Money Statistics: October 2018

23rd October 2018

Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for October 2018:

Personal debt in the UK
  • People in the UK owed £1.5987 trillion at the end of August 2018. This is up from £1.5544 trillion at the end of August 2017, an extra £849.91 per UK adult and £66.96 higher than the previous month.
  • The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £58,776 in August. The revised figure for July was £58,648.
  • Per adult in the UK that’s an average debt of £30,698 in August, around 113.2% of average earnings, up 0.2% on last month. This is up from a revised £30,631 a month earlier.
Spending and Loans
  • In the year to July 2018, consumer credit increased by 8.5% according to UK Finance, while outstanding levels of credit card borrowing grew by 8.9%, a rate that has been fairly constant over the last year.
  • In Q2 2018, households in the UK spent £108.7 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £4.00 per household per day. On a seasonally adjusted basis, this was slightly down on Q1 2018.
  • The average interest rate on credit card lending bearing interest was 18.38% in August 2018. This is 17.63%  above the Bank of England Base Rate of 0.75%.

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

  • Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1.385 trillion at the end of August. This is up from £1.352 trillion a year earlier.
  • That means that the estimated average outstanding mortgage for the 11.1 million households with mortgage debt was £124,732 in August.
  • The average mortgage interest rate was 2.45% at the end of August. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £3,056 in mortgage interest over the year.
  • For new loans, the average mortgage interest rate was 2.11%. Using the latest figures from UK Finance, this means new mortgages would attract an average of £3,070 in interest over the year.
  • According to UK Finance, gross mortgage lending in August totalled an estimated £24.1 billion. This is down 2.1% on August 2017.

The full report can be found here.