00:00Look, the cost of living crisis still rumbles on. Even though prices aren't increasing quite
00:08as much as they were a couple of years ago, we know that they haven't come down and are
00:12very likely, unlikely to come down to what they were kind of five years ago. So we know
00:18the pressure that is out there on people's savings and on people's wallets. I think the
00:23key point is not to get disillusioned. So if you do just look at the news and the headlines,
00:28it can seem like there's kind of very limited good news out there if you are trying to save
00:33or you're trying to invest or hit your financial goals.
00:38Brian says there is help out there for people and one that can be a really useful tool is
00:42the Lifetime ISA, a bank account that the UK government will top up depending on how
00:46much you have saved in it.
00:48So the Lifetime ISA is a government incentivised saving and investing product. You can save
00:52up to £4,000 per tax year and the government will top that up by 25%. So you can get a
00:57free £1,000 on top of your savings from the government every tax year and you can
01:02use that money either to purchase your first home or to supplement your retirement savings.
01:08The Lifetime ISA can be a massive help for people. Brian says that millions of people
01:12have already used them, including Bethan, who said it was one of the last pieces of
01:16the puzzle before she could get her home.
01:18Hi, I found it really difficult to save, so I took out a Lifetime ISA to help to save
01:25towards a new house, sort of slowly and surely. So over quite a few years, and Covid definitely
01:33helped me to save in order to be able to buy my first home, I think the total government
01:41bonus that I ended up having, I was just checking actually, was around, I think, £5,000 altogether,
01:48which is massive, you know, when you're trying to save for a house and like every penny helps,
01:53you know.
01:54There's about 1.5 million people that are saving into Lifetime ISAs today. About three
01:58million people have used them since they were brought in in 2017, but lots more people could
02:03be using them than currently are. So as I say, we're trying to get the word out there
02:07and as I say, spread that you can get a little bit of help from the government in what is,
02:11as I say, a very expensive and tough time to be a first-time buyer.
02:18One thing that Brian says is incredibly important to remember for everyone struggling to get
02:22that deposit together, that you're certainly not alone in that. There are thousands if
02:26not millions of people in exactly the same boat and talking to others can really help
02:30you through that.
02:32First-time buyers are facing some of the harshest buying conditions in two or three decades.
02:37We all know what's happened with house prices over recent years. Interest rates are higher
02:42than they've been in 10 or 15 years, so mortgages are very expensive. So anything that can help
02:47first-time buyers, they should take as much advantage of as possible. And there's very
02:51few places as well that you get free money from the government. So this is something
02:55specifically designed to help first-time buyers.
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