Striking Numbers

• 9,000 is the number of new debt problems dealt with by CAB each day in England and Wales.
• 41% of UK consumers feel worse off now than they did this time last year according to research by comparison site Gocompare.com.
• £1,823bn by end 2015 is what the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts will be the household debt which is a growth of £159m a day. This would take the average household debt to £72,341 per household.
• £38.06m a day was written off by UK banks and Building Societies over the past 12 months.
• £29,918 (including mortgages) is the average owed by every UK adult. This is 126% of average earnings.
• 11.4 m households that have an average outstanding mortgage at £108,825.
• £4,467 is the average consumer borrowing via credit cards, motor and retail finance deals, overdrafts and unsecured personal loans per UK adult at the end of July 2010.Every 14 minutes a property is repossessed.
• 1,359 Consumer County Court Judgements (CCJs) were issued every day during Q2 2010 and the average judgement amount was £4,063.
• £26 is the average cost of raising a child from birth to the age of 21, per day.
• £15.13 is the average cost to run a car per day.

Servicing Debt

• The Insolvency Service said there were 34,743 individual insolvencies in England and Wales (381 people a day or 1 every 3.78 minutes) in Q2 2010 on a seasonally adjusted basis. This was a decrease of 2.6% on the previous quarter and an increase of 5% on the same period a year ago.
• 1,000 people are seeking some form of formal debt rescheduling every working day.
• 230,137 unsolicited telephone calls companies made to UK consumers daily by debt management and personal loan companies.

Debt iceberg

• Many people are in unrecorded Debt Management Plans which are not included in today’s statistics. According to estimates by R3 this could amount to 500,000 people, more than double the number in formal insolvency procedures. Below them, under the waterline are another 574,000 who are struggling financially but have contacted their creditors informally.
• More worrying are another group further down comprising of 961,000 individuals who are struggling with debts but have not sought help. This group could find themselves in formal insolvency procedures unless they take swift action.

Spending

• At the end of 2009 there were 64.4m credit and charge cards in the UK compared with around 62m people in the country.
• Total credit card debt in July 2010 was £58.4bn
• Weddingplan estimates that couples looking to get married in 2009 can expect to pay a huge £21,089 on their big day.

You Gov survey

• More than half of Brits said they were struggling to some degree to keep up with bills and credit commitments at the moment. However, on a positive note, only five per cent were actually falling behind.
• 43% of people often or sometimes struggle to make it to the next payday.
• Only a quarter of people (26%) have a budget they follow regularly.
• Only 31% have made a Will, with 49% of those without one saying it’s because they’ve just not got round to doing it yet.

Source: creditaction.org.uk