The Budget, weeks after everyone else got there first

Bloody hell, George Osbourne, that was a hell of a Budget to go and sneak up on us.

I appreciate that the Budget happens at the same time every year, and that the political analysis has been done to death, and everyone else has already said their bit on it and moved on, but, well, it happened while I was getting married and I've only just twigged in the last week or so that perhaps the wider world might not have given a toss.

(That said: I did have a piece published by Offbeat Bride on How To Handle The Bride which is probably the most well-read thing I've ever written. I wrote it as a venting exercise, not expecting it to be featured in any way, so it's even under my jokey pen-name that I use for other internet stuff. Ah, the irony. Still, that's what I was up to in my time away.)

However, I still feel it's worth commenting on this Budget because in a nasty and shameful little way, it was a really good one for me. I am now paying less tax. Because if there's anything that able-bodied young people with no children need, it's to have a tax break paid for by less tax credits for young families, right?

I am aware of some sort of logic behind this tax break, in a twisted and horrible way. Basically, people in their twenties, not on a great deal of money, need some more disposable income. We're most likely to spend it, or even better shove it on one of the magical new 5% deposit mortgages the government appear to be promising. (The thought of even having that 5% deposit is hilarity making to everyone I know, but that's an aside.) Besides, we're all being so comprehensively screwed in terms of extra money on booze, fags, pasties, petrol, everything, that surely all the books balance out, right?

I don't want to pay more tax. That's the sad truth of it. I recently received a bonus in work, and spent three days howling with incandescent rage at how much money had gone on tax and on student loan repayments. I wouldn't dodge tax, and I am aware of my social obligations surrounding it, but my goodness, tax going out is a bit of a pinch.

I'm not all Tea Party about this, wilfully refusing to understand that without tax we wouldn't have any of the formal structures of government. And I'm pleased that my tax provides the safety net of the welfare state, which I have used before now and will hopefully still be there for me if I need it again. What worries me is that there are tax breaks being found for the individual, i.e. me, and yet still swinging cuts to services.

One or the other please, Mr Osbourne. One or the other. Both almost makes me begin to think that the cuts are ideologically driven as well as economically driven, and we can't have that, surely?

Student loan ridiculousness (again)

Student loan early repayment penalty proposal' abandoned.

As far as I can tell, pretty much everyone is on the wrong about this one.

Student loans, from what I can tell, are created and administered by people who generally don't have a student loan to pay off themselves because they were students back in the days of things like grants. This was not financially sound as a system. Fine. This is not the argument I am here to have today.

I owe the government tens of thousands of pounds, and I pay back £13 a month at the moment. I don't think I'm ever going to eligible for any theoretical early repayment penalty, or if I am it won't be for a long time which rather takes away the 'early repayment' option. Most students are the same.

Fun story: I know people who got a student loan, put it into a high-interest savings account (this was in 2005 – remember high interest savings?) and then paid the lot back promptly upon graduation, and have used the interest on the loan to have a nest-egg to buy a house. Instinctively, I feel this is wrong and that's with a lot of love and respect to and for the people involved. However, these are the risks taken with the system, and at least they've paid back their loans. It's a lot more than most people manage to do, and at least the money is 'back in the pot', as it were, for future students.

This is a small minority of people. However, a much larger majority of graduates desperately want to pay their loans off. I hate being in debt. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I grew up in a house where Debt Was Bad, and I say this as someone currently surfing the wave of the graduate overdraft so possibly a little hypocritically. If I won the lottery, or managed to get a high-paying job, I would love to pay my loan off quicker.

There are those that will take advantage of the system, and they will end up paying less than less well-off students. The simple – and sad – fact is that richer students will find many things easier in university whilst we live in an unfair society. They just won't take the loan, if they have parents that can support them, which is of course essentially what paying off the loan early is.

Penalising early repayment discourages ambition. That's the simple end of it. “It's to protect lower-income students,” they say. This is bollocks. It says that lower-income students can just stay where they are, on low incomes. If they really wanted to help low-income students, fees would be lower or there would be no loans at all. Don't take away people's pride in being able to pay back debt sooner, and I'm talking to you, Liberal Democrats and National Union of Students.

