The pitfalls of savings between £6k and £16k whilst claiming uc

I think many of us are in agreement that going over the lower £6k limit on esa was was more trouble than it was worth - the award paid out once every 2 weeks and the only way to update the dwp on your saving situation at the end of each esa payment period was via the phone (often on hold for an hr plus, sometimes a rude person on the other end and months taken off your life) - the advice everyone gave me was to avoid going over £6k savings like the plague.

There’s many ways that uc is worse than esa. However one thing that looks better (at least on paper) in uc is that as the award is mostly managed online via the uc portal, there is a tab where you can report change of circumstances (in this case savings over £6) - when I went to jobcentre whilst sorting out the uc migration earlier this year I asked this question as a query and they suggested to refill that change of circumstances: savings part of online uc account on the last day of your uc payment period (so they have time to calculate your uc award before the next uc payment goes in)

In theory this looks like a significantly better system for reporting excess savings in terms of stress and logically claimants reporting this way are proving that they are honest (and most likely not committing any welfare fraud) and removing the need for regular invasive bank statement checks.

However this is the dwp we are talking about and they aren’t logically and seem to use every opportunity/the slightest change to make a claimants life difficult

so the question for uc claimants with savings over £6k - is it more trouble than it’s worth

• do you get asked for more regular bank statement checks?
• Did it increase the dwp contacting you via phone, email (basically increase dwp intrusion into your life/their attitude towards you like you’re guilty for daring to have savings)?
• Did it trigger any other unintended consequences such as early triggering of uc/pip reviews or increased jobcentre appointments (or anything else I can’t think of)?

im at a point where I think it would be sensible to start putting aside a portion of my monthly welfare awards for a rainy day (esp with the storm of uc/pip reform incoming and not being certain whether I’ll even qualify even more - a larger saving cushion would help with the cliff edge of that scenario)

But my biggest barrier to doing the sensible thing is the worry that the dwp will penalise and more regularly harass as a result - at the end of the day if going over £6k triggers consequences that massively increase stress then it’s not worth it