Top 10 Striking Numbers   

1. 9,300 - Number of new debt problems dealt with by CAB each day
2. £57,937 - average household debt
3. £181m - personal interest paid in UK daily
4. every 11.2 - minutes a property is repossessed
5. 1,995 - people made redundant every day
6. 1000 - people seek some form of formal debt rescheduling plan every day
7. £4,316 - a second increase in Government national debt 
8. £54.5 bn - total credit card debt in December 2009
9. 17.79 % - the average interest rate on credit card lending which is 17.29% above base rate (0.5%)
10. 71.3m - credit and charge cards in the UK compared with around 60 million people in the country 

Today in the UK

 Savings

• Research from Abbey Savings reveal that over one in four (28%) British parents with young children have no savings or investments to use in times of difficulty
• Abbey Savings also reveal that four out of 10 Britons still save nothing at all
• 31% of savers don’t think they have enough money to cope in an emergency. In real figures, this equates to over 15 million people

Plastic card & Personal Loans

• 21.9m plastic card purchase transactions will be made today with a total value of £1.05bn.
• 8.1m cash withdrawals will be made today with a total value of £530m.
• 768,000 (47.5%) applications for consumer credit were rejected by the major UK lenders in July.
• According to the BBA the proportion of credit card balances bearing interest was 73.6% in July 2009.
• Total credit card debt in October 2009 was £54.5bn. The UK collective credit limit on credit cards is £158bn, which is an average credit card limit of £5,129 per person.
• The average interest rate on credit card lending is currently 18.4%, which is 17.54% above base rate (0.5%).
• There are more credit cards in the UK than people according to APACS. At the end of 2008 there were 71.3m credit and charge cards in the UK compared with around 60 million people in the country.

Young people - the IPOD generation (under 30)

• The proportion of 18-24 year olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) increased by 113,000 in the last 12 months to end Q3 2009 and now stands at 933,000 (19.7%). The proportion of 16-18 year olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) stood at 261,000 (13.4%) at the end of Q3 2009. The total of 16 – 24 classed as NEETS now stands at 1.082m which is the highest on record.
• AXA estimate that a fifth of 18-24 year-olds drink alcohol to take their mind off their financial concerns.
• The unemployment rate for 18 to 24 year olds increased by 24,000 (3.3%) on the quarter and 165,000 (28.5%) in the last 12 months to reach 746,000. This means that 18.0% of all 18 to 24 year olds are unemployed which is the highest figure since records for this series began in 1992. 325,000 (43.6%) have been unemployed for longer than 6 months.
• Research from Sainsbury’s Finance highlights that over half of undergraduate students (53%) in the UK are to be given financial assistance by their parents to see them through the financial burden of university.  The average amount of parental financial support given to undergraduates is £8,070 per student during their university life. 
• The UK's largest survey of student finance, published by Push.co.uk, reveals that students who started at university last year can expect to owe nearly £21,200 by the time they leave and new students should reckon on at least £2,000 more than that.

Source: creditaction.org.uk