Autumn Budget 2026: 5 Things Under-35s Should Do Before 28 October (and 2 Things Not To)

The most useful thing to know about the Autumn Budget on 28 October 2026 is that almost nothing worth doing depends on what's in it. The changes that actually hit under-35s were announced months ago and are already law. They start on 6 April 2027, not in October, and they are the reason to do anything at all this autumn.

Chancellor John Healey is due to deliver his first Budget on Wednesday 28 October, alongside a forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (HM Treasury, 31 July 2026). It is expected at around 12:30pm, after Prime Minister's Questions (Hargreaves Lansdown, 8 September 2026). It will be the first fiscal event under Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Between now and then you'll read a lot of confident predictions. Most of them will be wrong, and acting on them is how people lose money at Budget time.

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So here's the split: five things worth doing before 28 October, all of which make sense whatever the Chancellor announces, and two things you should not do no matter how convincing the headline.

What's already confirmed (and what's still a rumour)

Start here, because the distinction does most of the work.

Confirmed and legislated, starting 6 April 2027:

• The cash ISA allowance falls to £12,000 for under-65s. Savers aged 65 and over keep £20,000. The overall ISA allowance stays at £20,000 either way (HMRC policy paper, 17 September 2026).
• Interest earned on cash sitting inside a Stocks and Shares ISA gets a flat 22% charge — a wrapper that is tax-free today stops being tax-free for that specific slice.
• Under-65s can't transfer money from a Stocks and Shares ISA or an Innovative Finance ISA back into a cash ISA. The route becomes one-way.
• Savings interest tax rises two percentage points across the board from 2027/28: 20% to 22% at the basic rate, 40% to 42% at the higher rate, 45% to 47% at the additional rate (GOV.UK, 'Changes to tax rates for property, savings and dividend income'; Moneyfacts, 18 September 2026).

Announced but further out: National Insurance relief on salary-sacrifice pension contributions is removed above £2,000 a year from April 2029, and unused pension pots come into your estate for inheritance tax from 2027/28 (Hargreaves Lansdown, 8 September 2026; Moneyfacts, 18 September 2026).

Proposed, still at consultation stage: the Lifetime ISA is set to be replaced by a First Time Buyer ISA, not expected before April 2028. The bonus rate and property price cap are both still to be confirmed at a future fiscal event, so don't plan around the detail yet — our Lifetime ISA reform guide covers what is and isn't settled.

Rumoured, with nothing announced: a review of the personal allowance, capital gains tax reform including scrapping the uplift on death, and a lower threshold for the high-value council tax surcharge (Which?, 21 September 2026). The Chartered Institute of Taxation noted that as of mid-September neither the Prime Minister nor the Chancellor had directly addressed the CGT speculation. Treat all of it as noise until 28 October.

1. Use this tax year's cash ISA allowance while it's still £20,000

2026/27 is the last full tax year in which an under-65 can put the entire £20,000 ISA allowance into cash. From 6 April 2027 that drops to £12,000, with the remaining £8,000 only usable in a Stocks and Shares, Lifetime or Innovative Finance ISA.

The real deadline is 5 April 2027, not Budget day — so there's no need to scramble in October. But if you're sitting on savings outside an ISA and paying tax on the interest, this tax year is worth more to you than next one. We covered the mechanics and the numbers in detail in our guide to the cash ISA allowance cut to £12,000.

One honest caveat: for most people under 35, this is theoretical. If you're nowhere near saving £12,000 in a year, the cut changes nothing for you, and you can skip straight to point three.

2. Get cash into the right wrapper before the one-way door closes

This is the change almost nobody is talking about, and it's the one with a genuine "do it before" attached.

From 6 April 2027, under-65s lose the ability to move money from a Stocks and Shares ISA into a cash ISA (HMRC anti-circumvention rules, announced 23 June 2026). Cash-to-investments still works. Investments-to-cash does not. If you've got money in a Stocks and Shares ISA that you now think you'll need within a few years — a deposit, a wedding, a career break — the window to shift it into an ISA-protected cash account closes permanently on 5 April 2027.

We wrote up the full implications in the ISA one-way door. The short version: decide what that money is actually for before the rule changes, not after.

3. Check what your emergency cash is actually earning

The gap between a decent cash ISA and a current account is currently worth more to most under-35s than any Budget measure.

As of 22 September 2026, the top easy-access cash ISA paid 4.75% AER (Trading 212, including a fixed 1.15% 12-month bonus for new money via MoneySavingExpert's promo link), with Chip at 4.74% AER for transfers in. The best one-year fix was 4.82% AER from Kent Reliance (MoneySavingExpert, 22 September 2026). Against a Bank Rate of 3.75% and CPI inflation of 3.1% in August 2026, those rates are still comfortably ahead of inflation.

