Hi girls, im going back to work full time in 2 weeks and never dreaded anything more in my life. The 2 grans have offered to look after my lo so I know he will be well looked after but I just dont want to leave him and go back to that horrible place of work.

How do you afford to give up work and what benefits do you get? I already get Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit but that is based on last years income. My OH also works full time.

Any advice would be great.

Hi Denise. My partner works full time and i work part time. We also get CTC and CB and i think if i gave up work we wouldn't be able to claim anything else because of my partners income. I think to be eligible for Working Tax Credits your income (between you both) has to be under around 15000 pa. However if you were single and not working I think you'd be entitled to further benefits, although I'm not really clued up on that. I'm lucky in that I enjoy my job and we can get by with me just working part time hours, could you reduce your hours perhaps? I think there should definitely be more financial support for working mother's as after all we are the ones paying the taxes x

We are in the fortunate position that our mortgage is only quite small so we can actually manage on just my oh's pay. We get child benefit and the lowest rate of tax credits but that is all. If you don't want to go back to your old job could you maybe find something else? Perhaps part time or working from home?

We are just lucky my hubby earns enough money to cover the costs of the two of us and our two kid morgage and all the bills and still have a few hundred left each month,
Which i think is good as my hubby dosnt like the idea of me going back to work because we need me to, he says if i go back to work it has to be because i want to.

i'm living on my last smp wage, havent sorted anything yet! applied for TC today, think i may be entitled to more but i havent got a clue! i've left everything till last minute...oops! There is a website called entitledto.com (i think thats it) that will tell you what you should get x