The Money Statistics February 2017

7.279 million Employees had joined a pension scheme under auto-enrollment by the end of December 2016

0.15% The record low interest rate on an instant access savings account

22,852 The number of individual insolvencies in England and Wales in Q4 2016

1.597 million The number of people classed as unemployed between October to December

1.8% The rate of inflation in January

5.6% The average savings rate in Q3 2016

£1.78 The amount of interest someone on the average salary would get if they saved 5.6% of their income and put that in an instant access account for a year after tax

£3.25 The sum spent per household every day on water, gas and electricity

£20,908 Was spent every second using debit and credit cards.

UK Personal Debt

People in the UK owed £1.516 trillion at the end of December 2016. This is up from £1.466 trillion at the end of December 2015 – an extra £995.53 per UK adult.

The average total debt per household – including mortgages – was £56,153 in December. The revised figure for November was £55,856.

Per adult in the UK that’s an average debt of £30,022 in December – around 113.6% of average earnings. This is slightly up from a revised £29,982 a month earlier.

Based on December 2016 trends, the UK’s total interest repayments on personal debt over a 12 month period would have been£50.395 billion.

  • That’s an average of £138 million per day.
  • This means that households in the UK would have paid an average of £1,866 in annual interest repayments. Per person that’s £998 3.77% of average earnings.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s November 2016 forecast, household debt is predicted to reach £2.294 trillion in Q1 2022. This makes the average household debt £84,964 (assuming that the number of households in the UK remained the same between now and then).

Outstanding consumer credit lending was £192.95 billion at the end of December 2016.

  • This is up from £178.8 billion at the end of December 2015, and is an increase of £279.46 for every adult in the UK.

Per household, that’s an average consumer credit debt of £7,146 in December, up from a revised £7,047 in November – and  £522.70 extra per household over the year.

It also means the average consumer credit borrowing stood at £3,821 per UK adult. This is up from a revised £3,809 in November.

Total credit card debt in November 2016 was £67.9bn. Per household this is £2,465 – for a credit card bearing the average interest, it would take 25 years and 10 months to repay if you made only the minimum repayment each month.

  • The minimum repayment in the first month would be £59 but reduces each month. If you paid £58 every month, the debt would be cleared in around 5 years and 4 months.

Total net lending to individuals by UK banks and building societies rose by £3.8 billion in December 2016 – or £123m a day.

  • Net mortgage lending rose by £2.8 billion in the month; net consumer credit lending rose by £1 billion.
  • In Q3 itself they wrote off  £801 million (of which £584 million was credit card debt) amounting to a daily write-off of £8.7 million.

Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales dealt with 612,209 new enquiries in the three months between July and September 2016.

Everyday in the UK

The population of the UK grew by an estimated 1,286 people a day between 2014 and 2015.

On average, a UK household spends £3.25 a day on water, electricity and gas.

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

42 million plastic card purchase transactions were made every day in November 2016, with a total value of £1.806 billion.

2799 Consumer County Court Judgments (CCJs) are issued every day, with an average value of £1,711.

Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 4,022 new debt problems every day during the quarter ending June 2016.

15 properties are repossessed every day, or one every one hour and 34 minutes.

The number of mortgages with arrears of over 2.5% of the remaining balance fell by 21 a day.

The number of people unemployed for over 12 months fell by 266 per day October and December.

1,315 people a day reported they had become redundant between October and December.

Net lending to individuals in the UK increased by £123 million a day.

The Government debt grew by £188m a day during December 2016 (£2,576 per second).

Borrowers would repay £138 a day in interest over a year, based on December 2016 trends.

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

52 mortgage possession claims and 32 mortgage possession orders are made every day.

336 landlord possession claims and 268 landlord possession orders are made every day.