Money Statistics: January 2022

Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for January 2022

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1,754.3 billion at the end of November 202
• The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £63,122 and per adult was £33,169, around 108.6% of average earnings
• Net mortgage lending rose by £3.69 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending increased by £7.56 billion
• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 291,136 enquiries in December 2021, 4% up from December 2020.

Spending and Loans

• On average, 50.25 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in December 2021, an increase of 4.7% on December 2020
• The number of ATMs (in-branch and remote) fell from 54,574 at the end of 2020 to 53,398 at the end of 2021 (a fall of 2.15%.)
• In Q3 2021, households in the UK spent £118.9 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £4.28 per household per day
• UK Finance figures show that 53.6% of credit card balances were bearing interest in October 2021

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,556.5 billion at the end of November 2021
• The average mortgage interest rate was 2.02%at the end of November 2021. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £2,848 in mortgage interest over the year
• HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £225,175 in November 2021, an annual increase of 9.1% and a monthly change of 1.4%
• According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 1.8% in the 12 months to December 2021.

Financial Inclusion

• According to the FCA, in the UK in 2020 there were 1.2 million adults who did not have a bank account. This was 2.3% of the UK adult population
• According to the FCA Financial Lives Survey, in February 2020, 5.4 million people relied on cash to a great or very great extent, with 2.5 million using cash for all their payments
• According to Ofcom, 1.5 million households did not have access to the Internet in March 2021. This included 18% of one adult households aged 65+
• Recent research by The Social Market Foundation found that low-income households pay a ‘poverty premium’ in buying their goods and services of £490 per year.

The full report can be found here.