What a slap in the face to savers

[scooterscot]

If it were not bad enough being crippled with low interest rates.. now first time buyers get free money from the government. Why did I bother saving all those years for my deposit?

How does a Help to Buy Isa work? - BBC News

From 1 December first-time buyers will be able to save in a Help to Buy Individual Savings Account (HTB Isa) and the government will add money to it.
As with a traditional cash Isa, the interest you earn will be free of both income and capital gains tax.
In addition, when savers take money out to buy a house or flat, the government will add 25% to whatever is in the account, up to a maximum of £3,000.
So exactly how will it work?

[DimPrawn]

Anything to keep the vested interests rich and house prices skyward.

Biggest donations to Tory party come from house builders and wealthy land bank companies.

Another reason why Tories are sold on exponential uncontrolled immigration. It's all about house prices, the rest is a smokescreen.

[WTFH]

Scooter, the thing to do now while we have low interest rates is to pay off any loans/mortgages that you have, then when the rates go up you can start saving again.

[Zero Liability]

The longer they keep rates low, the more they will struggle later to raise them, as they're just stimulating stock buybacks and carry trades at present, and little of much value.

[MicrosoftBob]

The shock to people when interests finally rise again is going to be huge, can you imagine if we hit 15% again now there would be an awful lot more bankruptcies

Aren't we just following the American model, allowing people who can't really afford a house to acquire mortgages that really long term they are not going to have the savings to weather any future shocks to the world economy

I just feel lucky that my hateful ex forced me out, and made me buy again at the right time

Together with my gf we've got a mortgage that is deliberately a lot lower than lenders were prepared to lend to us, and if interests rates shoot up we'll be ok, we could have mortgaged up to the hilt to speculate on the toot toot house price recovery going on forever, but I like to sleep well at night, have no debts, and never have to worry even if interest rates hit 15% again

[scooterscot]

Scooter, the thing to do now while we have low interest rates is to pay off any loans/mortgages that you have, then when the rates go up you can start saving again.

You're absolutely right there and has been the approach we're taking, I'm sure it'll mean for others doing the same we'll be smug in the later years. Providing we live that long to enjoy the fruits.

Something has to give, ad-hoc fixes like this cannot make an functioning economy. Wages must either drastically increase or affordable living become the norm. We're lucky that only one adult in the house need work. Were we to return to the UK we'd both need to look for employment with a stranger bringing up the weins, ugh.

[Dallas]

To a max of 3k

That's nothing

[scooterscot]

To a max of 3k

That's nothing

When I bought my first house it was £36K!! And that was 2.5-3 my annual salary. £3k would have been more than welcome when I was saving for the deposit.

[fullyautomatix]

3K !! Prices are going up by that amount every month.

[SpontaneousOrder]

So that's what the new divi tax is paying for. Buying voters. Big surprise.

Oh... wait. I forgot; that's what democracy is.