The system is what's unfair, and faffing about with early and late repayment is just stupid. (And yes, 'faffing about' is a technical term.)

IT'S NOT DEAD MONEY YOU FOOLS

If one more person tells me that renting a house is 'dead money' I swear, I will scream. In fact, I reached this point quite a while ago, but it seemed impolitic to start shrieking at the downstairs neighbour, particularly because I had just hit his car and we had arranged matters fairly convivially up until that point.

When you come out of university, you are almost certainly without money. You are without money in exactly the same way that someone who left school at eighteen is without money. To buy a property is inordinately expensive, tens of hundreds of thousands of pounds. As such, it's frankly bizarre to expect someone in their early twenties to afford a house.

And yet renting is considered by anyone about ten years older than you to be the worst decision you could possibly make. “It's dead money!” they will cry. “Save up for a deposit! Find the money! It will be your PENSION!”

So as I sit here paying my rent, I would like to take a moment to take you through why the above statements are a lie, difficult, impossible, and a downright evil lie, in that order.

1. 'Dead money' is a phrase I particularly loathe. It's that weird, Thatcherite fetishism of money, that money should in some way be doing something. The money IS doing something, and that something is putting a roof over my head. You tell me that's dead money and I'll invite you to sleep outside.

A lot of people choose to live with their parents in order to save up for a mortgage. That's fine. That's your funeral. I lived with my parents for a year, until my sister and I were having daily screaming arguments and I spiralled into what I now realise was the beginnings of a bad bout of... I don't know what, exactly, as I don't wish to be too dramatic, but I think I may have cracked if I'd stayed much longer. It was the point I realised I was crying into some toast on a daily basis that I knew something had to give. I houseshared for a time, and now I'm sharing with Mr DG. I couldn't afford to live by myself, and neither could the majority of people I know. I found the method that worked for me.

This method keeps me with a remarkable sense of self-worth and also means that I am now of much better terms with my family. My parents are even coming for tea tomorrow. That is a healthy parent-child relationship, aged 24. My mother still desperately trying to iron my shirts was really not that good.

2. That said, saving up for a deposit is a jolly good idea. I am all in favour of savings. I really, really am. Mr DG and I try to squirrel away what we can every month, admittedly currently towards The Great Social Event Of 2012 i.e. our wedding, but it means we know we can do it. We don't go out a great deal. We eat cheaply. Buying new clothes are a distant world. Savings are a priority, for us.

However. You need approximately 10-20% of the worth of a house to get a mortgage. An average house around here is £100,000 pounds. That's £10-20,000. My annual salary is somewhere between those two figures. So that's at least a year of saving, even if I somehow managed to spend £0 in that year. So, er, where is my deposit meant to have come from between then and now?

Before any smartarse points it out, I am aware that at the moment it tends to be cheaper in terms of monthly payments when you compare mortgage vs. rent. However, I refer you to the £20,000 deposit above.

3. 'Finding the money is entirely possible'. Unfortunately, none of my wealthy relatives have yet revealed themselves. Bastards. I have also failed to find an old map with an 'X' marked on a treasure island, win the lottery, or worked out a way to rob a bank that is morally correct and 100% likely not to get myself caught.

4. A pension?! MY PENSION?!! What? The money is LOCKED WITHIN THE HOUSE. Locked there UNTO FOREVER. That's like saying that my rather lovely pair of Converse (three years old this year!) is a pension plan. That's not how it works at all. I have bought the shoes, I own the shoes, I will not somehow miraculously get the money back from the shoes. It is money invested, yes. It is a sensible investment, as they go. However, your pension is your pension and your house is your house. Telling people their house was their pension is the reason why we are about to have a whacking great pensions crisis. (Guess what generation is paying for that one, too?)

