How the budget affects me

I had planned to write a long post today on what effect the budget has on my MillionaireAdventure but this years dull budget really doesn’t give me much to say.

I estimate that I will be £8.88 per year worse off due to tax on beer going up by 4p per pint, and wine by 14p per bottle. I don’t drive a big car so escape the so called green taxes introduced and the previously announced 2p rise in fuel duty was postponed until October.

Ok so I gain a bit from the reduction in basic-rate income tax to 20% but what the chancellor gives with one hand he had already taken with the other by raising the National Insurance earnings ceiling by £100 per week.

So in summary it’s business as usual for me after the budget.

It’s cheaper to be vegetarian

Annual food product inflation has reached 8.4% - the highest since records began in 1986 - according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The main driver behind the soaring costs is the rising price of meat in reaction to the increasing cost of animal feed that farmers have incurred this winter so it’s bad news for us non-vegetarians!

According to research from the price comparison website mysupermarket.co.uk a typical family of four will have to spend an extra £572 this year to buy the same food items as last year.

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Free day!! (or at least it is for our employers)

It only comes once every four years, but when a leap year does come we get an extra day in the year. However if you are on an annual salary this extra day means devoting an extra 8 hours or so to your employer and for what… absolutely nothing! They will still pay you the same amount this year but gain an extra day of service from you. Unless of course you are a temp and paid by the hour, in this case for once it is your turn to get one over your permanent colleagues as you are being paid for working today and they are not.

If our employers were to decide to pay us for our extra hours today that would be the equivalant of a 0.4% payrise this year, although your salary would of course revert back to it’s original value next year. So come on employers… do the decent thing and pay your employees for their extra work!

£3,500 investment in Northern Rock (made on my behalf by the Government)

The Government has invested £3,500 of my money as a taxpayer as part of their £110bn rescue package for the Northern Rock. Whilst the popular press are rushing to print their articles on the potential risks of this being a bad deal for taxpayers I have to disagree.

Richard Branson and his Virgin group aren’t stupid, they saw possible returns of upto 75% if they could have bought the bank, and whilst the Government don’t have a good track record of running businesses if they can avert a recession and offload the bank to somebody else in the next couple of years they could make a tidy profit. The question then is whether us taxpayers would see any potential return on the risk being taken. (more…)