Q I am 60 years old and on Incapacity Benefit of £72.15 a week. My wife, aged 58, earns £58.60 a week and we have savings of £13,000. Our council tax is £82 a month and we have no mortgage. Is there any help we can get?

A Once you reach 60, the benefit rules become more generous, so do not think your savings will rule you out. Phone 0800 991234 to claim pension Credit of about £26 a week, which will lead to a full council tax rebate, making you £40 a week better off overall.

Q Our combined State Pensions are £141.77 and my husband's works pension is £205.63 a month but, because our savings are more than £16,000, we do not qualify for council tax rebate. As our house needs rewiring and other repairs, we will have to use our savings. By how much could we reduce our savings before we qualified for any benefit help?

A In your circumstances, you would start to qualify for Pension Credit with savings of less than £17,000, but it would not be much. Once they went down to £16,000, you could get Pension Credit of about £2 a week and your council tax bill would go down to about £312 a year. At the other extreme, if they reduced to £6,000, the point where they are ignored altogether, your Pension Credit would be about £9 a week and your annual council tax £175.

Q I am a widower of 74 with a State Pension of £144.14 a week and an annuity, after tax, of £44.15 a month. With savings of £18,000, I cannot get Pension Credit or a rebate on my single person's council tax of £720.25 a year. Will I always be excluded from help?

A As a single pensioner with a weekly income of more than £144, you could never get Pension Credit. Like the previous writer, your savings are too high for you to get Council Tax Benefit. But if you too were to reduce your savings to £16,000 by reasonable spending, you could reduce your annual council tax liability to about £555.