Budget 2012 explained: Live webchat with Mark Dampier, Head of Research at Hargreaves Lansdown, Wednesday 21 March 12.30-2pm

[AntoniaMumsnet]

It's Budget day on Wednesday. What will happen to the 50p tax rate? Will we see a mansion tax? What about child benefit?

It could be a red letter day for your family finances. We are delighted to welcome Mark Dampier to Mumsnet for a live budget webchat. Mark is head of research at Hargreaves Lansdown, the independent financial adviser, and an all-round financial guru. He will be translating the Chancellor's statements as he makes them, and finding time to answer your comments.

Mark will be busy keeping an eye on Osborne, so please don't post questions about your own family finances here (we've got plans for a special Q&A about this later, see below). Do join us here at 12.30, when the fun begins.

Coming up: We've set up a Q&A with a panel of experts to take questions on your family finances after the Chancellor sits down.

Next week, Mumsnet favourite Alvin Hall will be in on Thursday 29 March for a live webchat on savings and investments.

It's all about the Money at Mumsnet HQ.....

@mumsneedwine

Glad you find it amusing Justine. Unfortunately for some of us it's not very funny as its the difference between my kids being able to go on school trips with their friends (this year they will total over £1000 and that's for 3 trips). State schools and things everyone else in their year goes on. We live in SE, 3 bed house, 2 vauxhall cars and are going camping in Ireland for holiday. We have just enough at moment but am now going to have to tell kids they can't go on things. Hubbie may take home £2400 a month but after mortgage & utilities and food and child we are usually left with nothing. CB funds the kids. No holiday from now on so might sell tent. Or children.

Sorry, sorry, posted that on the wrong thread - will delete and repost blog link I mean to post here!

Thanks Justine - thought it bit strange mumsnet found this trivial. Hubbie agreed not to tell me his salary and I'm not telling him if I claim CB. Will see you in court Mr O and you can explain to us under what law we have to disclose these details to each other. I'm off to meeting now to discuss how this will affect the families we work with (some have very rich daddies and extremely poor wives and kids).

Here's the blog I've written on budget - sorry again for getting my posts muddled!

Haziedoll - Aren't you arguing against yourself? It's not a bit unusual to be a woman worker in low pay (over 70% of low paid jobs are done by women). It's called the female forfeit. In which case isn't it sensible that the government are basically ignoring what in most cases will be the woman's wage in two worker households.

I think this is really good for women with young children earning shit wages but of course it doesn't benefit you if you are married to a high earner. And that is fair.

Very quickly, i like the blog. Maybe could mention sometime about partners who do not share their hefty salaries with their partners and use money to control them and the kids. It is more common than you think. Am off to see a young lad later whose dad is a multimillionaire but gives him and his mother nothing. She uses the CB to help him go to school (transport). Yes the father is a prat and I would love her to leave him but she won't. Any advice how to help lad after Jan gratefully received. (meeting delayed as we are all do angry ).

Do = so.

I don't really understand what point you are trying to make Swet.

Swed admirable but it won't go to vulnerable people- as a carer my income is also being slashed over the next few years, albeit by different routes. £ 100PCM minimum for us, £200 PCM minimum fpr another carer family I know.

Yes mumsneedwine.

My dad was a child in a family like that- Grandad drank his wages, his Mum was bedridden and disabled- Dad worked from age 5 or didn't eat, even when Grandad had overtime it was his, not for feeding his 16 kids.

Not something I want to see back in our society, working 5 year olds.

Justine - great blog post, but the point about lone parents is a really key one (and one that people keep glossing over by saying "of course single earner families don't have childcare costs") and I think it risks getting lost because of your type of loan for lone - any way you can change it?!

We also have childcare costs; if I don't sleep in the day then i don't sleep more than 3 - 4 hours in any 24, it's far cheaper to send ds4 to a CM for a few hours twice a week then pay for night time help.

