The True Story of Debt in the UK

smeagold

Just to emphasise a few of these numbers:

• Total personal debt in the UK is running at £1.45 trillion (that's £1,454,000,000,000)
• Individuals owe more in personal debt than the country's annual output
• As a country we owe more in personal debt than we produce in economic output as a whole.
• The average UK household debt is £57,706
• The average UK adult owes £29,875
• The average UK adult has unsecured debts of £17,857, with 19% owing more than £30,000
• The average household pays over £2,582 in interest every year
• 46% of personal debt is on Credit Cards
• 372 people a day are declared insolvent or bankrupt, or one person every four minutes
• There are 7.9 million cash withdrawals every day, with a value of £530 million
• £2.73 is saved by the average person every day

bendix

Not me. Don't owe anyone a penny.

AD9898_2

I remember Hamish saying to me in the last week or so....... 'it doesn't matter how much you pay for something as long as the IR is low' .....doh... I guess most most of these people feel the same, apart from the ones going bust every 4 minutes.

worldtraveller

I remembered posting about personal debt & insolvency about 5 years ago and thought at that time that rates were staggering.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=1077234&postcount=21

The total number of individual insolvencies was 60,102 in the year up to end Q3 2005.

The figure for 2010 was 135,089.

Individual Insolvency in England & Wales, 1987-2010

Thousands

Source: Insolvency Service

Anyone like to take a punt on which direction the rates will go over the next five years? :think: :idea:

nicko33

The total wealth of households in Great Britain in 2006/08 was estimated at £9.0 trillion.
Property and pension wealth contributed the most to wealth, accounting for over three-quarters of the total.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_economy/wealth-assets-2006-2008/Wealth_in_GB_2006_2008.pdf

AD9898_2

worldtraveller wrote: »

I remembered posting about personal debt & insolvency about 5 years ago and thought at that time that rates were staggering.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=1077234&postcount=21

The total number of individual insolvencies was 60,102 in the year up to end Q3 2005.

The figure for 2010 was 135,089.

Individual Insolvency in England & Wales, 1987-2010

Thousands

Source: Insolvency Service

Anyone like to take a punt on which direction the rates will go over the next five years? :think: :idea:

What's interesting is IR's have fallen off a cliff in the last 2 years, yet the graph shows the 2 highest peaks there, imagine what'd it would have been if rates had of been normal.

Insolvencies would have close to millions, house prices down 50% I reckon. The thing is if it would have happened, we could have been on our way to rebuilding again now, instead we are just a zombie, stagflating, desperately trying to keep the plates spinning.

ukcarper

AD9898 wrote: »

What's interesting is IR's have fallen off a cliff in the last 2 years, yet the graph shows the 2 highest peaks there, imagine what'd it would have been if rates had of been normal.

Insolvencies would have close to millions, house prices down 50% I reckon. The thing is if it would have happened, we could have been on our way to rebuilding again now, instead we are just a zombie, stagflating, desperately trying to keep the plates spinning.

As half of that debt is unsecured I wouldn’t say they are benefiting from low interest rates.

Radiantsoul

AD9898 wrote: »

What's interesting is IR's have fallen off a cliff in the last 2 years, yet the graph shows the 2 highest peaks there, imagine what'd it would have been if rates had of been normal.

Insolvencies would have close to millions, house prices down 50% I reckon. The thing is if it would have happened, we could have been on our way to rebuilding again now, instead we are just a zombie, stagflating, desperately trying to keep the plates spinning.

In that case I imagine that every bank would have failed and it would have been a hell of a slog back to normality.

Kohoutek

This is just a reflection of the fact that we have both a relatively unequal distribution of wealth and income and an economy in large part driven by consumer spending.

Until either of those change these trends are not going to change.

Radiantsoul

The implication that debt is bad is not one that many people would agree with. If we are to assume that economic growth will continue for another generation then those levels of debt might be sustainable.

smeagold

Radiantsoul wrote: »

The implication that debt is bad is not one that many people would agree with. If we are to assume that economic growth will continue for another generation then those levels of debt might be sustainable.

Debt is good...