In conclusion: your average graduate cannot and does not have a mortgage. Your average graduate spends the first few years of post-graduate life doing doggy paddle to keep above water. If you can afford, and want, an aspire to a house then please, go for it! If you can't, though, don't go insane trying to get one. Don't make yourself ill. Try not to encourage any more recessions in terms of becoming over-stretched in your borrowing. (Think of the next generation of graduates there, perhaps.) Try to remember that having a roof over your head is good and safe money, and that our communal fetishism over property-owning as a nation is just plain weird.

And don't ever, ever tell me again that renting is 'dead money' because so help me I will not be responsible for my actions.

There is a Graduate Myth post here, somewhere, but I felt a bit of rage was possibly the way forward.

Some mildly bright news

Occasionally - very occasionally - there is a bright chink of light in the doom and gloom of professional graduate life. I've recently managed to secure a paying - paying! - writing and editing job. It's not very well paying, admittedly, but since it's my first paid gig outside of my job, I am ecstatically happy.

On the plus side, it's something for the portfolio (if I had one) and it's also something to throw into the gaping maw of my overdraft. It's also evidence that no matter how ambivalent your feelings towards your place on employment might be, some people turn out to be unexpectedly useful.

On the negative side, it's editing a re-wording a website that's in the exact same industry I already work in. (No conflict of interest, luckily, that would be a fun one to explain to my actual boss.) It's also effectively a second job, in between working, commuting, blogging, wedding planning and every so often sleeping.

... I, er, wait, why was I pleased about this again?

Graduate Myth #4: Disposable Income

Disposable income makes the economy go around. It's what makes us all have the ability to buy sparkly eyeshadow, stupid extras for cars, and life-affirming holidays.

I love disposable income.

Despite opinions to the contrary from Mr DG and my parents, I am not particularly profligate in my spending. I spent my time as a student eating on a basic level and not buying many clothes. Money as a teenager came via a badly paid part-time job, and I used most of the cash for driving lessons. So when I came out of university and fell into my first full-time job, it was like the singing of the hallelujah choir. Despite a fairly low wage, I was still living with my parents. They asked, and received, a rent to cover my living expenses. After that, the money was all mine!

… then I remembered that living with my parents was basically crap, and moved out. And lo, I have no disposable income again.

This is true of most people I speak to. Any kind of wages over the basic minimum you used to scrape by with as a student seemed like a gargantuan sum of money, but there was a lot more expenses to being a grown-up than you might first imagine. My two bugbears are the horror that is maintaining a car – necessary in order to get to work – and saving for a wedding. Now, a wedding is exactly the kind of thing that you need disposable income for and yes, it's exactly the kind of thing I couldn't afford a student. But as Mr DG and I sit in our living room and debate whether or not we can afford a pint this weekend (answer: no) I wonder: does any recent graduate actually have any disposable income?

The answer is, yes, a little. We sit and complain that we have no money – but we have no money because we're saving for houses, or we've just been on holiday, or we're getting married. The sad truth is that depressingly, if you work full time and have a couple of incomes and no kids, you do have money. The expectation, though, is that if you have an annual salary approximately four times bigger than your annual budget as a student, the money will be somehow neverending. And, of course, it isn't.

Alas.

Plus, you get the delightful knowledge that whinging because you can't afford new shoes is the absolute worst kind of first-world problems. That's an added bonus.

Student Debt

Some fascinating stuff in the Guardian today about student loans and debt management. I am having a birthday party/housewarming/potluck thing this evening so to be honest don't have time to go through it fully, but it looks like a good read.

As a heads up, I am fairly heavily in debt, but it could be worse; I have paid back approximately £100 of my student loan and I graduated two years ago. I currently owe a bank a small amount of money in terms of an overdraft, but nothing outrageous. I managed to graduate owing absolutely nothing on credit cards or overdraft due to a combination of being fairly boring, working my socks off, and having a car accident in my fourth year of studies which resulted in permanant back problems but on the bright side I ended up with a payment for the injuries, as the accident wasn't my fault.

I do not advise this as a method for paying off your debts.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to run around Seaside Town like an unsuccessful Come Dine With Me contestant.