Thoughts, feelings and comments?
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Beer, cider and spirits duties to be frozen
Yay! 
Personal allowance, the rate at which people start paying income tax, to rise from Ā£11,800 to Ā£12,500 in April - a year earlier than planned
ā¦ Well if I now turn down any overtime that comes my way, I wonāt have to pay income tax. 
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Wasnāt expecting to get an extra Ā£730 from the higher band increase (in addition to the Ā£700 personal allowance increase) so pleasant surprise there.
Still waiting for the day they change child benefit eligibility to account for one parent not working but wonāt hold my breath!
Edit
They must be feeling super generous to increase allowances when āWages growth at its highest in nearly a decadeā. Lucky us!
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Really frustrated to see FOBT gambling stake limit delayed till next October, a year Is s long time !
Great to see mental health included prominently.
The new 0% loans for lower income with big debt burdens is positive.
Definitely feels like a pre-election budget, 2019 GE?!
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Iām feeling generally very positive about this budget. Certainly a big surprise that the manifesto pledge of Ā£12,500 personal allowance/Ā£50,000 higher rate threshold is being brought in a year early!
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Ending PFI and PF2. A bold but overdue move. The final cost of hospitals and schools built on expensive borrowed money during the boom years is nothing short of a scandal. Off-balance-sheet debt, designed to conceal the true scale of borrowing (mostly by the Labour Party, although PFI was first introduced in the UK by John Major I believe).
Confirmation of the extra Ā£20.5bn for the NHS. An extra Ā£394M/week. Thatās a big deal.
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Good changes to universal credit but still nothing about the wait for the first payment or those who get paid at any other frequency other than monthly. Those are the biggest problems
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Definitely a āgivingā budget, OBR gave Hammond a Ā£20bn forecast improvement - and he spent every single penny. Although, completely meaningless unless a Brexit deal is done before March.
No surprise that threshold increases are much more generous for higher rate payers than basic rate payers.
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Donāt forget the min wage is being hiked 4.9% - after several huge hikes to the min wage in recent Tory budgets. It wonāt be long before burger flippers start paying higher rate tax! 
This is another very good budget for low income families.
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I must of missed this? Any info
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From what I understand though, this is for specific debts? Just payday loans?
I agree this is a good step, but it doesnāt tackle the reason they take out those loans - normally other debts (credit card or overdraft or missed payments for rent etc) but from what I can gather this is not for consolidating debt.
What ought to be the case is at least access to low rate loans to clear their debt and let them start again fresh.
Heck Iād argue that anyone should have access to government loans with low rates of interest to clear debt but then Iām radical maybe.
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Ā£860 a year that wonāt be taken is excellent 
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This was written before the budget, no?
Did he actually announce it? Any detail?
This is also a big one for it, when you read the actual guidelines around it, it also includes anyone under NHS crisis teams (for the full duration of the ācrisisā):
It said it would also extend the ābreathing spaceā people get to put their finances in order from six weeks to 60 days, and launch a Ā£2m fund for technology entrepreneurs to create products to make it easier for people to borrow from affordable lenders.
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Iām not saying itās bad, I just think it could be better.
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Definitely lets hope its the first step 
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Great to see belfast getting a city deal also even though its alot less than asked for.
With dublin offering alot better incentives (cheaper corporation tax and no apd tax among others) and companies still weary to come here as a cheaper alternative to london we need all the help we can get here especially with no functioning government of our own 
Iām normally a bit of a Grauniad reader but their response to the budget is pure sensationalist nonsense. The byline āTop half of households to benefit from 84% of the cuts, says Resolution Foundationā conveniently fails to acknowledge that the top half of households pay 90% of the tax so of course they are more likely to benefit from tax cuts. If you pay no or almost no tax, you canāt exactly benefit from a tax cut.
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