Carers Allowance - Am I better off with it included in or seperate from Universal Confusing?

GuillermoK

Carers Allowance - Am I better off with it included in or seperate from Universal Confusing? Thanks for any replies and wil share what data I can. GK

GuillermoK

Please: 1. How do I edit this? 2. As a full time Carer, single no kids, looking after parent, seperate UC (monthly) and CA (weekly), what is my Savings Cap - £6k or £16k? Thank you advance. GK

calcotti

Financially it make's no difference. If you receive Carer's Allowance it is deducted in full from your UC. You can get the carer element included in your UC (provided you do 35 hours pf care/week and are not already getting the LCWRA element yourself) without claiming CA.

There are two key differences
1) You can receive the carer element regardless of any earnings you have whereas you cannot receive CA if you earn more than £132/week
2) On CA you get Class 1 NI credits, whereas UC only gives Class 3 (for most people the difference is not significant).

GuillermoK

Thanks calcotti - didn't know about the NICS difference. Anything you can say about editing a post much appreciated (13.7k posts? WOW). MOST PRESSING ISSUE is Savings Cap/Assets Limit - saved my pennies up during lock down and recent simultaneous deposit of UC and Council Tax rebate has marginally pushed me over £6k till Rent is paid:

UC website says this:

To claim you must:

live in the UK

be aged 18 or over (there are some exceptions if you’re 16 to 17)

be under State Pension age

have £16,000 or less in money, savings and investments. HELP

calcotti

I'm not clear what you are now asking.

You cannot receive UC if more than £16,000 capital.

So the cap is £16,000 but anything over £6,000 affects the amount of UC received.

If you have more than £6,000 of capital your UC will be reduced by £4.35/month for each £250, or part thereof, over £6,000. However your current UC payment is not counted as capital, anything left over when you get your next payment will be counted as capital. 

As regards editing a post. You should see a cog to the top right of your post. If you click on that you get an option to edit the post.

p00hsticks

calcotti said:

As regards editing a post. You should see a cog to the top right of your post. If you click on that you get an option to edit the post.

If the cog doesn;t show, it make be because the OP is a 'new' user (in terms of how many posts they have made, not necessarily how long they have been a member of the forum).  

GuillermoK

Thanks both, sure you can tell by my sparse number of posts and the abcence of a cog...

I have no income other than UC and CA. Will try asking UC again...

calcotti

GuillermoK said:

Thanks both, sure you can tell by my sparse number of posts and the abcence of a cog...

I have no income other than UC and CA. Will try asking UC again...

I'm not clear what you want to ask them. If you are receiving CA then (unless you get the LCWRA element of UC) your UC should include the carer element. Does it?
The CA will be deducted from the UC.