Haven't read what happened but my guess is. Country broke, Govt cuts NHS and Welfare spending and increases tax breaks for the rich. Country still broke.
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
No irony included there, would probably struggle to explain what irony means anyway. Purely factual post and 100% poster. Lefties didnt even photoshop it
They didn't photo shop it, but there's been quite a lot of spoofs doing the rounds since it appeared last night. This is my favourite one so far: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjHgY_dCYAAlvXU.jpg
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
...I haven't read the detail but what happens when the person takes out their pension in cash, has a bloody good spend up for a couple of years and shortly afterward ends up broke but now with a motorboat on the drive instead of a pension? How does that help? Easier than sorting out the pension annuity rip off though I suppose...
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
...I haven't read the detail but what happens when the person takes out their pension in cash, has a bloody good spend up for a couple of years and shortly afterward ends up broke but now with a motorboat on the drive instead of a pension? How does that help? Easier than sorting out the pension annuity rip off though I suppose...
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
...I haven't read the detail but what happens when the person takes out their pension in cash, has a bloody good spend up for a couple of years and shortly afterward ends up broke but now with a motorboat on the drive instead of a pension? How does that help? Easier than sorting out the pension annuity rip off though I suppose...
Free choice is a good thing surely...
To an extent of course but this is crazy. There will be whole industies spring up with the sole aim of separating people from their pension fund asap whether that's through dodgy investment schemes or just plain old conmen selling Doris some overpriced tat that she doesn't need but he knows she can now fund through her pension pot.
It's a very mixed message as we had years of government telling us to save for our retirement but now they are saying, 'do what you like with it' and who is picking up the tab when it's gone?
The pension move is quite clever. First if people draw down the income then (some) tax becomes payable. Second, the pensioners get control of their capital. If it's invested to produce an income then the Govt. will benefit from the inheritance tax in due course. Double-bubble. Yesterday's share price moves tell you everything you need to know. Hargreaves Lansdown - the UK's largest provider of investment services up 14.5%; Legal & General - a provider of annuities down 8.5%.
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
...I haven't read the detail but what happens when the person takes out their pension in cash, has a bloody good spend up for a couple of years and shortly afterward ends up broke but now with a motorboat on the drive instead of a pension? How does that help? Easier than sorting out the pension annuity rip off though I suppose...
Free choice is a good thing surely...
.....There will be a whole industies spring up with the sole aim of separating people from their pension fund..... selling Doris some overpriced tat.....
That's pretty much what the protected insurance companies have been doing for decades.
Another important change is that ISAs will be fully switchable between cash ISAs and stock & shares ISAs. (At present you can't switch back into cash once you have switched out.) This might mean that first, people will be more prepared to use stocks & shares ISAs with the better yield you can get, knowing they can switch back if cash ISAs become more competitive; second, the cash ISA providers might have to make the interest rates more attractive.
Seemed on the surface a bold and accomodating budget with some interesting new changes, though little disappointed there seemed little there targeting families, particularly low income ones.
Still, its good to know you can now save 15k a.year tax free.......
Nice to see Edward Balls has a firm grasp on things. Referring to the 1p cut in beer duty, he said on BBC Breakfast this morning: "You've got to drink 100 pints of beer to save a pound." Clearly he's been taking lessons since he was last in the Treasury because that sort of accuracy was beyond him then!
Thought the increase in income tax allowance will be the biggest impact for low-middle income families. Will help cover 1 in 12 mortgage payments for us
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
...I haven't read the detail but what happens when the person takes out their pension in cash, has a bloody good spend up for a couple of years and shortly afterward ends up broke but now with a motorboat on the drive instead of a pension? How does that help? Easier than sorting out the pension annuity rip off though I suppose...
Free choice is a good thing surely...
.....There will be a whole industies spring up with the sole aim of separating people from their pension fund..... selling Doris some overpriced tat.....
That's pretty much what the protected insurance companies have been doing for decades.
