There wasn’t a lot for mums to get excited about in the budget announced by the Government this week, but I did spot a few plus points.

Child tax credit is increasing by an extra £20 per year, which will help some people, while parents with disabled children will now get an extra £100 towards their Child Trust Fund.

One of the new initiatives I did like is that grandparents who help with childcare will get National Insurance credits towards their state pension from April 2011.

This is long overdue. I’ll bet a lot of Hectic Mum readers agree when I say that lots of us couldn’t survive without a bit of help from Nan and/or Grandad. Maybe someone wants to set up a new blog called the Hectic Nan!

Anyway, here is a link to a quick budget calculator to see how the 2009 budget affects your family finances.

Here’s one for all those dads (and mums!) who want their kids to grow up to be famous footballers.

I thought at first this might have been an ad for children’s branded sportswear but it’s actually for the Child Trust Fund.

I don’t remember it being on TV, but it’s available from YouTube and is very funny.