…work and be broke or be a social parasite? I talked recently about my sister who is a nanny, and makes about $1,800 per month. After all work related expenses, and paying another nanny to take care of her own kid, she has about $350 left. And now she is getting divorced, so on top of that she needs a $1,200 place to stay. Nothing fancy, that is what a 450sqft 1 bedroom costs 20 minutes outside of Paris those days. Her ex husband is helping a little and so are my parents but she is barely getting by.
courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
The thing is, in France, she could stop working altogether and rely on welfare. She could get a state allowance of $938 for her and her kid for living expenses. Then she could apply for state housing, and get a similar 1 bed flat for $600, and a $325 discount on that with another state housing help. Her rent would cost $275, leaving her with $663, instead of $600 if she works and rents privately.
There would also be multiple freebies such as
– 100% free healthcare. I discussed the French healthcare system, usually you pay 30% of the cost of acts, 6.9 euros for a GP consult for example, but when you are on state benefits you don’t pay a thing.
– free transit pass. Worth $100/month for unlimited bus, tram, underground in Paris and the whole region.
– $200 bonus for Christmas
– social discount on home phone, broadband, gas and electricity, a $50 discount per month.
– no need to pay a nanny since she wouldn’t work.
– next year when the kid is off to school, school lunches will be free, and so will be after school sport and art classes (or 90% discount) where the kid usually pays depending on his/her parents’ income.
– she will also get a supplement to buy books and clothes at the beginning of the school year.
– she can access lots of museums for free, go to the swimming pool and rent a tennis court for free (yes, really!!).
– if she begs a little more, she could get the equivalent of food stamps, called social supermarket, it is a place where you shop for food at a heavy discount.
I have to say I admire my sister for not giving up. She has no chance of promotion at work and will always be a nanny, so her salary will go up with inflation and that is about it.
It is really tempting to abuse such a generous system and that is what many people do, rotting the programs that are made for EMERGENCIES ONLY. You can find people living on those benefits for most of their lives, and coming up with all kind of excuses as why they can’t work. “Too depressed”, “My hand hurts” and simply “I would make less if I worked”. Now the government is trying to set up a fair offer system, that is if they offer you a job you can do, not too far from home and decently remunerated, you must take it or lose your benefits. But that still has a long way to go.
Would you go to work to support the system if you made more by doing nothing at home?
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I believe your sister’s daughter need more time with her mother. If she will be out of home for working with less opportunities, she is also gambling the time that passing by. The time that should be spend with here daughter. Kids nowadays need guidance from any parents.
yes, I wish she could have both. I can’t blame her for working but she is not seeing the kid much.
I would like to have a system like France or UK for the peace of mind, but don’t think I would use it. Just not me.
it is a great safety net, if you use it for emergencies. but it also prevents people with low salaries from wanting to make more or they would be above the benefit limit.
As much as I do enjoy doing nothing… I would probably still try to work my way out of the system. I guess I am just wired that way and would not feel good about myself knowing I was just leeching off others.
there is sadly an entitled mentality over there, as all those benefits are paid for out of our gross. Before income taxes, about 20% of your gross is taken out to pay for unemployment and your future state pension (if such thing will still exist in 30 years) so people feel like they have “worked” for it.
I’m sure you mentioned this, but I’m curious why she isn’t allowed to bring her kids to work with her? That would seem pretty fair and it would save her money. It seems like it should be a fringe benefit of being a nanny.
Anyway, I would never give up because there is no way that I would want to live at that salary level for very long. Maybe I’m just greedy 🙂
she can’t, that is the rule at her daycare. She could take 2-3 kids in and make more plus keep her own but now she only has a 1 bed place so that can’t happen.
Wow, I definitely think it’s worse in France than it is in the United States, but we have a similar issue where sometimes it makes more sense to keep getting unemployment benefits than it is to go out and take “any job” that you can get. Why work 40+ hours a week at a stressful job at a fast food joint when you can sit at home, watch TV, and make more money off of the state aid? There is a limit as to the number of weeks you can get such benefits, but it definitely is impacting our system.
we have a 2 YEARS limit on how long you can claim unemployment at 70% of your previous net (about 6000 euros if you were a trader lol) then you can get the minimum that is about $450 or the $900 odd my sister would get for being a single mom of one indefinitely… doesn’t push you to look for work.
This would be a hard decision, but I would prefer to work for my money. I just wouldn’t feel right if I was perfectly able to work, but then not working.
It would be strange indeed not to work if you can.
That’s a pretty sweet welfare system! It sounds tough to work at a job with no chance of a promotion. Id find it difficult yo keep working if I had no chance of ever making it.
She enjoys the work and has never been one to be money oriented but in this case the numbers don’t really add up. She studied for 7 years!
I can honestly see it both ways. If it’s really true that her only career track is being a nanny and she’s already maxed out the financial value, then I think that real consideration needs to be given to taking advantage of the social programs available. It’s really no different than making efforts to pay as little as possible in taxes, within the rules set up. The rules are there, you can agree or disagree with them, but she has a family to support and flat out turning your back on what might be the best decision for your family certainly has honor to it, but I’m not sure it’s the right decision.
