Could I be entitled to benefits?

[Joe Blow]

I am under 25, my girlfriend is a full time student with the bog standard loans.

I am self employed and earn less than £800 a month. Our rent is £220 a week. Council tax is £138 a month (which I pay as we got a reduction due to my partner being a student)

Obviously we have gas/elec on top of this etc as well as food. I suffer from depression and anxiety and work from home due to these problems and have only recently started to face all my bills and problems after having my head in the sand so long.

I just want a better quality of life and feel like even if I pay all my debts off I might as well not even be bothering because my quality of life wouldn't be any better.

I've put off sorting all this out for so long and after reading so much positive stories here I feel more liberated to stand up for myself.

So can anyone offer advice on what I could do regarding to benefits to help survive a bit better?

[Joa]

At a first glance I would say apply for Working Tax Credit and possibly for Incapacity Benefit or even Disability Living Allowance. You can also try for Housing Benefit. Your partner's income of Student Loan would be taken into consideration when calculating HB.
You must read up before applying for disability/sickness benefits- please have a look t the sticky post with useful links. Other benefits are number-crunching, but disability/sickness benefits need more personal, subjective info.

[Joa]

Originally Posted by davjoh

I would strongly advise you do not claim Incapacity Benefit, it will do nothing but worsen your depression!

Davjoh

How true, but with help of experienced adviser, can be bearable.
Wouldn't wish to put off anyone from claiming IB but this is definitely one of the jobs that you may need help with.

[GlasweJen]

I thought disabled people over 16 who worked 16 hours or more could claim a type of tax credit?

[Joa]

But OP is not in receipt of disability bens.

[GlasweJen]

Sorry, as i understood it you just had to have one of the disabilities on the list that came with the WTC form to be eligable, it didn't occur to me until now that reciept of a disability benefit would be the proof of having the disability that you would send away with the form.