In last April's budget on the tenth anniversary of the introduction of Individual Savings Accounts (ISA's), Alistair Darling announced that ISA allowances will be raised from £7,200 to £10,200 from 6th of April 2010, with the new ISA allowance raised earlier for the over 50's from the 6th of October 2009.

As with the current £7,200 allowance, savers will be able to split 50/50 between cash and shares ISA's i.e. from the new tax year, £5,100 in a Shares ISA and £5,100 in a Cash ISA.

However the Chancellor missed a golden opportunity to both win votes and entice cash ISA savers to deposit more into the cash starved bailed out banks by allowing the whole of the £10,200 allowance to be used as a Cash ISA.

There is however a potential spanner in the works for the Over 50's as not all ISA providers are willing to allow top ups to existing ISA's as the rule remains that only one ISA can be opened in each tax year.

Additional good news has followed the April budget as market interest rates have risen which is inline with the interest rate forecast of rising rates for the second half of 2009 UK interest rate forecast of December 2008.

Typically top savings accounts have risen by 1%, to range between 2.8% and 3.4% with fixed rates rising further depending on the number of years fixed and currently range between 3.5% to 4.6%, well above the irrelevant base interest rate which continues to stand at 0.5%.

By Nadeem Walayat
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

Nadeem Walayat has over 20 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis specialises on the housing market and interest rates. Nadeem is the Editor of The Market Oracle, a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. We present in-depth analysis from over 400 experienced analysts on a range of views of the probable direction of the financial markets, thus enabling our readers to arrive at an informed opinion on future market direction. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk

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