A MUM-OF-TWO has sparked fury after explaining what her £2.3k Universal Credit monthly payment goes towards.
Single mother Eleanor took to her TikTok page to reveal how she planned on managing the £2,338 UC allowance that had landed in her bank account.
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Universal Credit is a payment to help with your living costs.
According to the Gov website, it’s paid monthly – or twice a month for some people in Scotland.
Brits may be entitled to it if they’re on a low income, out of work or you cannot work.
The mum, who goes by the name of @ellieleehay on the platform, received over £2.3k at the end of December – which works out to be a little more than a person on a £39k annual salary, according to HMRC.
Someone putting away a common contribution of 8% into their pension, paying off a Plan 1 student loan would earn the same amount as Eleanor on a £39k salary, after Income Tax and National Insurance were taken off.
Despite the government offering a helping hand to Eleanor and her two kids, the mum said she was ”annoyed” because she had allegedly been ”paid slightly less” this time.
Although the single parent said she’d have to ”visit food banks” to be able to feed her family for the next few weeks, she had allocated £450 of the allowance for a trip to Disneyland.
A further £700 of the UC payment, she claimed in the video, went towards her rent, with gas and electricity bills totalling up to £150.
According to Eleanor, who is ”unemployed”, she didn’t have to fork out for her TV licence and her internet and phone bills set her back £38 and £35 respectively.
In the clip, which has since taken the web by storm, the mum said: ”I am paying my car and my car insurance next week, which comes to £550 in total.”
As well as spending around £100 on groceries, Eleanor confessed eating out is costing her a further £100 every month – and the sum doesn’t include takeaways.
After putting all the expenses together, the single mum said she was left ”with roughly £150 to £200” extra ”for the rest of the month”.
”With that in mind, I am going to try to budget as much as possible and I will have to use food banks a few times during the month.
”If anyone has any tips and advice on budgeting, I would really appreciate it,” Eleanor noted, in hopes social media users would flood to comments to help.
Am I entitled to Universal Credit?
According to the GOV website, if you’re on a low income or need help with your living costs, then you could be entitled to Universal Credit.
To claim, you must live in the UK, be aged 18 or over (with some exceptions if you’re 15 to 17), be under State Pension age, and have £16,000 or less in money, savings and investments.
Other circumstances are if you are out of work, or unable to work, for example because of a health condition.
But while Eleanor was managing to save, the video sparked fury amongst the internet viewers, with one wondering: ”This so the equivalent of a £40k per year job. Why do we bother working.”
Another angry TikTok user chimed in: ”I work full time on 34k and you get more than me.”
Someone else was just as baffled, writing: ”What is the point in working.
”That’s more than I get working full time – leaving home in the dark and getting home in the dark, traffic jams, stress. If this is true it’s shocking.”
A fourth critic penned: ”£2400 on the dole and il have to use the foodbank a few times this month but i spend 100pound on takeaways – is this a p***take while i was in disneyland – obviously this is a pi**take????”
