The Money Statistics April 2016

4.2% The household savings rate in 2015 – the lowest since records began in 1963

3.8% The record low household savings rate in Q4 2015

45,318 The number of mortgages approved for house purchase in February

0.33% The record low average interest rate from an instant access savings account

£231,843 The average cost of raising a child to 21 years old

191,152 The record low number of mortgages in arrears greater than 1.5% of loan value

84 months The period of time the Bank of England base rate has been at 0.5%

111,000 People were made redundant in the three months to January.

31% Of households owned their home with a mortgage

UK Personal Debt

People in the UK owed £1.465 trillion at the end of February 2016. This is up from £1.43 trillion at the end of February 2015 – an extra £684.39 per UK adult.

The average total debt per household – including mortgages – was £54,261 in February. The revised figure for January was £54,094.

Per adult in the UK that’s an average debt of £29,010 in February – around 111.9% of average earnings. This is slightly up from a revised £28,921 a month earlier.

Based on December* 2015 trends, the UK’s total interest repayments on personal debt over a 12 month period would have been £52.371 billion.

  • That’s an average of £143 million per day.
  • This means that households in the UK would have paid an average of £1,940 in annual interest repayments. Per person that’s £1,037 4.03% of average earnings.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s July 2015 forecast, household debt is predicted to reach £2.551 trillion in Q1 2021. This makes the average household debt £94,481 (assuming that the number of households in the UK remained the same between now and Q1 2021).

Outstanding consumer credit lending was £180.7 billion at the end of February 2016.

  • This is up from £171.1 billion at the end of February 2015, and is an increase of £190.47 for every adult in the UK.

Per household, that’s an average consumer credit debt of £6,693 in February up from a revised £6,656 in January – or £356 extra per household over the year.

It also means the average consumer credit borrowing stood at £3,578 per UK adult. This is up from a revised £3,559 in January.

Total credit card debt in February 2016 was £63.82bn. Per household this is £2,364 – for a credit card bearing the average interest, it would take 25 years and 5 months to repay if you made only the minimum repayment each month.

  • The minimum repayment in the first month would be £56 but reduces each month. If you paid £56 every month, the debt would be cleared in around 5 years and 5 months.

Total net lending to individuals by UK banks and building societies rose by £4.9 billion in February 2016 – or £169m a day.

  • Net mortgage lending rose by £3.6 billion in the month; net consumer credit lending rose by £1.3 billion.

UK Banks and Building Societies wrote off £3.175 billion of loans to individuals over the four quarters to Q4 2015.

  • In Q4 2015 itself they wrote off  £1,046 million (of which £356 million was credit card debt) amounting to a daily write-off of £11.4 million.

In 2014/15, the average maintenance loan awarded for full-time undergraduates from England was £3,890, and the average maintenance grant  awarded to successful applicants was £3,008.

The average debt owed per student at the end of 2013/14 was £12,651 (this is debt for English students and EU students in England, including loans for Further and Higher Education. It doesn’t include ‘mortgage-style’ loans, as these were sold by Government in May 2013).

 

The average debt for the 2014 cohort which just entered repayment was £20,10.

Everyday in the UK

The population of the UK grew by an estimated 1,223 people a day between 2003 and 2013.

On average, a UK household spends £3.78 a day on water, electricity and gas.

222 people a day are declared insolvent or bankrupt. This is equivalent to one person every 6 minutes 13 seconds.

34 million plastic card purchase transactions were made every day in January 2015, with a total value of £1.57 billion.

8.4m cash machine transactions were made every day in February with a value of £334m.

2,102 Consumer County Court Judgments (CCJs) are issued every day, with an average value of £2,030.

Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 3,957 new debt problems every day during the quarter ending December 2015.

25 properties are repossessed every day, or one every 57 min 40 seconds.

The number of mortgages with arrears of over 2.5% of the remaining balance fell by 35 a day.

The number of people unemployed for over 12 months fell by 422 per day between November and January.

1,207 people a day reported they had become redundant between November and January.

Net lending to individuals in the UK increased by £169 million a day, despite a fall in February.

The Government borrowed £245m a day during February 2015 (£2,843 per second).

Borrowers would repay £143m a day in interest over a year, based on December 2015 trends.

It costs an average of £30.23 per day to raise a child from birth to the age of 21.

54 mortgage possession claims and 37 mortgage possession orders are made every day.

420 landlord possession claims and 317 landlord possession orders are made every day.