Striking Numbers

Today in the UK

• Citizen Advice Bureaux dealt with 9,072 new debt problems every working day in England and Wales
• 220 mortgage possession claims will be issued and 160 mortgage possession orders will be made today
• 382 landlord possession claims will be issued and 265 landlord possession orders will be made today
• 829,000 people unemployed for more than 12 months
• 1,271 people made redundant daily
• The UK population is projected to grow by 1,205 people a day over the next decade
• every 14 minutes a property is repossessed
• 331 people every day of the year will be declared insolvent or bankrupt. This is equivalent to 1 person every 60 seconds during a working day
• £55,862 is the average household debt
• £179 million in personal interest paid in the UK, every day
• 1,000 people today will seek some form of formal debt rescheduling
• £20.71 million daily write-offs of loans by banks and building societies
• 1,577 Consumer County Court Judgements (CCJs) were issued every day during Q1 2011 and the average judgement amount was £3,118
• The average person will save £2.73 every day
• The average car will cost £16.08 to run today
• It costs £68.05 on average to fill a car with a 50 litre tank with unleaded petrol
• The average cost of raising a child from birth to the age of 21 is £27.50 a day
• £199,700,000 is the amount that the Government Public Sector net debt (PSDN) will grow today (equivalent to £2,178 per second)
• £1,156,000,000 total value of all purchases made using plastic cards today.

Servicing debt

Research by unbiased.com has revealed that a striking 22% of homeowners don‘t know what would happen to their mortgage repayments if the Bank of England base rate were to rise from its record low of 0.5%. According to the findings, 16% of those on a standard variable rate mortgage and 13% of those on a tracker rate mortgage did not know that their repayments would go up if the base-rate increased.

Research by the Co-operative Bank has found that 80% of the UK population are worried about the state of their finances. Utility/energy bill prices (21%), personal debt (21%) and fuel price rises (15%) are causing the most concern. Furthermore, 32% of UK adults do not feel confident that they can pay their bills every month. 28% of those in this group admit to missing some bill payments completely. Of those who have missed payments, 33% had done so for more than one month.

Figures released by the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) suggest that their average client has to work until 4pm on a Wednesday each week just to earn enough money to repay their unsecured debts. The average person contacting CCCS in 2010 owed a total of £22,476 in unsecured debt, and faced a monthly bill of £675.52 simply to meet repayments. This made up an alarming 58% of CCCS clients‘ average monthly earning of £1,173.23 after tax.

Credit cards

There are more credit cards in the UK than people according to the UK Payments Council. At the end of 2010 there were an estimated 63.0m credit and charge cards in the UK compared with around 62m people in the country.

Total credit card debt in May 2011 was £57.2bn.

The average interest rate on credit card lending is currently 18.55%, which is 18.05% above base rate (0.5%).

According to the BBA the proportion of credit card balances bearing interest is just under two-thirds.

Source: creditaction.org.uk