Tell us your experiences of managing household income, savings and debt

UKParliament

The Treasury Committee wants to hear from you as part of their inquiry into household finances.

Do you have any experience with:

hard-to-manage household debt or consumer credit

non-credit (e.g. utilities bills or council tax) defaults

using saving schemes, e.g. lifetime ISAs, help-to-buy ISAs, or similar

seeking and receiving financial advice

planning for retirement and/or deciding how to draw your pension following the implementation of pension freedoms

The Committee would like to hear about:

Your personal experiences involving these issues;

What you think the Government and financial services providers could do to address and improve these issues and prevent problems with saving and unmanageable debt affecting people in future; and

Whether we need new pension, saving and credit products in light of this.

We will use this information to brief MPs, to raise awareness using quotes and statistics through social media campaigns, and potentially to frame and give a human face to questions we ask to witnesses at our evidence sessions to be held after the New Year. We will ensure that no other personal information or identifiers are held or used to protect the privacy of individuals who wish to contribute.

Please note, the Committee cannot respond to or pursue individual cases.

If you don’t want to contribute on the forum, you can submit through the Committee’s website.

Full terms of reference for the inquiry are available on the Committee’s website.

You can visit the Committee website, or follow the Committee Twitter account @CommonsTreasury, for more information.

EssexHebridean

I'd love for us to be able to use Lifetime ISA's to save towards retirement but apparently those over 40 don't deserve getting rewarded for thinking ahead like this...

tallyhoh

I'd love it if finance companies were banned from advertising loans etc including sending out unsolicited mail encouraging people to take out finance.
When I went to pay off my mortgage I was asked if I wanted to take out ANOTHER loan instead??
Bank staff are trained to persuade customers to take out stuff they probably can't afford, it needs to be stopped.

Fireflyaway

Payday lenders should be made illegal. Only desperate people use them and they only make the situation worse.
Store cards / credit should only be available to over 21's.
There should be more financial education for kids. I left school not knowing the cost of living. I didn't know how to budget and hadn't even heard of a credit file or why protecting it is important.
I'm concerned about retirement. Currently I won't qualify for a state pension till I'm 68... Depressing! I'm sure it will rise again.

Wonky_Teacup

Better education is needed on financial matters, done at a point in school to catch even those that leave at 16.
Better rules to stop credit "up sell" from banks etc - the emphasis should be on rewarding saving/loyalty over attempting to sell more and more credit to consumers. Personally, I'd love to see it be made mandatory for banks to have folk in house (at the very least by phone for rural areas - in most branches as well would be nice) to help customers with debt management/advice in a change of circumstance. It's a bit hit and miss with access to/knowledge of other charities etc to get personalised debt advice so it'd be nice to force banks to have something (personal experience involved a lot of bank staff happy to sell credit but really reluctant to give any advice etc)

tori.k

An idea would be continued support of the citizens advice bureau's services, a essential form of support for many that find themselves in difficulty, maybe if less money was spent in these pointless inquiries and used to help keep, one stop shops and other essential services running, there wouldn't need to be so many inquiries in the first place.

tealady

I would agree with having better education re money matters.
Understanding APR's and how to recognise a loan shark would be a good place to start.

bexster1975

I could not agree more re: financial education. My business offers this to schools and colleges amongst other services.

It seems the only motivation for not offering this previously was that it is not considered in the governments/financial services best interests that the populus are educated - I sometimes wonder if this extends to education on anything (?)

Better understanding of the deliberately complex financial sector would make all lives better.

Bexster

curiousralphy

Credit check companies should be held to account for incorrect information and should be made to promptly deal with errors. The process for fixing errors is also not transparent enough.

We had delayed mortgage approval due to incorrect information on their files and we were responsible for proving the credit check company made an error. It took them months to update the record and by the time the issue was fixed the house was gone.

Jibeddy

I’ve been in quite large debts with credit card companies and payday loans, I’ve turned this around in the space of 5 years to now have 6 months salary behind me in savings. All thanks to some very sound information from this website and it’s members.

I don’t have too much to add to other commenters, other than that payday loan companies are like vultures. When they know you’re stuck they hound you with direct advertisement giving you a dangerous sense of security.

What can be done? Education, education, education.

It’s not been too long since I left school, so it’s fresh in the memory. I’ve learnt far more about debt, saving and budgeting in the 1 or 2 years I’ve been visiting this website than in all the time I spent at school.

I’ve been teaching this to my younger sisters and they’re far better for it than I was at their age. They’re also surprisingly engaged so I think we’d all be surprised at how valuable a lot of young adults would find proper ‘everyday finance’ education.

Dia_Pita

I was saving for my retirement through the National Insurance scheme, I was due to retire at 60 as promised when I choose full stamp over half stamp contributions. The government reneged, whilst ring fencing all MP's so they still get their state pension at 60 (female) and 65 (male).


I've got an idea about savings for retirement, put me back on my original terms and make tax evaders pay double.