Endowment payout & savings

BobBoo

I’ve just received a £40k payout from a 25 year endowment policy. I’ve paid 25k into my mortgage, 5k to pay off a loan, and about 5k to buy new items for my house and some home repairs. This brings my savings to below 6k. I’m currently in work but for health reasons I may not be for much longer. Does anyone know - if I need to claim benefits, will the way I’ve spent my endowment be seen as me trying to deliberately reduce my savings?

Keep_pedalling

Unlikely, endowments were designed to pay off a mortgage and you have spent most of it on that plus paying off some other debt.

calcotti

As an aside, the savings threshold for benefits is £16,000 (although savings over £6,000 would reduce benefit entitlement).

TELLIT01

Very unlikely to be seen as deprivation of capital, no least because it would be virtually impossible for DWP to prove the money was spent in order to be able to claim benefits.   You are still working and from what you say there is no certainty about any date when you will have to stop.

BobBoo

Thanks so much for your responses. Totally appreciated.