Am I the only one that thinks that the budget is good?!

Another rude netter!!! Just because you disagree you don't have to be an arsehole!

I'm single, low income, desperately saving for my first property. Am gutted about the ISA news but apart from that I'll be less than £9 worse off a year - which comes from petrol taxation.

Since I've said I'd be happy to pay more tax to bolster our public services, then I can't grumble

I work in this field. There is no misunderstanding!

Can we not give parents supermarket vouchers instead of child benefit? Excluding booze and cigarettes?

Why does it need to be cash? If its to get kids out of poverty, which i am FULLY on board to help, why do we need to give it in cash?

Hand it over @SuffolkBargeWoman;

Yes you are

I agree with the ending of voluntary class 2 NI contributions for those living abroad, essentially making it harder to qualify for a UK state pension if you are not working or paying tax in the UK.

Putting money in my pension is pure greed?????
Seriously?????

Yes, anyone who thinks we are taxing our way to better services is going to be sorely disappointed.

Yes it will. There has been a huge amount of research done on this (and it’s the child element of universal credit not child benefit) and it’s estimated that a further 109 children every day cross the poverty line whilst the cap was in place. This has the potential to make a huge difference to thousands of struggling families.

I'm sure lots of people claiming UC now are good at budgeting as well. 59% of parents claiming UC are actually in work as well.

I'm glad that you utilised the benefits system when you needed it and now have such negative opinions about people who use it.

Also my point was that if you're still in your twenties there is lots of time for you to need the benefits system again. Anything can happen.

If you are earning enough to be in a position to add thousands in a pension just to avoid tax, you're already self sufficient. It's pure greed and completely tone deaf to the problems in society.

Also, why the name change? You clearly can’t truly think the budget is that great if you don’t want your opinion to be linked with previous posts 🙄

Me and DP have a joint income of about £95k (usually..DP got made redundant last week so right now its my £70k)

Own home horrible mortgage rate, horrible childcare bill. I guess we come under middle earners. Not much left at the end of the month and not much in savings

The forgotten as I like to say. Not poor enough for help not rich enough to not have to worry.

It could have been worse for us. Tbh we don't win or lose this time.

The benefit cap annoyed me as we have longed for another child but had to put it off for now due to cost and no help.

As "in the middles" I guess we have just come to accept we are already shafted enough and not being shafted anymore is a bonus so overall we sighed relief.

The budget is a pile of shit and you’re deluded OP.

Hope that clears things up.

Policies that are good for people do not always sound nice. Policies that sound nice are not always good for people. I think everyone understands this on an intuitive level but it gets lost in political debates.

It is in our collective interest that the economy is strong and we live within our means. Obviously (and sadly) this means that some people now will live in very difficult situations and won't have everything they want, possibly not everything they need. This does not mean we should jeopardise our collective future and the futures of all children in the UK to fix those difficult cases. This is not callous. This is weighing up the pain of many (the future population) against the not so many.

Good politicians would see horrible, painful, difficult situations and feel enormous personal empathy while still having the clarity of vision to not put the whole country on the path to economic ruin to rescue those cases. Labour has failed on this.

Good politicians would stand up and say the thing that needs saying which is that the pension triple lock is financially crippling the country and needs to go, even though pensioners vote reliably. Labour and Conservative together have failed on this.

Why is no one making the case for our children? For today's young? For difficult decisions that make the country stronger?

I think you may have misunderstood the advice tbh

Yes because it’s so RARE for the wealthy to be taxed higher. Did you miss the lsst 14 years of Tory rule ramping up taxes on higher earners while leaving lower earners untouched?

4+ kids by 4 different fathers? Not sure that was a requirement

I agree OP - I'm happy about the removal of the 2 child benefit cap (I don't think children should be living in poverty, whatever their parents' choices or misfortunes) and I think the choices made about tax rises could have been far worse. Also happy to see a decent amount of headroom.

Err, rich people aren’t getting child benefit. It isn’t a universal benefit.

They aren’t. People keep posting on here oh good money going to the NHS or schools or public services. Did I miss something?

I’ve been there on barely anything before with my oldest when I was 16 did you know under 25s get a lot less universal credit than over 25s? Even if they have kids and live alone. I’m extremely good at budgeting. I’ll be honest I found the jump from two to three kids financially not too bad, my younger two room share and I reused a lot of stuff. A £300 benefit rise for each child definitely isn’t warranted I mean people with jobs don’t get a pay rise when they have kids so why should people on benefits?

Do behave darling. It's utterly dreadful for the 'middle earners' (on MN that's 150k plus a year) Those awful poors with feral children who Simply Haven't Worked Hard Enough to rub shoulders with the 'educated strivers' are possibly going to be able to MANAGE. Imagine!!!
It's beyond appalling