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Survey uncovers a region of worriers

PEOPLE in the North East worry about their personal debt more than almost everyone else in the UK, according to new research by insolvency trade body R3.

And the research also discovered that people in the region are the first to start to struggle financially before their monthly payday arrives.

Nationally, four in ten adults in Britain (almost 19 million people) said they were worried about their current level of debt, with Londoners (49%) registering the highest levels of concern, closely followed by those living in the North East and North West (both 44%).

Those living in the East were the least worried, with just under a third (32%) saying that they were concerned with the level of their debt.

A slightly higher number nationally (42%) said they struggle each month to make it through to ‘payday’ (11% on a regular basis and 31% occasionally), with the average day on which this struggle begins being the 20th day after payday.

But in the North East, things begin to get tight on average on the 18th of the month, earlier than anywhere else in the UK, and affects half of the regional population.

Across the age brackets, those aged fifty-five and over expressed the most concern over credit card debt, whilst concerns around mortgage repayments were more common amongst those aged between 25 and 54, and those under 25 were most worried about their student loan (42%) and loans from family and friends (27%).

Worry over loans from banks or other lenders was fairly evenly spread across the age group. R3’s research comes against a backdrop of record levels of personal insolvency, something which particularly concerns Linda Farish, chairman of the north east arm of R3 and director of Recovery & Insolvency at Newcastle-based accountants RMT.

She says: “Over the course of the last decade, personal insolvencies have increased by 350%, and it is very worrying that such a large percentage of the regional population are finding it a struggle financially to get through the month.

“This is a huge stress in itself and factors such as inflation associated with basic living costs, potential rises in interest rates and significant levels of job insecurity will not make this monthly struggle any easier any time soon.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .