Losing child benefit is one cut too many for this middle-class family and it is going to hit where it hurts
It isn’t often that even George Osborne feels me with despair. But when at the Tory conference, the chancellor announced the end of child benefit for higher earners, I took note: he had hit me where it hurt.
Like the Osbornes, we have two children and currently receive £33.70 a week £1,752.40 a year in child benefit towards their upkeep. But there the similarity ends. While I recognise the moral case for scrapping the benefit for the better-off, that doesn’t feel like us. Admittedly, we can hardly be classified as being on the breadline. But the reality is, as a family living in an expensive area on a single income not much above the £43,875 threshold, it feels as if we need that cash.
This became clear in August when, my husband, a trainee surgeon in an NHS hospital, had his take-home pay unexpectedly slashed by about £650 a month. Doctors are assumed to be on huge salaries thanks to the publicity given to GP partners with £100,000 earnings, but my husband now earns about half what a GP does.
This cut has made a big difference to our lives. We had to relocate to expensive Cambridge for his work which meant a £230,000 mortgage for a three-bedroom house and we run two cars as we live in a village and he has to commute 140 miles a day to Ipswich.
As a result, I have become far more scrupulous about balancing the books. Our incomings including that not insignificant £33.70 a week in child benefit greatly exceeded our outgoings. And so, like an increasing number of families, I’ve had to take a ruthless approach to our expenditure. Some of this has hurt; some of it has proved quite salutary.
The easy cuts quite rightly won’t garner much sympathy. Sacking the cleaner we had for two hours a week, saved £80 a month. Banning online shopping from Ocado and turning to Sainsbury’s on days they deliver for nothing, and looking out for special offers in the local Co-op, saves about £120 a month. Shopping at Tesco makes it cheaper still.
I switched car insurance on moneysupermarket.com, saving about £36 a month. Potty-training my son he was ready but I’d been reluctant saved the same amount in disposable nappies.
We have no savings all money spent on moving house six times in 10 years for my husband’s career but we’ve stopped the £20 a month put in each of the children’s child trust funds.
School dinners, poor value at £10 a week, were scrapped in favour of packed lunches with homemade flapjacks rather than bought cereal bars costing less than a fiver a week.
At the risk of sounding too virtuous, we’ve reduced our alcohol consumption no automatic glass of wine after getting the children to bed. Not working, I’d already turned into a frugal cook making a chicken last three days; whizzing up my own soup; baking; churning out copious amounts of spaghetti bolognese.
We’ve also exploited our allotment. I may be tired of blackberry and apple compote and very tired of courgettes but it’s local, green and, crucially, free.
Charity now begins at home. Where I would have once have made the trip to Oxfam, I’ve just packaged up our old baby clothes, cot and bedding for a National Childbirth Trust sale; the last one made me £85, to be spent on new clothes for the children and, for my two-year-old, a single duvet.
Despite being unable to sew, I’ve joined my local Stitch ‘n’ Bitch group; perhaps those pre-pregnancy clothes, bought when I had my own income and of far better quality than anything I wear now, can be resurrected.
Birthday presents for children’s parties my five-year-old daughter went to at least 20 last year now come from the Book People or Red House, books being educational and bought in bulk cheap. But the days of three for two paperbacks in bookshops are over. I buy no books for my children or myself and visit the village library instead; this means I’m rediscovering gems from my childhood that I wouldn’t necessarily see in bookshops, and I can peruse cook books I don’t need to buy.
Much of this may seem like tinkering around the edges but it has saved at least £400 a month.
Abandoning the repayment part of our mortgage and all thoughts of holiday last year’s was a week off-peak in Cornwall; we’re hardly profligate are other measures we’ve had to take to make up the shortfall.
We’re lucky, of course. When the woman selling me my Guardian commented that Osborne’s move was “quite right, the rich don’t need it”, she clearly grouped me in this category. I’ve had the luxury of being a stay-at-home mum since my second child was born two years ago something many women don’t have a choice over and, at some point in the not too distant future, I will earn money again.
I’ll certainly need to by 2013, because it’s hard to see what else would give to make up for that £33.70 a week. The answer: any remaining treats.
As it is, things once taken for granted are now weighed: ballet lessons for my daughter, but no jazz dance; no going out for the adults; no coffee shops; no haircuts and certainly no highlights; lots of hand-me-downs.
Everything is weighed up and assessed. Not just “Is it worth it?” but “Can we afford it?”
In some ways, this is good. I want my children to be brought up knowing the value of things. Luckily, they are young enough to be entertained for nothing: racing round the park; hunting for conkers; looking for big sticks.
It’s a long way from those carefree double-income-no-kids days. But it’s something we’re all going to have to get used to.
