IVY BABE

For once, for younger working-age adults, today's Budget could be the opposite of boring (which is how it's been described). Several key things coming: - Your First Home - aka Help to Buy 2.0. First-time buyers earning up to £140,000 in London and £110,000 outside will be able to buy new homes with just a 2.5 per cent deposit and a 20 per cent government equity loan. A boon to housebuilders, which they lobbied hard for at a tricky time for the housing market! Their share prices are looking decent this week. This will also help people get into homeownership - but how many? Let's find out. Will this deliver more new homes? Let's find out! - Living and minimum wage changed - a rise in the minimum wage is expected to be announced today, but 18-to-20-year-olds might see lower increases than in previous years. Why? Serious concerns that it's too expensive to hire younger people and is pricing employers out of doing so - nearly 1 million NEETs - BUT...if you're 19 and not living with parents, it's very hard to earn enough to pay rent, which prices them out of work... - Fiscal drag! Frozen tax thresholds will remain, dragging another half a million people into paying the higher rate. This is effectively the biggest stealth tax rise...ever. Makes younger adults' pay rises less punchy at a time when they face near-historically high housing costs... Meanwhile....expected that Healey will protect 1 million pensioners from paying income tax even though state pension is due to rise by 3.9 per cent....