That's the whole point really isn't it. Rather than actually address the issue through tackling the existing miss-selling and poor returns currently provided they are going down the whole 'open the market up' approach and let people sort it out for themselves. Fine if you're dealing with the price of a loaf or a pint of milk but not something as important or complicated as long term retirement planning.
I (personally) could direct George Osborne to hundreds of vulnerable people who to my knowledge will have absolutely no idea what to do with their pension fund and will be ripe for the first smooth talking investment 'analyst' that sits down in front of them. Or some rogue trader that tells them they need a new roof and fortunately they are doing a special offer at the moment and even have the time to help them fill out the forms to use their pension fund to pay for it. Or others that will just do the lot in the first few years and worry about it later.
George Osborne might trust pensioners to manage their finances properly but that's because he has zero experience of dealing with people who cannot or will not.
Let's not even think about what the effect in the housing market might be once pensioners start piling into buy-to-lets as an alternative....
Seemed on the surface a bold and accomodating budget with some interesting new changes, though little disappointed there seemed little there targeting families, particularly low income ones.
Still, its good to know you can now save 15k a.year tax free.......
To confirm, the £15k doesn't have to be from income - it can just be a case of moving any existing 'unsheltered' savings into the ISA tax shelter.
George Osborne might trust pensioners to manage their finances properly but that's because he has zero experience of dealing with people who cannot or will not.
I personally liked the budget as someone on a low income who is aiming to save a bit, the ISA amount of 15k gives me something to aim for (over quite a few years I hasten to add) and the income tax adjustments will save me over £100 a year next year.
I am not well off, and I have been helped by the conservatives.
I think nothing annoys Ed Milliband more than the fact that the Tories are doing a much better job with the economy than he ever could.
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
...I haven't read the detail but what happens when the person takes out their pension in cash, has a bloody good spend up for a couple of years and shortly afterward ends up broke but now with a motorboat on the drive instead of a pension? How does that help? Easier than sorting out the pension annuity rip off though I suppose...
Free choice is a good thing surely...
.....There will be a whole industies spring up with the sole aim of separating people from their pension fund..... selling Doris some overpriced tat.....
That's pretty much what the protected insurance companies have been doing for decades.
That's the whole point really isn't it. Rather than actually address the issue through tackling the existing miss-selling and poor returns currently provided they are going down the whole 'open the market up' approach and let people sort it out for themselves. Fine if you're dealing with the price of a loaf or a pint of milk but not something as important or complicated as long term retirement planning.
I (personally) could direct George Osborne to hundreds of vulnerable people who to my knowledge will have absolutely no idea what to do with their pension fund and will be ripe for the first smooth talking investment 'analyst' that sits down in front of them. Or some rogue trader that tells them they need a new roof and fortunately they are doing a special offer at the moment and even have the time to help them fill out the forms to use their pension fund to pay for it. Or others that will just do the lot in the first few years and worry about it later.
George Osborne might trust pensioners to manage their finances properly but that's because he has zero experience of dealing with people who cannot or will not.
Let's not even think about what the effect in the housing market might be once pensioners start piling into buy-to-lets as an alternative....
Don't disagree with your concerns BA but Government being a nanny is invariably counter-productive and restricts the freedom - in this case at the cost of very significant restriction of income - of lots of people who are perfectly content to take responsibility for their own pension pots.
PS sorry about the wonky quoting, something amiss with the Quote button (or me)
Be interesting to see what the impact will be on freeing up capital for pensioners. Don't expect the cruise liners to struggle for the next few years !
Well a great move from Gideon to be honest. For all those like me who are approaching 55 we can now take our full pension pots in cash rather than having to use the majority of it to buy an annuity. What with that and beer duty cut again, Happy Days!
...I haven't read the detail but what happens when the person takes out their pension in cash, has a bloody good spend up for a couple of years and shortly afterward ends up broke but now with a motorboat on the drive instead of a pension? How does that help? Easier than sorting out the pension annuity rip off though I suppose...
