really treated your savings as pension then it would be locked up until you were 55 and hence possibly not counted now

Carrieanne

I suspect many people in the OP's situation would be sorely tempted to withdraw their cash savings in a hurry to take the total below the lower £6K threshold so as to make a new UC claim around 9 months hence.