But...
What if the reason you have £5000 in savings is because you've been careful with your money over the years - as opposed to some other people who, for example, blow it all on drugs and alcohol.

Why should those people then receive benefits, when the sensible saver does not?

That's just sending out a message to people that there's no point in saving: may as well squander everything here and now, because if you're even unemployed then the poor chumps who have been saving will bail you out.
(EuroSong I love horse meat: best of all the animals, Sun 5 Apr 2009, 14:30, 3 replies)

thankyou
better put than I could have hoped to. In fact, sums up my situation neatly.

I think he's backpedalled on his original post though.

(IMustn'tPanic, this is not a personal attack on you, we're all just discussing an issue. Please keep posting!)
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Sun 5 Apr 2009, 14:36, closed)

I think
it's more a case of morals. Yes it's good to save and no you shouldn't be denied benefits because you have but I personally wouldn't apply for them because the idea of them is to help those who are really in need, if I've got savings I'm not in need.

So yes you should be entitled to it to encourage saving, but you shouldn't take it.

Isn't it fun trying to live up to what you believe in? The answer is no it's fucking annoying and I would have a much easier life as a hypocrite.
(Hippo_of_Doom, Sun 5 Apr 2009, 17:46, closed)

if you have £5,000 in savings,
no matter how hard it was for you to save it up, then the odds are you're either saving to buy something BIG (shiny car, huge wedding, safari holiday, etc) or you are a person who prefers to have some funds put aside just in case something goes to shit (the boiler explodes, the car needs repairing, your house burns down).

In the first scenario (saving for something BIG), well, benefits are meant for people who are at rock bottom. There is no definition of rock bottom which includes having money put aside to splash on a fabulous holiday.

I'm sure someone's about to tell me about the legions of people on the dole who have amazing cars and tellies and whatnot. I've only met one of those, and the only reason she had all that stuff was because she was too stupid to understand that "catalogue" "credit" or "loan" means you have to give the money back.

In the second scenario - well, isn't being jobless exactly the type of rainy day you were saving for? Depending on the type of benefit, it can be claimed when you have less than £3,000 or less than £1,500 left in savings. When I got sick and lost my job, it took the various departments a long time to sort out my claims - two months for Incapacity Benefit, six months for Disability Living Allowance, and almost a year for Housing Benefit, all of which was at a time when I was (a) very ill, (b) trying to come to terms with being suddenly and permanently ill, (c) dashing back and forth from hospitals and doctors appointments, and (d) having to put up with fucking attitudes about 'benefit scroungers' on top. Yeah, I think I would have preferred it if I had managed to save up enough money so that I didn't have to do the "how will I keep a roof over my head" panic until I'd got a handle on the "what the fuck is wrong with me and am I going to die of it" panic. Unfortunately I was all of 23 years old, earning ~£10k, living on my own, debt-free but with less than £1,500 in the bank. How frivolous of me.

The point is you *could* have squandered your money, if you'd wanted to. You *chose* to save it instead, deciding that getting an extra £500 in the bank was more important to you than going on a weekend bender of coke and whores. Just like you *could* piss away your hard-earned savings, give up your job, and make a claim if you think being on benefit is easy. I somehow suspect you won't, though, because life is better with a bit of a financial safety net, a feeling of self-worth, a reason to get up in the morning, and aspirations beyond "a job, any job, I can't afford to be fussy".

PS. This isn't a rant at anyone in particular and the "you" is generic. I agree absolutely that it is shit when one's hard work (such as saving) goes down the pan and I agree absolutely that it is horrible to feel penalised for having 'been sensible' or 'done the right thing'. I'd happily cut the payments to people who live in situations where all essentials are provided (eg with parents or a partner) and consider JSA to be £60.50 of weekly pocket-money. I just don't believe the answer is to refuse to give subsistence-level benefits to people whose worst crime is to have no other resources.
( Batsgirl, Mon 6 Apr 2009, 12:01, closed)

interesting
Just to be clear: I'm not arguing against there *being* a savings threshold, just that it is unreasonably low.

After all, I think unemployment is not a rainy day, rather a fact of life; and you can't punish people just because their employers were greedy / incompetent / unlucky.

If the Minumum Wage was actually a Living Wage; most people could replace lost savings, and I wouldn't be complaining.
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Tue 7 Apr 2009, 19:59, closed)