The Money Statistics February 2023

People in the UK owed £1,832.8 billion at the end of December 2022.

This is up by £72.3 billion from £1,760.5 billion at the end of December 2021, an extra £1,367.21 per UK adult over the year.

The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £65,946.

Per adult this was £34,653, around 105.7% of average earnings. This is up from the revised £34,594 a month earlier.

Based on December 2022 numbers, the UK’s total interest payments on personal debt over a 12-month period would have been £55,803 million, an average of £153 million per day.

The average annual interest per household would have been £2,008 and per person £1,055, 3.22% of average earnings.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March 2022 forecast, household debt of all types is forecast to rise from £2,019 billion in 2020 to £2,447 billion in 2025.

This would make the average total household debt £85,906 (assuming household numbers track ONS population projections.)

At the end of December 2022, outstanding consumer credit lending was £207.0 billion, decreasing by £64 million on the revised total for the previous month.

Within the total, outstanding credit card debt came to £62.9 billion, an increase of 7.74% in the year to December 2022. Credit card debt averaged £2,262 per household and £1,189 per adult.

A credit card on the average interest would take 25 years and 10 months to repay, making only the legal minimum repayments each month.

The minimum repayment in the first month would be £61 but would reduce each month. If £61 were paid every month, the debt would be cleared in 5 years.

Total net lending to individuals and housing associations by UK banks and building societies grew by £3.1 billion in December 2022 or £101 million a day over revised figures for November 2022.

Net mortgage lending rose by £3.2 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending decreased by £774 million.

In Q3 2022 lenders wrote off £774 million (of which £279 million was credit card debt, amounting to a daily write-off of £8.4 million.)

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

On average, a UK household spends £3.96 a day on water, electricity and gas.

289 people a day were declared insolvent or bankrupt in England or Wales in November to January 2023. This was equivalent to one person every 4 minutes and 59 seconds.

In Northern Ireland in January 2023, there were 4.0 insolvencies per day. In Scotland in the three months to December 2022 there were 21.4 insolvencies per day.

Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 2,101 debt issues every day in the year to January 2023.

7.6 properties were repossessed every day in July to September 2022 in the UK, or one every 3 hours and 9 minutes.

The number of UK mortgages with arrears of over 2.5% of the remaining balance fell by 16.2 a day in the year to September 2022.

The number of people unemployed in the UK fell by 282 per day in the twelve months to December 2022.

1,076 people a day reported they had become redundant in October to December 2022.

Net lending to individuals and housing associations in the UK grew by £101 million a day in December 2022.

Government debt increased by £397 million a day in the three months to January 2023.

Borrowers paid £153 million a day in interest in December 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.

34.4 mortgage possession claims and 27.0 mortgage possession orders were made every day in England and Wales in October to December 2022.

222.4 landlord possession claims and 175.6 landlord possession orders were made every day.