Guardian News and Media/London
Almost 15mn Britons are “not currently making any effort” to save for the future, while 8mn have no savings to their name at all, according to a new study.
The research also found that during the last year there had been a jump in the number of people who had given or loaned “substantial” amounts of money to their children or other family members, often simply to help them meet daily living expenses.
Some 31% of the UK adult population - representing around 14.9mn people - are failing to save, according to the seventh annual savings and investment report from Scottish Widows, part of Lloyds Banking Group.
This is a slight improvement on the 32% figure of a year ago. It also found that while the majority of Britons are managing to put some money away, nearly a third (32%) estimated the value of their total savings and investments at less than £1,000.
This is less than a typical household’s combined monthly mortgage and council tax bill (£1,009).
The report’s authors said families were increasingly “shouldering the burden”.
In this year’s survey, 40% of those quizzed said they had given or loaned family members “substantial amounts of money” - up from 30% last year. Children were the main recipients of this cash; a quarter of respondents said they had gifted or loaned a sizeable sum to their children.
The average amount given to children has risen to £14,865, compared to £13,300 last year. The top reason for giving cash to their offspring was to help meet essential costs, closely followed by helping with a deposit on a house and paying off debts.
This level of support was having a “stark impact” on parents’ finances, with a quarter cutting back on their savings and almost one in 10 stopping saving altogether, stated the report, which was partially based on a YouGov poll of 5,086 adults carried out in December.
However, it is not just parents funding their children. The researchers found that grandparents were helping their grandchildren, children were lending money to their parents, and siblings were also supporting each other financially, with the typical amount given in these cases ranging from around £3,500 to £4,500.
The wider economic climate is increasing the pressure on those struggling to save, with three in 10 people reporting that they had been forced to cut back on their savings by rising costs. A separate survey from insurer Axa claimed that annual living costs for those aged over 75 had increased by a quarter - from £7,852 to £9,796 - between 2008 and 2012.
However, some of these increases were potentially linked to positive factors such as increasing life expectancy. For example, those aged over 75 were typically spending £196 more on education than they were five years ago - £222 in 2012, compared to £26 in 2008 - and an additional £153 on recreation and culture, both of which are categories associated with an active lifestyle.
Parents ‘struggling to feed children’
Children are being sent to school with cold chips or a packet of biscuits in their lunchbox as families face a squeeze on their budgets, a new survey claims. More than two thirds of adults working with children (68.1%) say that in the last two years, they have seen an increase in the proportion of families who are struggling to feed their youngsters. And of those working in schools, almost half (47.5%) say they have seen a change in the food in children’s lunchboxes as household budgets get tighter. One person told the Children’s Food Trust, who conducted the survey, that “some children come in with just a packet of biscuits”, while another said they had seen “poorer quality sandwich fillings, sometimes just margarine”.