The big Budget special

Get straight to the good stuff every day with the Multiply Minute; a lightning-quick round-up of the money news and how it affects you.

The Budget breakdown

Yesterday, chancellor Rishi Sunak delivered his first Budget. The focus has been on headline-grabbing spending promises to tackle coronavirus and its economic impacts.

Let’s take a look at what the government’s giving us:

£30 billion for coronavirus: The package includes £5 billion for NHS England and £7 billion to support businesses and workers across the UK. That’ll pay for things like sick pay and a business rates holiday for small companies. It’s a coordinated response with the Bank of England, which yesterday announced its own package of measures including an interest rate cut from 0.75% to 0.25%.

National insurance cut: The threshold at which you start paying national insurance will increase by almost £1,000 in April, to £9,500. Over 500,000 people will no longer pay national insurance at all, and everyone else will save £85 a year on average.

Pension tax on high earners: The rules are set to change, meaning fewer people (like the doctors who were charged for working overtime) will be hit with big tax bills for saving into their pension. Restrictions will kick in if you earn £200,000 a year, up from the current £110,000.

Infrastructure spending: There’s £600 billion for building roads, railways, homes, and broadband in the next five years. Sunak’s also promised £2.5 billion to fix potholes and £1.5 billion for further education colleges to upgrade their buildings.

In other news

President Trump has banned all travel from Europe (but not the UK) into the US, starting tomorrow and lasting for 30 days. The FTSE 100 stock market has dropped 6% in the first hour of trading. And with fewer young people hitting the sauce, sales of no/low alcohol beer are fizzing, with 30% growth since 2016.