Money Statistics: May 2024

Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for May 2024

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1,843.9 billion at the end of March 2024.
• The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £64,296 and per adult was £34,372, around 97.4% of average earnings.
• Net mortgage lending increased by £482 million in the month, while net consumer credit lending increased by £591 million.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 244,687 enquiries in April 2024, 19.8% up from April 2023.

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,620 billion at the end of March 2024.
• The average mortgage interest rate was 3.51% at the end of March 2024. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £5,290 in mortgage interest over the year.
• HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £236,461 in March 2024, an annual increase of 1.8% and a monthly change of 0.8%.
• According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 8.9% in the 12 months to April 2024.

Spending and Loans

• On average, 42.9 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in April 2024, a decrease of 10.2% on April 2023.
• The number of ATMs (in-branch and remote) fell from 50,300 at the end of 2022 to 47,711at the end of 2023 (a fall of 5.2%).
• In Q4 2023, households in the UK spent £96.43 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £3.43 per household per day.
• UK Finance figures show that 50.0% of credit card balances were bearing interest in February 2024.

Financial Inclusion

• According to the FCA, in the UK in 2022 there were 1.1 million adults who did not have a bank account. This was 2.1% of the UK adult population.
• According to the FCA Financial Lives Survey, in May 2022, 3.1 million people said they had paid for everything or most things using cash in the last 12 months.
• According to Ofcom, 1.5 million households did not have access to the Internet in March 2021. This included 18% of households with members aged 65+.
• Fair By Design has estimated that the cost of the poverty premium to a typical parliamentary constituency is £4.5 million a year. This equates to over £430 per year for a low-income household.

The full report can be found here.