With that said, it isn’t explained why being a nanny is her only option. There might be a very good reason for it, but another option is to explore a career track that would allow her to make more money than what the social benefits provide. This would, in my opinion, be the best track.
fair point well made. She is not career oriented so she likes where she works and don’t look for something better. Before she got divorced I ran the numbers of opening her daycare at home since they had a 4 bed house, and she would have made much more money (and looked after her own kid) but she said she wanted to get out of the house and liked her colleagues. Doesn’t make financial sense but that is what she wants…
It’d definitely admirable that she is working and not giving up. I don’t think she’d be abusing welfare if she went on it for a bit to get back on her feet and potentially find a higher paying job.
that is the tough part because her low salary is pretty much average to good in her line of work. So if she stayed home she might get used to it and not look for a job as it is more comfortable to sit on the couch all day for the same money.
I think I’d pick social parasite. Honestly, what’s the incentive to work a menial job in France if you get such massive benefits thrown at you for doing nothing? I can spend every day day tripping around Paris for free with my free housing, food stamps, free transit, and free museum admission. Such a hard life…..
tempting, right? on reachfinancialindependencecourtesyofthefrenchgovernment dot com I think I could come up with one cool perk a day and last for a while…
That was one of the problems around here when unemployment benefits kept being extended and extended again. Several of the renters in the neighborhood our duplex is in we’re just shocked at how “lucky” they were to find a job the week after their 99 weeks of unemployment ran out. I think their level of hustle increased pretty dramatically when it did run out.
that’s another thing. People keep receiving those benefits while working for cash under the table. Some migrants even go home for extended holidays because they can live like kings in Morocco or Algeria on those benefits and they come back to France twice a year to sign and extend their rights.
I hear it’s a real problem in France with young kids working for a few years then collecting unemployment. They make about as much as if they were to work.. so they don’t bother working, and stay at home rent-free.
You get 70% of your previous net salary for two years if you worked for two years. Then you fall into the minimum income that is about 400 euros a month with all the benefits described here, and a bonus for each kid. If you can live on 70% of your salary, you could do 2 years on 2 years off for life.
Wow, those are some very generous benefits. I would find it very difficult to choose to continue to work when I know so many people around me are making more by doing so much less. And it’s not even like they worked hard for a bit and are enjoying their spoils, they’d technically be enjoying other people’s spoils. Is there some other option available that she could use to help her get ahead in the long run?
well she has to finalize her divorce first, to get out of her husband’s tax bracket and stop paying taxes on her low salary then she should be able to apply for some little help towards the kid’s school lunches and after school activities. But her income is still above poverty line so she would not have such awesome perks as if she stopped working altogether.
“social supermarket” – Interesting naming conventions.
You’ve read about Eurosclerosis? The observation that Western European nations have systemic high unemployment because the safety net is so strong it rivals entry level jobs. I think you’ve got the perfect example of one of the tough choices this causes…
I hadn’t heard about it, thank you for the recommendation. When you live there it is hard to see some other possibilities, only now that I am abroad and come back occasionally do I really see how damaging those social policies can be. Social supermarkets are half way between a food bank and a normal supermarket, it is a non profit collecting free food from supermarkets that are about to expire, and selling them at 70 or 80% off to people close to poverty line to offset their costs and keep a little dignity in it not being a full handout.
I would work. I have a strong work ethic. Despite my parents’ qualifying for several programs when I was young, they did not take them. They understood these programs were there for emergencies, and if we abused them, the system would eventually fail. Unfortunately, many people don’t see it this way.
Agreed. Enforcing the “emergency only” part would mean paying a lot of staff to make sure people who qualify do not work illegally, really have no other form of income, no family support… and would break the system even more.
Taking government assistance takes away everything! In some ways it makes it easier, but it is a way of locking you into the system.
That is the bad thing. Having no job doesn’t push you to get better and find one.
I would probably do the economic analysis and take the money, if it can be done legally. However, I have a bigger question. Why doesn’t she look for a better job? And how many hours does she work for that? And why does she need a $1,200 apartment? I’ve found good places to live as low as $700 for a reasonably nice place (not in the middle of downtown, but an easy enough ride on the train).
I wouldn’t look at this as something to be locked into, I would look at it as a launch point for a better future.
It is a full time job at the moment, and jobs in daycare run for the school year so September/June.She got divorced in January, and I understand that she needed time to find a place, etc. and had enough trauma as it was to change job. The nanny she hires for her kid is also on a September to September contract and she wouldn’t have time to drop off/pick up the kid on time if she worked or lived much further. She already lives in the suburbs of Paris and close enough to my mom so she can step up if the kid needs baby sitting when my sister works longer hours. The ex husband is also nearby. Unlike me she isn’t the adventurous type to go relocate to a cheaper city where she has no job lined up and knows no one. I don’t agree with her choices since my family has to provide for her but understand that considering her personality she is trying, not as much as she should but as much as she thinks she can for now. She studied psychology for 4 years then decided she wanted to be a daycare staff, so did another 3 years for that, while her husband provided for both so she didn’t consider much the money aspect of her line of work. Few daycares pay better but hopefully she will look for a better one for Sept 14 since she already renewed her position for the next school year…
I was curious, as well, if she could take her kid to the other family’s house or have the other kid come to her house? Also, wouldn’t the benefits be finite/limited? I wouldn’t give up, as well, I’d find any type of work to make ends. Sorry to hear your sister is going through a divorce.
sorry I phrased that wrong, she is a daycare staff so she looks after 10 kids and yes, it would be more lucrative to run a private daycare from home but now she doesn’t have the space in 450 sqft. At her old house she could have done it but didn’t see the point as she wanted to get out of the house and had her husband’s salary to rely on. The rule of her daycare is you can’t bring your kid to avoid favoritism.
