The Money Statistics March 2020

People in the UK owed £1,680 billion at the end of January 2020.

This is up by £48.7 billion from £1,631 billion at the end of January 2019, an extra £923 per UK adult over the year.

The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £60,363.

Per adult this was £31,845, around 112% of average earnings. This is up from a revised £31,765 a month earlier.

Based on January 2020 trends, the UK’s total interest payments on personal debt over a 12-month period would have been £51,085 million, an average of £140 million per day.

The average annual interest per household would have been £1,836 and per person £969, 3.4% of average earnings.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March 2020 forecast, household debt of all types is forecast to rise from £2.068 trillion in 2019-20 to £2.425 trillion in 2023-24.

This would make the average household debt £86,388 (assuming household numbers track ONS population projections.) This forecast is pre-Covid-19.

At the end of January 2020, outstanding consumer credit lending was £224.9 billion, increasing by £0.56 billion on the revised total for the previous month.

Within the total, outstanding credit card debt came to £72.2 billion, a decrease of 0.3% in the year to January 2020. Credit card debt averaged £2,595 per household and £1,369 per adult.

A credit card on the average interest would take 26 years and 8 months to repay, making only the legal minimum repayments each month.

The minimum repayment in the first month would be £67 but would reduce each month. If £67 were paid every month, the debt would be cleared in around 5 years and 2 months.

Total net lending to individuals and housing associations by UK banks and building societies rose by £4.178 billion in January 2020 or £135 million a day over revised figures for December 2019.

Net mortgage lending rose by £3.62 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending rose by £0.557 billion.

In Q4 2019 lenders wrote off £1.459 billion (of which £459 million was credit card debt, amounting to a daily write-off of £5.0 million.)

The population of the UK grew by an estimated 1,083 people a day between 2017 and 2018.

On average, a UK household spends £3.92 a day on water, electricity and gas.

318 people a day were declared insolvent or bankrupt in October to December 2019. This was equivalent to one person every 4 minutes and 32 seconds.

In Northern Ireland, there were 7 insolvencies per day and in Scotland 36 insolvencies per day.

Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 2,618 debt issues every day in the year to February 2020.

14 properties were repossessed every day in Q4 2019 in England and Wales, or one every 1 hour and 40 minutes.

The number of UK mortgages with arrears of over 2.5% of the remaining balance fell by 18 a day.

The number of people unemployed in the UK grew by 14 per day in the year to January 2020.

1,152 people a day reported they had become redundant in November 2019 to January 2020.

Net lending to individuals and housing associations in the UK grew by £135 million a day in January 2020.

Government debt increased by £124.6 million a day in the year to February 2020.

Borrowers paid £140 million a day in interest in January 2020.

It costs an average of £22.92 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 £28.16 per day.

68 mortgage possession claims and 48 mortgage possession orders were made every day in England and Wales in October to December 2019.

277 landlord possession claims and 223 landlord possession orders were made every day.