Free choice is a good thing surely...
.....There will be a whole industies spring up with the sole aim of separating people from their pension fund..... selling Doris some overpriced tat.....
That's pretty much what the protected insurance companies have been doing for decades.
I (personally) could direct George Osborne to hundreds of vulnerable people who to my knowledge will have absolutely no idea what to do with their pension fund and will be ripe for the first smooth talking investment 'analyst' that sits down in front of them. Or some rogue trader that tells them they need a new roof and fortunately they are doing a special offer at the moment and even have the time to help them fill out the forms to use their pension fund to pay for it. Or others that will just do the lot in the first few years and worry about it later.
That is a real worry Bournemouth. One of the most depressing (although not huge scale) financial scandals of the past was perpetrated on the miners when they got their redundancy payouts. Unsurprisingly, many had never been anywhere near such a large sum of money before and it, literally, frightened them. They pretty much gave it to the first person who offered to take it off their hands. In some cases it was in cash to some bloke they met down the pub. Of course, they were being preyed upon by vultures and many of them lost out on the opportunity to secure their futures into old age. You should never underestimate a person's stupidity when it comes to money. Numerous lottery winners, pools winners and footballers have made similar mistakes with their money.
for me the most disappointing aspect is the 1% staged incremental rise for the 40% tax threshold. (which is below wage inflation and so therefore is actually a net loss for most taxpayers)
415 quid difference...so the effect on your pocket is 80 pounds or so annually. is the cost of constantly changing these thresholds every year not equivalent? just seems a rather cack-handed way of going about things, creating more work for an already under-staffed and woefully under-resourced HMRC. still at least tax practioners will have more work.
apart from the administration cost issue, i dont have many other criticisms. prudent budget is unfortunately completely necessary.
George Osborne might trust pensioners to manage their finances properly but that's because he has zero experience of dealing with people who cannot or will not.
Listening to George Osborne on Today on the way to work he said he trusts them to manage their finances well because they are the sort of people were sensible enough to have a retirement fund in place in the first instance. There will be a lot of pensioners who are in this position and in a perfect world it would be fine to let them manage their funds in their own way.
But I think he is being incredibly naive if he thinks that the levels of financial acumen in the population are such there will be no problems with businesses targeting those (and I think they are probably a majority) who are not as clued up on investments or otherwise vulnerable.
Anyone who has come into contact with a cross section of the public over a period of time will testify that there are a lot of people out there prepared to exploit others to their own ends and a lot of vulnerable potential victims.
As Charlton Fan points out I doubt that George Osborne, Danny Alexander or anyone in Whitehall has seriously considered the effect of giving older people easy access to £10,000's for probably the first time in their life. Too many people in the UK already lose their life savings to scams and rogue businesses and the government has just opened the door to another source of funding to them rather than sorting out the problem properly.
The good news is of course that we have no history of the miss-selling of financial products in the UK so I'm sure everything will be fine and I'm worried unnecessarily...
Comments
Country broke, Govt cuts NHS and Welfare spending and increases tax breaks for the rich. Country still broke.
Working Class people get Bingo and Beer.
Nothing changes.
Link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjHgY_dCYAAlvXU.jpg
To an extent of course but this is crazy. There will be whole industies spring up with the sole aim of separating people from their pension fund asap whether that's through dodgy investment schemes or just plain old conmen selling Doris some overpriced tat that she doesn't need but he knows she can now fund through her pension pot.
It's a very mixed message as we had years of government telling us to save for our retirement but now they are saying, 'do what you like with it' and who is picking up the tab when it's gone?
Double-bubble.
Yesterday's share price moves tell you everything you need to know. Hargreaves Lansdown - the UK's largest provider of investment services up 14.5%; Legal & General - a provider of annuities down 8.5%.
That's pretty much what the protected insurance companies have been doing for decades.
Still, its good to know you can now save 15k a.year tax free.......
