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Jobseekers Allowance-Help please??

  • 06-06-2009 7:10pm
    #1
    Clueless09
    Closed Accounts Posts: 139 ✭✭


    Hi All-Hope someone can help me on this.

    My Dad was made redundant last year, his JSB is about to come to an end. My mother was a house wife all her life and is dependant on him. He will be means tested shortly for JSA.

    They have 71k in the bank from the sale of their house two years ago-this is their pension as they have no private pension fund. They are 59 and 58 respectively.

    They are wondering if this will be taken into account and will they be forced to take this money off deposit to live off instead of jobseekers allowance-they will be forced to pay a big penalty as it is locked up for 5 yrs and only just less than two have passed.

    Also they own their own home-is this considered an asset? Id say in todays market its prob worth 400k?

    Can anyone shed any light on this as they are extremely worried about the possibility of their pension being gone before they reach 65.

    Many Thanks in advance for any help :)


Comments

  • #2
    Xiney
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,085 ✭✭✭Xiney


    Your own home is not considered an asset.

    Your savings are counted as means for JA using the following formula:
    The formula for assessing the value of capital including property (but not your own home), savings and investments is as follows:
    Capital Weekly means assessed
    First €20,000 Nil
    Next €10,000 €1 per €1,000
    Next €10,000 €2 per €1,000
    Balance (€40,000 +) €4 per €1,000

    So, your parents would have their weekly means assessed at
    €10 + €20 + €124 = €154 per week. There is a chance they would have to dip into their savings in order to survive, if they can't survive on the €185.90 per week they are most likely going to get. (339.90 - 154 = 185.90)


  • #3
    Clueless09
    Closed Accounts Posts: 139 ✭✭Clueless09


    many thanks for the reply :D


  • #4
    Thoie
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,344 ✭✭✭Thoie


    This is a bit complicated, but it might be worth looking into. Bear in mind, I might have this arseways, so they'd need proper financial advice!

    If they find that they're going to have to dip into their savings, and therefore lose the benefit of the 5 year lockdown thing, it could be worthwhile looking into setting up a PRSA with the remaining money (dropping it into the PRSA in lumps). I think it might be possible to essentially backdate some of it to when your dad was last working, which would give him some tax relief. At their age, they'd want the funds to be put in secure things, so it would be a bit like a deposit account then, except they can't access it till they retire, and there are limits on what way you can access it at retirement.

    The benefit of doing this at the moment is that money in pensions isn't assessed as savings/income for things like the JSA, but there may be a lot of pitfalls that would make it a bad idea for them. Most of the banks/brokers will offer free advice and discuss some options with them, but bear in mind that all the advisors will want to sell them a product of one kind or another, so tell them not to sign anything while they're there - come home and think about it!

    Maybe you could draw up a list of questions for them to bring to the meetings?


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