Stupid benefits system. If they let me do what I wanted with my money, I could save and invest it and possibly not need to be on benefits forever, but instead they'll stop my benefits if I have more than £2000, and only start them again once I've spent some of it.
Could you put your savings into another bank account that the government doesn't know about?
Savings accounts are all tied to my national insurance number, so I doubt I could hide stuff that way.
The only thing I can think of is hiding your money the old-fashioned way. Under your mattress.
Sadly, that defeats the whole point of the exercise, which is to invest and have the money grow exponentially, as investments do. By hiding it under the mattress, I actually lose money as inflation eats away about 3% of the hidden money every year. If I could invest as I pleased, I could eventually have enough money to not require benefits, but by denying me that option, the system ensures that I'll remain dependent on benefits.
The whole thing sucks. 
I would probably try and use someone else's account but then you have the issue of trust and that sort of thing.
On the plus side, I've been helping mum with her finances, since she inherited some money when her father died. Most of it's willed to me, so I have a pretty strong interest in making sure it gets high returns. Unfortunately, mum is pathologically risk-averse, and would have left it sitting around in a savings account and trickled it into cash ISA's if I hadn't kept on at her about it, but she's coming around now and has finally realised that the ultra-cautious approach doesn't pay off. I also educated her a bit about insurance, and she's cut about £100/month off her insurance bill after getting rid of the superfluous crap that she doesn't need insurance for. £10 a month, for example, was going to pay for 'accidental damages', like if she spilled paint on a carpet, which is entirely unnecessary; she has more than enough capital to pay for things on her own, and that £10 a month could buy her a new carpet every year. Now she's just insured for things that she couldn't pay for on her own, like if the house burned down, and car insurance, which she's legally required to have. I told her to change the car insurance to third-party only insurance, but I don't know if she's done that or not.
