Brits rely on credit to fund basic household emergencies
Consumers in the UK do not have the savings they would need to pay for basic household breakdowns and repairs, a new report has said.A study by Alliance & Leicester Savings found that 45 per cent of people thought they would struggle to raise more than £500 in the event of an emergency.One in five people (21 per cent) revealed they would find it difficult to find more than £100 to pay for something like repairs to a boiler or a replacement washing machine.What's more, 16 per cent said they had no money saved for emergencies and would have to rely on credit instead."The reality of being a homeowner means that at some point you will inevitably have to pay out for repairs such as broken boilers and faulty appliances," warned Hetal Parmar, manager for savings at Alliance & Leicester."We would encourage people to start saving sooner rather than later to avoid a basic household emergency becoming a financial headache."Despite these figures, the survey did reveal that 70 per cent of Brits do now have a savings account of some kind, up from 64 per cent in 2005.
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