While all the attention seems to be focussed on the Self employed and their National Insurance payments, little or no comment has been made about the effects on investors.
It seems that investors have been caught in the cross fire of the attack on the tax savings available to the self employed.

Thus the £5,000 dividend allowance, which everyone seems to have forgotten, was introduced to make up in some small way for the scrapping of the dividend tax credit last year is being reduced to £2,000 after just a couple of years. Largely because this is how many self employed chose to pay themselves thanks to the tax advantages. Consequently whereas most investors would not have previously been affected by the tax credit change, this will now potentially bring far more investors into the  net to pay tax on their dividends.

Thus this highlights the on going benefits of other tax shelters for longer term savings such as SIPP's and ISA's. Thus if you can't afford to make use of the new higher ISA allowance of £20,000 for the next tax year, then it would make sense to sell down in your taxable portfolio and use the proceeds to top up your SIPP or ISA to avoid getting hit by tax on your dividends, if you are not already in that situation.

Meanwhile the small sop to savers in the shape of the 3 year savings bond doesn't look that generous as it will probably hardly keep pace with inflation. Nevertheless I guess it may be competitive with private sector providers and is at least backed by the government.

Any way that's enough of a rant from me you can see more from the BBC here on how the budget might affect you including a helpful table looking at how much extra tax you could be liable for on your dividend, depending on the size of your portfolio and with an assumed 4% yield.

..or Financial Independence and Retiring Early which I thought I would write about as there is not much news today. Having said that there is lots of press today about the Governor of the Bank of England talking about interest rates rising, maybe later this year. I seem to remember we had the same blarney from Carney last year and we were supposed to have seen a rate rise by now. So I remain sceptical of that and I will believe it when I see it.
Any way back to the point of today's post. For some the idea of financial independence and retiring early may be appealing and to others it might seem like a pipe dream or even a nightmare if they love their job. So what are the best ways to achieve this and how much do you need? Well as ever it depends on what lifestyle you want to lead and how much you realistically need to live on for the rest of your days. Now rather than reinvent the wheel (as I have better things to do with my time) I'll recommend a few good blogs and sites out there that have covered this ground already.

So first up the answer to the above question - how much do you need and maybe even life the universe and everything is not apparently 42 but 25 according to an interesting site called Mr. Money Mustache (I know that's the wrong spelling but that's the address). He explains why he thinks 25 is the answer in this post and also references a useful site where you can plug in your own numbers and see how you would have fared in the past here. While these are US centric I'm sure similar results could be achieved for those using UK equities or a diversified global portfolio. He also looks at The Shockingly Simple Maths Behind Early Retirement which is all about saving hard if you can and he touches on the mindset required for achieving this with a bit on Stoicism.

Meanwhile in the UK we have similar sites and one I stumbled on recently is called Fire v London which is about Financial independence in London (which is how I stumbled on Mr. Mustache). Hat tip to Mike at The7Circles.uk (a useful site for UK investors) for putting me onto Fire v London. The Fire v London site also put me onto a useful resource for Private Investors which might help with the often asked question of how to calculate the returns on your portfolio. This comes from something called boglehead.org which is a Wiki set up by John Bogle the founder and retired CEO of the Vanguard Group.
Links to various formats of useful spreadsheets for this purpose can be found here.

Finally, last but not least is another blogger called Wheelie Dealer who is quite helpful and educational and who has written recently about how much you need to retire. All interesting, I hope you find these useful and that they might help you on you way to your own Financial Independence and retiring early - if that is what you want.

Talking of which since I get strange looks and people seem dazed and confused when I say I'm an investor or I'm retired perhaps I'll start saying I'm a FIRE-man which might make them see me in a better light and seem less bemusing for them. Talking of bemusing I'll leave you with a bit of old music today (which if the Led Zeppelin dazed & confused link above doesn't float your boat) then the video below might amuse and it seems appropriate to today's post - I am the god of hell fire and I bring you: