drb5

iTrader: (4)

The missus is due to give birth to our first in August, but she has only just found out what her pay entitlement is on maternnity leave and it's somewhat lower than we expected and we're now trying to find out what benefits there are out there to help a little?

Not expecting there to be much for two working(soon to be) parents, but every little helps......

SpecDscooby

All depends on your household income.

My mrs does'nt work, just gave birth to our 2nd last week, we dont live in a council house, have a morgage etc, fair to say not a burden on the economy.....we get.....*** ALL! Seriously nothing at all....just child allowance which stops in 2013.

not that there is anything wrong with a council house all, just trying to make a point about not being a burden...

Ant

Child tax credits and child benefit.

Child benefit is around £20 a week, helps for little things like milk and nappys.

Tax credits is all down to how much you earn.

Can't claim either till the little one comes.

drb5

iTrader: (4)

Cheers guys.

We have a house/mortgage, so you know i'm in that situation too and the missus intends on going back to work....my wage ain't THAT good.

I'll check out the child tax credits.

krisando

iTrader: (2)

+1 for above. works out bout 70-80 a month for child benefit, and tax credit depends on your earnings, if your lucky you will get the working and child element, just be cautious with them as they do make mistakes. I believe you can put the forms in for the tax credits prior to baby arriving, child benefit after.

Kev_turbo

go on the HMRC website and it will tell you exactly. It depends on your incomes and hours worked

SteveScooby

iTrader: (2)

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTax...tart/DG_073804

and

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/childbenefit/index.htm

Child benefit is £20ish a week
Tax credit is based on your salary, there's a calculator on there

slipstream_uk

iTrader: (1)

http://www.turn2us.org.uk/benefits_search.aspx

Chip

Why should we give people benefits for having a child anyway? In these times of recession if you cant afford them don't have them.

I can say that as my two are grown up now,and yes I did claim every penny I could when they were little though it amounted to the best part of f all as we were both working anyway.

Chip

Ant

Brilliant , it's ok for you to claim but others shouldn't

Chip

Hook line and sinker

Chip

Ant

here just for you

SpecDscooby

LOL @ Chip....^^

chocolate_o_brian

iTrader: (22)

I've been get a bit of working tax credit since turning 25. Will be a little more with child tax credit or whatever when our babys born but not a mahoosive amount. Mrs currently gets £124 a week maternity leave but is in the process of possibly taking voluntary redundancy.

HMRC are useless at the best of times in my experience so any calls and enquires should be logged just in case. They do usually backlog any payments owed. As an apprentice 14 months ago on about £3 an hour I was owed over £400 after about 8 weeks of them fannying about with a slight change in circumstance

drb5

iTrader: (4)

Thanks fellas.

It appears we're entitled to what your saying about the child credits, but 0 working tax. Better than nothing i suppose.

SRSport

If you live near me just come up and ask any of the locals. We have a town of benefit experts who make it their profession to work the system to the max. That effectively is their job.

tony de wonderful

How is living in a council house a burden?

All the people with mortages now are benefting from the raping of savers and what is in effect state socialism, plus the gov will pay your mortgage now if you go unemployed.

Lee247

How did you come to that conclusion. Mates hubby was made redundant. They had no savings and were on the bones of their *** until he decided to start his own business.
They got job seekers and nothing else. They had to borrow off their parents, to pay the mortgage and bills until the business started to make money.
You only get benefits if you know how to play the system. The honest people, who have paid all their lives get nowt

drb5

iTrader: (4)

Too true!

Certainly people we know very well get their benefits and do quite well from it, but they don't get how we can say "we're a bit skint" because we work! They seem to forget the position they are in and expect us to get the same benefits as they do....

chocolate_o_brian

iTrader: (22)

+1

I got jobseekers for 6 months at about £50 a week when I lost my last job on medical grounds. Where's the link to this free mortgage?

LEO-RS

Child benefit is universal and paid at £20.30pw

CTC is based on household income. In April the upper threshold is being dropped from £50k to £40k, so if your household income is more than this, no tax credit award.

CB is reported to be axed in 2013 for couples with a single higher rate tax payer which is crazy.

Couple 1.. 1x £45k higher rate tax payer, 1 x PT worker on £5k (Not entitled to CB)
Couple 2.. 2x £40k earners (Entitled to CB)

I think they really need to revisit this 1, the tories have alienated their core voters by doing this. They will lose hundreds of thousands if not millions of votes by hitting middle income familes again by doing this to them.

Myles

iTrader: (40)

Tony, wasnt the opposite true during the last big recession when interest rates were up above 10%? Swings and roundabouts, and as mortgages are generally over a long period, home owners are taking bigger risks and see more ups and downs during that period. Savers have every right to remove their money and put it where they want, when they want, dependant on notice agreements.

urban

iTrader: (1)

Milk?

She'll be lactating I would have thought.

Husband can use that money for beer - might aswell get something for himself, because he'll certainly not be getting any action for a while

Gear Head

iTrader: (2)

Seriously, where do you this infomation?

Ant

Not everybody breastfeeds.

But the last statement is so true , I'm lucky once a month now

PaulC72

I love threads like this people throw up all sorts of misinformation.

Can I also have a link to the free mrtgage payments as I need to do a claim back for when I was unemployed in 2009/2010. lol....pay your mortgage whatever next.....there is some crap posted sometimes.

Leslie

Thats only for illegal immigrants. It all part of the £29K+ they get per annum!

Les

austinwrx

I'm like you, married and we had a baby girl 17 mths ago.

I told my wife to put in for everything. I've paid into the system for 21 yrs and had F88K all ever out of the state.

what did we get ?

well child benefit of I think £10 a week.

no family/tax credits whatsoever.

we did at least get £250 child trust fund grant. I think she also got £150 one off family sure start grant thing.

if you were sat on the dole, you'd have got £500 instead of £250. probably more sure start grant too.


you do get a few freebies from health visitors and its worth going on line and signing up to pampers, bounty etc for freebies such as nappies and bags.

bottom line is, unless yr a scrounging dole head, you'll have to pay for everything yrself.

which in fairness I agree with: if you make that decision to have a family, yes you should pay for it.

she did get 6 mths maternity pay, then 3 mths at half and then 3 mths at nil.- she needed that 12 mths off and I was more than happy to cover costs.

she's back at work, but basically she'd working for little, due to child care costs.

I also think we're about to loose child benefit too under the new rules.

urban

iTrader: (1)

You want to put an end to that!
Otherwise she'll be requesting that you do your share of the feeding too.

Funkii Munkii

I'd heed this advice, I have lost count of how many letters I wrote to them telling them they had calculated it incorrectly, not because it was too low but way over the top, at one point they were telling me I would get £2000K a month. Had I not been wise to how it worked I could have said thanks very much and then been landed with a massive bill requesting over payments back months later, as many people did.

I even got letters asking me to pay them "x" amount as they had overpaid us and the figures they quoted didnt even tally up with what we had been paid, we hadn't been overpaid, it was just a total fiasco.

Since coming back from Oz I have filled out the forms again and cant wait for the whole saga to start again

It's a very badly run department and has been since day one, be warned.


Also in total agreement with LEO-RS, that is one fooked up idea that needs looking at properly.