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yup, it was announced in the 2008 budget on May 10 - it was all over the news for ages. i guess it may have been something you missed if you weren't interested in the budget info or if you weren't expecting or planning a kidlet cos it didn't apply to you at the time
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We'll still qualify but meh, would rather get it in one hit. I've never received any payments from FAO or Centrelink before (other than at tax time on the very rare occasion we get anything at all) so fortnightly repayments seem...messy...to me! LOL. I'd rather just get it and be done with it.
Last time we used a big chunk to pay our ob fees. Thankfully we are covered by PHI this time, otherwise we'd be a bit up the creek in that regard.
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doh - replied to wrong thread! my answer made no sense - sorry ladies!!
i agree with installments, i agree (to a degree) with having an income cut off - i just get grumpy that it's a hard line cut off - ALL eligibility for things like this should have a sliding scale - $1 makes the difference of whether you receive $5000 or not...
Last edited by briggsy's girl; March 6th, 2009 at 02:51 PM.
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I actually agree with it. I must be one of few though cos the general opinion I am getting is negative.
Hi, you can get around not qualifying for the baby bonus by salary sacraficing your superannuation. I've heard of quite a few families doing this, there was an article in one of the parenting mags about how you could get around it.
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Its a bit of a pain to be having it in installments for us, with DD we have put aside the money for her and want to do the same again so getting it each forthnight means we gave to remember to transfer the money over so it doesn't get spent on bills.
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Bit of a rant
Kind of an old thread I know but...
For us this really SUCKS! We qualify still, so I guess in that regard were lucky, but I was really hoping and planning to use that money to buy things we NEED for the baby soon after it's born. Both my partner and I are relying on Centrelink at the moment as he's studying full time and I cant work, and because they barely pay us enough to live on, let alone buy much needed things for our baby. We really needed that extra money up front so we can buy things like a pram/ stroller, clothes, high chair, bouncer/ swing and a whole heap of other stuff I probably havent even thought of yet.
It makes me so angry when Centrelink decide what is best for everyone without asking them what they need and looking at thier individual circumstances first. We dont gamble or drink, we didn't plan to have a big spend up on ourselves when we got the $5000, we planned to spend it on our child to give it the best start to life possible under our circumstances, now because of these changes our child is going to miss out on a tonne of much needed items.
How is that fair that so many other families before Jan 09 got the lump sum payment to do with what they like and we get f**ked over like this. It's just not fair. As if we didnt have enough to worry about financially without this thrown in to the mix.
Fortnightly payments just arent gonna cut it. Sure it'll help with little things like nappies and wipes but what about the big items? Where are we supposed to get the money for that? What are we supposed to do?
they did the same when calculating how much my partner was to get on Austudy. What he's getting now, what he's "entitled" to barely covers his repayments on his car and the fuel he needs to get to tafe and back each week. Where as what I'm "entitled" to is more than he gets and I don't have a job or any commitments other than my monthly phone bill. How does that work? So now I have to transfer money to his account each fortnight so he has enough to live on and more at the start of each month to cover his phone bill. Even then we are both JUST scraping by. On top of all this we have a layby on a cot and a car seat to pay off because those two things were absolutely neccesary, in our eyes, to have before the baby is born.
Sorry for the rant. Just had to get that out.
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I wouldn't be entitle to it, just my salary is close to the 150K mark and plus adding Hubbys would make us go way over that does that mean I would get nothing?
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