The Money Statistics March 2022

People in the UK owed £1,767.1 billion at the end of January 2022.

This is up by £62.2 billion from £1,704.8 billion at the end of January 2021, an extra £1,176.40 per UK adult over the year.

The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £63,582.

Per adult this was £33,410, around 107.5% of average earnings. This is up from the revised £33,382 a month earlier.

Based on January 2022 numbers, the UK’s total interest payments on personal debt over a 12-month period would have been £44,940 million, an average of £123 million per day.

The average annual interest per household would have been £1,617 and per person £850, 2.73% of average earnings.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s October 2021 forecast, household debt of all types is forecast to rise from £2,004 billion in 2020 to £2,363 billion in 2025.

This would make the average total household debt £82,957 (assuming household numbers track ONS population projections).

At the end of January 2022, outstanding consumer credit lending was £198.0 billion, falling by £110 million on the revised total for the previous month.

Within the total, outstanding credit card debt came to £58.4 billion, an increase of 3.11% in the year to January 2022. Credit card debt averaged £2,100 per household and £1,104 per adult.

A credit card on the average interest would take 25 years to repay, making only the legal minimum repayments each month.

The minimum repayment in the first month would be £55 but would reduce each month. If £55 were paid every month, the debt would be cleared in around 5 years and 1 month.

Total net lending to individuals and housing associations by UK banks and building societies grew by £5.7 billion in January 2022 or £183.5 million a day over revised figures for December 2021.

Net mortgage lending rose by £5.60 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending decreased by £64 million.

In Q4 2021 lenders wrote off £902 million (of which £214 million was credit card debt, amounting to a daily write-off of £2.3 million.)

The population of the UK grew by an estimated 777 people a day between 2019 and 2020.

On average, a UK household spends £4.28 a day on water, electricity and gas.

297 people a day were declared insolvent or bankrupt in England or Wales in December 2021 to February 2022. This was equivalent to one person every 4 minutes and 50 seconds.

In Northern Ireland in February 2022, there were 5.8 insolvencies per day. In Scotland in the three months to December 2021 there were 22.4 insolvencies per day.

Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 1,988 debt issues every day in the year to February 2022.

4.2 properties were repossessed every day in October to December 2021 in the UK, or one every 5 hours and 40 minutes.

The number of UK mortgages with arrears of over 2.5% of the remaining balance fell by 11.7 a day in the year to December 2021.

The number of people unemployed in the UK fell by 1,101 per day in the twelve months to January 2022.

739 people a day reported they had become redundant in November 2021 to January 2022.

Net lending to individuals and housing associations in the UK grew by £183.5 million a day in January 2022.

Government debt increased by £204 million a day in the three months to February 2022.

Borrowers paid £123 million a day in interest in January 2022.

It costs an average of £24.44 per day for a couple to raise a child from birth to the age of 18.

For a lone parent family, the cost of raising a child comes to £29.50 per day.

27.9 mortgage possession claims and 18.0 mortgage possession orders were made every day in England and Wales in October to December 2021.

157 landlord possession claims and 74.4 landlord possession orders were made every day.