Rates won't necessarily stay there. The Bank of England held at 3.75% at its September 2026 meeting on a 6–3 vote, with three members voting for a rise to 4% because of energy-driven inflation risk — so the next move is genuinely uncertain in both directions. That's an argument for checking your rate now rather than a reason to panic. Our best cash ISA rates page tracks the current table, and if you don't yet have a buffer at all, start with how to build an emergency fund from zero.

4. Claim the free money you're already entitled to

Two things beat every Budget-timing manoeuvre going, and both are unconditional.

Your workplace pension match. If your employer matches contributions above the auto-enrolment minimum and you're not taking it, you're declining part of your salary. No rumoured tax change is worth more than an instant 100% match, and the 2026/27 pension annual allowance is £60,000 — nowhere near a constraint for most people in their twenties and thirties (HMRC, updated 6 April 2026).

Help to Save, if you're on Universal Credit. It pays a 50% bonus on what you save — up to £1,200 over four years on a maximum £50 a month. HMRC confirmed on 21 September 2026 that the scheme is now permanent, that 656,700 accounts have been opened and over £300m paid out in bonuses. Eligibility is broad: you qualify if you're claiming Universal Credit and had take-home pay of £1 or more in your last monthly assessment period. Nothing in any ISA or investing app comes close to a guaranteed 50% return.

5. Check your ISA money is actually invested

Money sitting as uninvested cash inside a Stocks and Shares ISA is about to be treated differently from money that's invested. From 6 April 2027, interest on that cash attracts a flat 22% charge (HMRC, 17 September 2026).

This catches more people than you'd think. It's very common to transfer money in, mean to buy something, and then leave it as cash for months. Worth logging in and checking. We went through the detail and the workarounds in what the 22% charge on cash in a Stocks and Shares ISA means, and the related question of where to hold cash in a Stocks and Shares ISA after April 2027.

If the answer is that the money should be invested, keep the costs low — platform fees compound against you in exactly the way returns compound for you. Remember that the value of investments can fall as well as rise, and you could get back less than you put in; a Stocks and Shares ISA protects you from tax, not from markets.

Don't do this: take pension money early because of a rumour

This is the single most expensive Budget-season mistake, and it happens every year.

Ahead of the October 2024 Budget, speculation that the tax-free lump sum would be cut drove savers to take £3.9bn in one-off pension payments in the 12 months to Q3 2025 — up 29% year on year and 81% on the equivalent period in 2022/23, with record £1bn quarters either side of Budget day (Corporate Adviser). The change never came. Hargreaves Lansdown's summary of the episode is blunt: it "left many people with part of their pension investments sitting outside a tax-efficient wrapper" (8 September 2026).

The lump sum allowance is £268,275 for 2026/27 and has been unchanged for three tax years (HMRC, updated 6 April 2026). As of 23 September 2026 there has been no announcement about changing it.

If you're under 35 you can't access a pension anyway — the normal minimum pension age is 55, rising to 57 on 6 April 2028 (Finance Act 2022) — so this one mostly matters as something to mention to a parent who's getting twitchy.

Don't do this: sell investments to front-run a CGT change

Capital gains tax reform is the loudest rumour of this Budget cycle. It is also entirely unconfirmed.

Selling to escape a hypothetical tax means crystallising a real one today, plus dealing costs, plus the risk of being out of the market while it moves. And if your investments are inside an ISA, capital gains tax doesn't apply to them at all — which is the actual lesson here. The answer to CGT anxiety is to use your ISA allowance, not to sell.

There's a broader version of this point. Ten-year gilt yields were back around 5% in late August 2026 and the political backdrop is unsettled (Hargreaves Lansdown, 8 September 2026), which makes Budget season feel like a moment demanding action. It usually isn't. We looked at what the 2026 market wobble actually means for beginners in is now a bad time to start investing?

What to do on 28 October itself

Read the start dates, not the headlines. Most personal tax changes are deferred to the following April — as the ISA reforms announced at Budget 2025 were, taking effect 6 April 2027. A measure that "starts in 2028" gives you two years to respond calmly.

Then check three things that genuinely affect under-35s: anything on ISA allowances beyond what's already legislated, anything on the personal allowance or income tax thresholds, and anything on student loan repayment thresholds. We'll update this page after the Budget with what actually landed.

The honest summary

Four of the five things above — using your allowance, sorting your cash wrapper, checking your rate, taking your employer match — are worth doing in a year with no Budget at all. That's rather the point. The financial press needs a Budget story every October; your money mostly needs you to have a boring buffer, a low-cost ISA and an employer match you're not leaving on the table.

This is general information, not financial advice. Rates, fees and tax rules change — every figure above is dated, and it's worth confirming current terms with the provider before you act. Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and may change in future. If you're unsure, consider speaking to a qualified financial adviser.

Last updated 23 September 2026. We'll revise this page after the Budget on 28 October 2026.