I am a single parent of 2 young children. I work full time and I live alone. I am wanting to leave my job to be a stay at home parent but I’m worried I won’t have enough money to live. I understand I will get single parent pension and FTB. If I study is there anything else I can claim? I would like to study to get into a different field with school friendly hours.
7 Replies
How old are the children?
I have one started prep this year and my other is 3.
If you're studying fulltine you might qualify for austudy. Your best bet is to hop into the Centrelink website and put in all of your details and see what you might qualify for because there are a lot of varying factors
As a working mum and looking at the SAHM's I know and the position they're in compared to mine I'd recommend if you can work, do so even if it's part time.
OK please don't bother reading all the facebook posts. People that are married, have houses, & have 2 incomes have no idea what it's like to be a single parent.
I found the best way for me to stay at home with my kids and still have enough money to live was finding a casual job that I worked on weekends. The kids were at their dads, I didn't need to pay child care. I still received my benefits slightly reduced, but got paid on top of that from my job. I also never get child support.
It was absolutely not worth it for my to go back to work full time as I would have been earning less than what I would make on benefits once I had paid for childcare.
Do not feel guilty if you decide to stop working. I personally will not go back to work until I need to as I refuse to pay someone else to raise my kids and be left with the bare minimum. I can live comfortably (not lavishly) working casual hours.
How dare these nasty women say you aren't allowed to stop working because they don't think it's right. One day they may be in the same situation and whether they like it or not will probably need to call centrelink at some stage
Check out the fb page “parenting payment for parents not Newstart”
Full of people struggling to live on Centrelink. Skipping meals so kids don’t get hungry etc. it’s not a great life
Stay part time if you can. Trying to get back into the work force is so hard. Not to mention that benefits will decrease in a few short years and you'll have no choice but to get back out there.