This is a similar problem in the US where people won’t get off the system because they make more money than they would when working. Why would someone work to earn money when they can get more by doing nothing?
The system is there to help those that need it. The problem is that those people need to be forced off after a set period of time. Sounds like the French system has some issues just like the US one.
yes, the main problem being how to control all the people who can claim benefits, and change the entitled mentality to one of last resort.
Rent a tennis court! We have a winner.
it is a tie with the free swimming pool and free access to the Louvre or castle of Versailles 🙂
I’m sorry that your sister is struggling so much, that sounds like an awful situation to be in. I would personally still work and not take advantage of the benefits offered. Like others have said, it’s there for those who truly do need it, and it gets abused far too often, which is a shame. The welfare mentality runs around like crazy here. You’re right that people make too many silly excuses to get out of working.
I admire that she is doing the right thing regarding the state and not abusing the system. But she hasn’t slowed down on her lifestyle and my parents are still paying for nights out and expenses that should be cut, so I hope she realizes it soon or when they stop paying she’ll go broke and need those benefits.
Doing the right thing sucks sometimes. Best of luck to your sister.
Thank you Nick!
If I’ve paid more than $1 million in taxes by the age of 35 do I still count as a social parasite?
It is only logical to live off the government if the alternative is to work and make a similar to slightly more amount. I can totally empathize with everybody whose main income is from the government.
If you use the parks, library and roads, absolutely not. But if you are able to work, refuse to work, and claim unemployment benefits, I guess you qualify. At the beginning of the crisis, a lot of French traders were fired from the City in London and found a loophole due to some EU regulation. They could claim 2 years of unemployment in France but had to work for one day to switch benefits back to France. They worked one day as waiters, and then claimed 6000 euros per month, the maximum you can get on benefits, for 24 months. They had been paying taxes in the UK but the UK would only give them 300 pounds per month for a very short time. Sure you don’t do anything illegal but that is still playing the system.
I think I’d feel better about myself if I worked for my money, but my situation is very different from the one you offer. It’s just Tammy and I here, no kids to consider.
I see help wanted signs everywhere I go, and although I know they are minimum wage gigs, I would have to take one or two and try to work my way up.
I would do that too. I was never afraid to leave a job because I knew worst case scenario I could be a waitress for a while and be hired the next day.
You know as well as me that I’ve seen it all before. Best of it is some mums that are out of the workforce for so long don’t want to go back so they keep having kids. The years keep overlapping and keep them in the system as one turns 18 I believe. I’m 100% sure how it all works but they get pretty much the same and really who would want to work when you get it all handed it to you. I agree, emergencies only…. but we know that will never happen as long as the system is so lucrative in nature.
It is! You can claim a lot more for each additional kid, it can become your own little business hehe.
I would take the government money. I would feel terrible and like a leech, but you have to put your child first, and working all the time for such a little gain makes no sense. If she were earning a huge salary so she could eventually quit or working her way up to a better job, it would be different, but I wouldn’t give up all my time for basically nothing when I could do nothing and be home with my kid. Actually, I would do whatever I could to find a job that paid better so that I could show my daughter you don’t have to depend on a man. I feel for her and your niece.
Thanks Kim. The kid factor is a tough one. I think she didn’t make those calculations, she sees her paycheck being more than the benefits and doesn’t go into further thinking. I didn’t want to point it out because that is her choice to make and it may push her to look harder for a better job.
I dated a girl once that was going to grad school full time and recently got a divorce. She was working 2-3 odd part time jobs to help her pay her mortgage each month. One day, without applying, she received food stamps via a debit card in the mail worth $600. She did everything she could to not use that money because in her eyes, she could work her behind off and still pay the bills. That money was for those that truly couldn’t afford to eat.
She was really brave. I think I would have gone for it, props to her for not doing it.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for your sister. I think most people would probably say they would do what she is doing, but not until you are in that situation will you ever know. Kudos to her!
Thank you Michael.
Wow, Pauline. I feel bad for your sister and applaud her for continuing to work. I see cycles of poverty where parents are using the system and modeling the same for their children. I like what you said about Emergency use, and that is when I would use it. The situation here in the US is so messy that it’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not. I do know that, after working with children in poverty, I want them to be able to have resources. It is never their fault, and one way out of such a situation is to work hard and get an education.
I don’t care if social welfare programs paid double my salary. There are few things I hate more than sitting idle. A few days off every now and then is fine, but much more than a week and I start getting antsy.