Starting again ... again

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

Another £0.85 survey done on PA. Now have £10 ready and waiting and £8.50 waiting to be approved - not bad for a couple of days!

CRANKY40

Try noodles for the potato hater. My 16 year old still loves smart price noodles but these days I can add them to a meal instead of them being the meal 😂

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

Thanks @CRANKY40! He does love noodles, pasta, rice and couscous, so plenty of other things he can eat. Not sure any of them go with baked beans though haha! It's ok though, he has 2 cooked meals at nursery for lunch and tea already, so sitting him with us at dinner is really just a token family time exercise, he doesn't have enough dinner with us to justify the effort of making him something separate!
Eldest has cold packed lunches though so needs a hot meal at night. 

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

Another grievance with Universal Credit - OH was offered lots of overtime this weekend but ended up turning it down. He gets paid time and a half so used to do all the hours he could, but if he earns more, then our UC payment gets reduced so it's not really worth the extra stress, no matter how much the goverment insists "it will always pay to work more". It does, but it doesn't pay very well. 
I've worked out how much UC would reduce depending on how many hours of overtime OH might do, and it's a massive faff and not accurate because of how obscure UC calculation is - can only use an approximation using entitled to website.
It just works out at such a lowly hourly rate that it's really not worth it. If he did 15 hours of overtime, it would work out as £5/hour roughly, but if he did 30 hours, it would only be £2.80 an hour. That's a joke and not worth losing out on family time when he would normally see £11 per hour after tax and student loan deductions. 
It will also be a pain when he gets his bonus. If he gets a bonus of £2000, for example, which is roughly what he had last year, then that would normally mean about £1100 more net pay, but we'd lose out on the £500 UC that month so he'd only see £600 of that. Still good, but feels like robbery when we pay that much tax and childcare cost and rent. Gah. 
We could do tax-free childcare instead, but that only saves 20% of childcare costs, so in normal months saves us a lot less money than we get back through UC, and you can't do both. 
It's all such a headache to work out, I really understand why some people just don't bother with going back to work when they have children. The system needs to be rethought. 
Where I'm from, childcare is free because the state subsidises it, and on top of that parents get €250 per month per child child benefit. My school friends and family can't believe how expensive it is here. 

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

Just went through a few more scenarios and it basically means that OH would get paid less in total for doing 30 hours of overtime, than if he did 20 hours - doing 10 hours more work would make him £15 worse off overall. That's ridiculous and wrong on so many levels. We're both fuming right now haha. 

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

Have worked it all out over the year though, and we're still at least £2,000 a year better off by doing Universal Credit rather than tax-free childcare, it's just a lot of hassle. Sigh!

WinterWarrior

It does seem an odd system. It is banking on thinking that people would rather have money they have earned, rather than UC top ups, and to a certain extent that’s right, people would prefer not to have to claim it, but on the other hand who in their right mind would work an extra 30hrs for no reward. You could drive yourself to illness that way 😞 There’s a big difference between being proud and being foolish. I don’t think any system works 100% well for every single scenario ☹️

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

You're right @WinterWarrior no system is perfect. But one where you use up almost your whole salary for childcare surely isn't quite right haha. OH would have more money if he did the 30 hours overtime, but it would be £90 haha. No thanks! If it was an easy job maybe, but it's a high-pressure stressful one and £90 are not worth running yourself into the ground for!

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

Good morning MSE people and happy Monday!
Nothing much to report from the weekend - both kids are full of cold so it was a quiet one. 
Went shopping in Aldi and Asda and spent £71 on what should be a week's worth of groceries, though will need a top up of fresh fruit and bread later in the week no doubt. 
Leaves me with £109 in my grocery budget which should carry me to the 26th as we only need fresh items - the cupboards are rammed full of things I really need to start using. Really determined to stick to the budget this month as that would reset our floating credit card spending we seem to accumulate every month. 
Still have child benefit coming in next Monday, so hoping to use that towards the credit card rather than for groceries. 
I also spent £20 on presents for my dad as it's his birthday soon, but that came out of the gifts savings account so all good. It's empty now though so will have to start refilling it before the big family birthday wave starts hitting at the start of August!
Only other spend was £4 for myself to book a swim session for next weekend. I've been loving going back to the pool and having a bit of alone time while I swim some very unelegant lengths. It's one of the few forms of exercise I truly enjoy so I'm ok with spending the odd £4 on it here and there (when I manage to nab a time slot - they're like gold dust at the moment!). 
I really hope eldest's swimming lessons will return soon as well, he loved going but hasn't been since Feb 2020 so I think he's forgotten everything by now! 
Hope everyone has a productive start to the week!

Debt_Me_Out_Of_Here

Good morning MSEers! 
Not much to report from yesterday, although it was an NSD which is good. 
I've cashed out £18 from PA this morning which I will use to pay for postage for the parcel for my dad, and one for my cousin. I'll have to get my head around the new customs declarations I have to fill in for this - yay Brexit. 
Nothing else going on really, have to decide what to make for dinner tonight - I'm thinking giant couscous salad with tahini dressing, but we'll see if I still feel like it by dinner time ha!