Debt has always been a taboo subject everyone has some form of debt but no one ever wants to talk about it. This is for many reasons but embarrassment is probably one of the main ones. So are you one of those people who thinks either burying your head in the sand and hope it goes away or you are paying off interest and are delusional to the fact you are not actually paying the debt off. Living in a major city, low employment area or low education can also contribute to your debt.

The boring stuff, statistics for 2017 on debt

Amount Owed:

People in the UK owed £1.529 TRILLION at the end of March 2017. This figure is up from £1.484 TRILLION at the end of March 2016 – an extra £886.84 per UK adult.

Average Borrowing:

The average total debt per household – including mortgages – was £56,632 in March.

That’s an average debt per adult of £30,277 – which is about 114.5% of average earnings.

Consumer Credit Levels

Outstanding consumer credit lending was £197.4 BILLION at the end of March 2017.

This is up from £182.8 BILLION at the end of March 2016, and is an increase of £288.31 for every adult in UK.

This means average consumer credit borrowing per UK adult is now £3,909

Credit Card Borrowing

Total credit card debt in March 2017 was £67.6 BILLION. This is an average of £2,504 per household

This means at the average credit card interest rate it would take 25 years and 11 months to repay if you made the minimum repayments each month.

Debts Written Off By Banks

UK banks and building societies wrote off £640 MILLION of loans and credit card debt to individuals in quarter 4 of 2016. That’s roughly £7 MILLION a day.

CCJ’s

3,321 consumer County Court Judgments (CCJS) are issued every day, with an average value of £1,495.

Number Of Personal Insolvencies

248 people a day are declared insolvent or bankrupt. This is equivalent to one person every 6 MINUTES 13 SECONDS.

Can debt affect your health, yes it sure can and it can commonly cause mental health problems, denial, stress, fear/panic, anger and depression.

So, what do you do to get help?

I would recommend the following if you can consolidate your debt into one manageable monthly payment. You can shop around for a low-interest rate loan to consolidate all your little debts into one. Next cut up all credit cards and store cards immediately as this is not cash but debt and will continue to add to yours if you don’t get rid of them.

If your debt has spiralled out of control and you are in serious financial difficulty please seek advice from a debt management company/charity. I would recommend you speak to a company called StepChange Debt Charity www.stepchange.org the offer free advice and support.

Do not hide from your debt but face it head on as the relief you will feel once you have will change your life. No more letters in the post or avoiding phone calls you can start to live your life in peace again.