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Are you one of these several million people in the United Kingdom who is a carer? Are you amongst the 400,000 people missing out on claiming carer's allowance? The estimated pool, the estimated fund of carer's allowance, not being claimed is approximately 1.3 billion pounds, a lot of zeros. In this week's podcast, I'm going to be covering what carer's allowance is.

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Secondly, I'm going to be exploring what the eligibility criteria are, and lastly, showing some insight and stats about carers.

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You are listening to the I Hate Numbers Podcast with Mahmood Reza. The I Hate Numbers podcast mission is to help your business survive and thrive by you better understanding and connecting with your numbers. Number love and care is what it's about. Tune in every week. Now, here's your host, Mahmood Reza.

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Hi folks. Welcome to another weekly episode of I Hate Numbers, the podcast that's designed to improve your financial awareness, improve your money mindset, help you and your business make more profit, save tax, and time. What's not to love about that? Let's crack on with the podcast. Firstly, what is carer's allowance?

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Now, carer's allowance is a benefit provided by the DWP and administered by the DWP. DWP, by the way, folks, is the Department for Work and Pensions. It's a taxable benefit, and if you do count as a carer for carer's allowance, you can also claim universal credit. Obviously, the level of universal credit you can claim and how much you get will depend on other circumstances, including your savings

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if you have any, your partner's work and joint income. Let's explore the criteria that has to exist for you to be able to claim carer's allowance. These are as follows: you mustn't earn more than 128 pounds a week after tax and expenses, and those expenses can include up to 50% of your pension contributions and also some of the costs of caring for your children or the disabled person while you're at work.

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In addition to those financial criteria, all of the following must also apply. You’ve got to be aged over 16. That's unfair on the several hundreds of thousands of people who are carers and estimated, there are over 290,000 carers in the UK who are aged between 16 and 24. Also, there are young adult carers below that estimated to be about 700,000.

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That's a lot of responsibility. Secondly, you've got to spend at least 35 hours a week caring for somebody. You've got to normally live in England, Scotland, or Wales. You can't be in full-time education, and you can't be studying for more than 21 hours a week or more. There is another issue as well, and you mustn't be subject to any immigration control.

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For further detail, check out the show notes and I'll give you a link to HMRC site to dive into more detail than we need. In addition, the person that you care for must also be in receipt of one of these benefits. A PIP. It's nothing to do with fruit. It's a personal independence payment, the daily living component. Disability living allowance, either the middle or the highest care rates, attendance allowance, and remember, it's either one of these benefits, constant attendant allowance, the Armed Forces Independence payment, or the constant attendance allowance are the basic four-day rate.

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So having gone through those hurdles of financial 128 pounds a week and less after tax and expenses, the age, the number of hours you've got to spend on caring, then you can make the claim. Now, obviously, when you make that claim, have certain things ready, like your national insurance number, your bank details, your employment details,

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if you finish work, your P45. Those financial details need to be provided when you make the application. Now, the actual level of the claim is around about 68 pounds a week. Now, if you work that out, that is equivalent to 1 pound 91 per hour. And it's no surprise that of the carers in the United Kingdom, it saves the UK economy, in financial terms alone, about 132 billion pounds a year.

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If you take into account the amount you get for carer’s allowance, annualised it’s just over three and a half thousand pounds a year, and you compare that to the cost of a carer, if you were to employ somebody just over 19,000, you can see why the UK economy has saved quite a lot of money. Now, obviously, people care, not driven by financial motives, but that financial contribution can have a big impact into the household coffers.

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Now lastly, I wanna share some facts and figures about carers. When I was preparing for this podcast, it was quite illuminating to me coming across these stats, and I was not aware of them, and I want to share those with you. Now, these facts and figures I've taken from Carers United Kingdom. It's a leading campaigning and support group for carers, and it is worthwhile checking their site out.

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If you're in that situation, you are new to caring, you are one of the 6,000 people every day who take on a caring responsibility, having a good network to connect into is gonna be really useful. One in eight adults, around 6.5 million people, are carers every single day, and over 6,000 people take on a caring responsibility.

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That's around about 2 million people each year. The split is 58% of carers are women, and 42% are men. Now in terms of time commitment, 1.4 million people on average every week provide over 50 hours of care per week. Over a million people care for more than one person. Now, there's precious people who are at work, juggling caring responsibilities and looking after somebody.

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That's about 5 million people. That's about one in seven of the workforce. Every day, 600 people give up work to care for an older or disabled relative. Then, check out the show notes at the end, folks here, and I'll give you a link to tap into and have a closer look at Carers United Kingdom. There's a support mechanism for anyone who's involved in caring responsibilities.

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Remember, there's also the additional benefit that you can get in terms of the financial support, and in terms of caring, if you've had to give up work, then obviously money and finances are going to be at stretch, and it's a sad fact that there's all that money that's unclaimed. If you're entitled, I would strongly urge you to submit that claim.

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You can, by the way, when you submit a claim for carer’s allowance, go back up to three months. 13,000 of the UK's young carers, and that's below the age of 16, work for over 50 hours per week, and that's a lot. And that's quite a lot of pressure on our youngsters. Folks, let me just wrap this up here. So we've talked about eligibility for carers allowance.

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The amount that you'll get under the carer’s allowance is not a significant sum, but it's money, nevertheless. You can go back up to three months to make a claim. You've got to be working and caring for somebody for at least 35 hours a week. You've got to live in England, Scotland, or Wales. You can't be a full-time student and you can't be studying for more than 21 hours a week or more.

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If you find you are eligible, do please make that claim. Tap into the networks there to support you. Until we speak again next week, have a good week folks. We hope you enjoyed this episode and appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show. We hope you got some value. If you did, then we'd love it if you shared the episode.

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We look forward to you joining us next week for another I Hate Numbers episode.