Referring to the 1p cut in beer duty, he said on BBC Breakfast this morning: "You've got to drink 100 pints of beer to save a pound." Clearly he's been taking lessons since he was last in the Treasury because that sort of accuracy was beyond him then!
That's the whole point really isn't it. Rather than actually address the issue through tackling the existing miss-selling and poor returns currently provided they are going down the whole 'open the market up' approach and let people sort it out for themselves. Fine if you're dealing with the price of a loaf or a pint of milk but not something as important or complicated as long term retirement planning.
I (personally) could direct George Osborne to hundreds of vulnerable people who to my knowledge will have absolutely no idea what to do with their pension fund and will be ripe for the first smooth talking investment 'analyst' that sits down in front of them. Or some rogue trader that tells them they need a new roof and fortunately they are doing a special offer at the moment and even have the time to help them fill out the forms to use their pension fund to pay for it. Or others that will just do the lot in the first few years and worry about it later.
George Osborne might trust pensioners to manage their finances properly but that's because he has zero experience of dealing with people who cannot or will not.
Let's not even think about what the effect in the housing market might be once pensioners start piling into buy-to-lets as an alternative....
What makes you say this @Bournemouth Addick?
I am not well off, and I have been helped by the conservatives.
I think nothing annoys Ed Milliband more than the fact that the Tories are doing a much better job with the economy than he ever could.
I (personally) could direct George Osborne to hundreds of vulnerable people who to my knowledge will have absolutely no idea what to do with their pension fund and will be ripe for the first smooth talking investment 'analyst' that sits down in front of them. Or some rogue trader that tells them they need a new roof and fortunately they are doing a special offer at the moment and even have the time to help them fill out the forms to use their pension fund to pay for it. Or others that will just do the lot in the first few years and worry about it later.
George Osborne might trust pensioners to manage their finances properly but that's because he has zero experience of dealing with people who cannot or will not.
Let's not even think about what the effect in the housing market might be once pensioners start piling into buy-to-lets as an alternative....
Don't disagree with your concerns BA but Government being a nanny is invariably counter-productive and restricts the freedom - in this case at the cost of very significant restriction of income - of lots of people who are perfectly content to take responsibility for their own pension pots.
PS sorry about the wonky quoting, something amiss with the Quote button (or me)
That is a real worry Bournemouth. One of the most depressing (although not huge scale) financial scandals of the past was perpetrated on the miners when they got their redundancy payouts. Unsurprisingly, many had never been anywhere near such a large sum of money before and it, literally, frightened them. They pretty much gave it to the first person who offered to take it off their hands. In some cases it was in cash to some bloke they met down the pub. Of course, they were being preyed upon by vultures and many of them lost out on the opportunity to secure their futures into old age. You should never underestimate a person's stupidity when it comes to money. Numerous lottery winners, pools winners and footballers have made similar mistakes with their money.
415 quid difference...so the effect on your pocket is 80 pounds or so annually. is the cost of constantly changing these thresholds every year not equivalent? just seems a rather cack-handed way of going about things, creating more work for an already under-staffed and woefully under-resourced HMRC. still at least tax practioners will have more work.
apart from the administration cost issue, i dont have many other criticisms. prudent budget is unfortunately completely necessary.
But I think he is being incredibly naive if he thinks that the levels of financial acumen in the population are such there will be no problems with businesses targeting those (and I think they are probably a majority) who are not as clued up on investments or otherwise vulnerable.
Anyone who has come into contact with a cross section of the public over a period of time will testify that there are a lot of people out there prepared to exploit others to their own ends and a lot of vulnerable potential victims.
As Charlton Fan points out I doubt that George Osborne, Danny Alexander or anyone in Whitehall has seriously considered the effect of giving older people easy access to £10,000's for probably the first time in their life. Too many people in the UK already lose their life savings to scams and rogue businesses and the government has just opened the door to another source of funding to them rather than sorting out the problem properly.
The good news is of course that we have no history of the miss-selling of financial products in the UK so I'm sure everything will be fine and I'm worried unnecessarily...