The bit that scares me is referenced in this blog: johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/nothing-but-fear-for-the-very-poorest-in-this-budget/

@Bramshott

Justine - great blog post, but the point about lone parents is a really key one (and one that people keep glossing over by saying "of course single earner families don't have childcare costs") and I think it risks getting lost because of your type of loan for lone - any way you can change it?!

yes will try [shame]

It might just be me not getting this.... but the threshhold is 50k pa.... after CHB cut and outgoings most on that threshhold annual income still have more to 'play' with than we started off with on minimum wage and ever hour we can get....
... just a thought to leave you with as you weep over plus minus 2k per year you loose in CHB as you trolley around M&S

yours sincerely
17kpa, 3 small children, higher education and still saving ££ (not moaning)

Rationing, it's because some people have enormous overheads in order to earn that. For example around here:

£60,000 equals £41,000 after tax
Less £20,000 for two nursery places
Less £6,000 for commuting costs
Less £12,000 for rent on a 3-bed semi

Leaves you £3000 a year to bring up your entire family. So you've lost 40% or so of your income at a stroke of a pen, and have to feed and clothe four people on less than you would be getting on benefit, whilst being told how lucky you are.

That's why people are making a fuss.

Well explained boffin

The problem is that it's taxed and as BoffinMum points out - it doesn't go far after travel costs, mortgage and associated bills etc..... And prices of food etc... are more expensive in London. Everything is more expensive in London. And you are forgetting that some of us are not getting any help from (grand)parents or any other 'concessions' as some families benefit from.

I do not know (personally) the ins and out of family tax credits or other benefits but get the impression that some are tax free and that goes a long way to make those 'earnings' worth more than they appear to be on paper - just as my slightly under £50,000 per annum job goes nowhere near far enough for foreign hols, a car, shopping for food in M&S (as if!) and is actually a lot less than it might appear on paper. We don't get council tax exemptions, free prescriptions, free eye tests/dental care etc...as some people on family tax credits do. We have to pay full cost for everything and it bites!

We have friends who are low income families and they seem to do things that we can't in terms of car, holidays, stuff done to the house but the difference is manifold - a very, very small mortgage (possibly only £100 a month or slightly over that), parents who help out with providing evening meals weekly, regular supplies of fruit/veggies, top-ups that help with uniforms and extras for the children, regular holidays etc.... But despite low incomes they get family tax credits and that probably tops up their income considerably.

And also, if you have worked hard at school, uni and then during working life you expect a few luxuries at some point in life. To think that not everyone is shopping in M&S and having fab, glam holidays etc...on £50,000. Not unless they have inherited money with which to buy home outright or are living in the middle of the wilderness with no outgoings...

You are assuming a lot Rationing !

Yours,

£11k PA joint income (including Carer's Allowance), 4 children, all with SN including severe, TC cut by £25pw for disability tax credit. Still saving (for the moment), but believe in fairness.

Some are gazzal- but some are not, for eg my Carer's Allowance. Within 3 weeks we will both be graduates (DH about to finish at long bloody last).

Generalisation rarely work in RL.

I take my hat off to you and DH for managing with four children on that amount and studying hard..... Let's hope your income goes up amazingly once you graduate....

It is possible to manage on very little and DW and I have both done it in earlier (and younger) working lives...but there comes a point when you reach a certain age when you don't necessarily want to be having to watch every penny you earn. And even on what some would consider to be a 'high' salary (which compared to what my Dad earned, it is), we do have to watch the pennies....

BoffinMUm
"Rationing, it's because some people have enormous overheads in order to earn that. For example around here:

£60,000 equals £41,000 after tax
Less £20,000 for two nursery places
Less £6,000 for commuting costs
Less £12,000 for rent on a 3-bed semi

Leaves you £3000 a year to bring up your entire family. So you've lost 40% or so of your income at a stroke of a pen, and have to feed and clothe four people on less than you would be getting on benefit, whilst being told how lucky you are.

That's why people are making a fuss."

Where's the second income? Presumably there is one, given the two children are in full time nursery?

Second income could be very low or the example could be a lone parent - they need full time nursery. Of course in that case the £3000 would only need to feed and clothe three people.

Well the second income could be low, but would you really pay £20,000 on nursery fees if you earned less than that? But OK, let's say the second income is at the minimum wage. The two nursery places are full time so the second worker must work full time. So their income is boosted by £11K net. Lots of families live on £14k after their rent and commuting is taken into account. And the full time nursery fees are only temporary. Things are going to get better soon for this couple.

And if it's a single parent, I agree. It's shit. Hopefully the single parent receives child maintenance from the absent parent. But I know many don't.

I think they've let down single parents.

Could be a single parent, could be two career family, many permutations possible. The £60k is the TOTAL amount where it's all taken away.

Sorry, I lost the plot there, that was a rubbish post and completely wrong.

BoffinMum - LOL. Now if we could all talk bollock, that would be my kind of thread.