watatank said:
in your situation don't worry about it so much.
when you start earning > $400/fortnight (it's about that much anyway) you have a "bank" (for need of a better word) of $6000 they will deduct from for every dollar over you are each fortnight. if you have nothing left in this "bank" *then* they will start deducting from your youth allowance. this resets every year.
i *think* that's how it works but yeah don't worry too much about YA and get a job if that's what you want.
but remember if you get a job you have to declare your payments to centrelink (but not if you get paid cash in hand).
You've got the general concept right, but you are wrong on a couple of the details.
Every dollar you earn above $260 in each fortnight will reduce your youth allowance by about 25c in each dollar. If you dont earn that amount though, the difference is added to an 'income bank', where you can continue this until a maximum of $6000 is achieved. Once this happens, you can earn over the $260/fortnight and any additional earnings will simply reduce the amount you have in the 'income bank'.
For example, I used to work at a fast food place, and would earn about $200 a fortnight. So roughly, each week I had $60 go into my 'income bank'. Then I stopped work, and had no earnings, so they put $260 each fortnight into my income bank. When I started working, I had about $2300 that I could earn, and still receive my full amount of Youth Allowance.
So, to answer the OP's original question, as long as you are earning less than $260 each fortnight from KFC, Macca's etc, then you will still receive your full $190 per fortnight in Youth Allowance, PLUS any earnings from your job. You just need to make sure you earn around $130 a week for this to continue.
