Huge debts being accrued by women in their twenties and thirties

According to data in a recent report many women in their twenties and thirties are running up huge debts, with many trying to cope with much higher loan costs since the latter part of last year. Many women in this age group as said to be turning to expensive forms of borrowing such as store cards, credit cards, and payday loans because they are so short of money.

The data shows that the number of women aged between twenty five and thirty four who are spending over 50 percent of their income on repaying unsecured debt has doubled since August of 2008, and now equates to around one in ten. The data comes from the credit reference agency Callcredit. Prior to Christmas another credit reference agency reported that around 38 percent of women had been refused credit and around 34 percent did not know what they would do if they received an unexpected bill.

One industry official stated: ‘Payday loans are the ultimate barometer of how tough things are in much of the real Britain. We saw an explosion of payday loans from January 2008 onwards with more and more people using all of their income on essentials – but still not being able to get through to the end of the month. We will know the economy is starting to recover when the trend starts heading back down again.’

One twenty six year old woman stated: ‘Although I am not earning a bad wage in my job, and I still live with my parents, I seem to be paying a huge amount of money out on debts that I’ve run up over the past year, such as store cards, credit cards, and a couple of loans that I took out over the past couple of years.’