Beat the Credit Crunch. Ways to reduce your food bills.
United Kingdom Feels Global Credit Crunch
The spending habits of the people in the U.K. depend on where they live. The people in the more urban city dwelling areas are more likely to spend liberally as opposed to those who live in the rural areas. This is partially because of the fact that the fancier merchandise is more readily available to them. The people in the urban areas can afford to spend upon more luxury items as well because higher paying jobs are also available to them. Of course everyone is going to feel the credit crunch even in London where foreclosures have risen sharply over the last two years with more and more people borrowing with the use of their credit cards. The number of foreclosures has risen sixteen percent over the entire country over the last year in a half. The country has not seen these kind of housing problems since the early 1990s. With the loss of equity in homes you are seeing more and more people depend on credit cards to buy everyday items.
Even developers who are trying to get prepared for the 2012 London Olympic Games are having trouble getting loans from banks to work on those projects. For the average person though credit card companies in the United Kingdom are reporting an increase in late and interest payments. The overall individual’s debt in Great Britain is double that of any other Western European country. Because of these increased debt numbers and bankruptcies advocacy groups such as The Federation of Small Businesses within the country are calling for credit card rate caps.
Visa Europe has pledged not to raise rates as quickly on small businesses if they get in trouble. The same kind of protection does not appear to extend to the average British consumer. The British Finance Minister has offered further training for folks in financial literacy and has also requested that people lending credit use discretion. The government is not likely to play hardball with these companies given the lackluster job creation numbers not only in Britain, but around the world. Gordon Brown has already had to deal with a run on a bank so it is hard to say how much a toll free help line as far as credit and financial literacy will remedy the situation.
I think most people view these issues as a bump in the road and once the storm calms they will continue their usual spending habits. To ask them to truly change their lifestyle and comforts is probably simply too much to ask. Thousands upon thousands of their neighbors can have their items legally taken due to debt and it is just the nature of certain groups of people not to notice. Frankly the key is just to find the right mixture of personal responsibility and compassion when dealing with the problem of overspending and the calamities that can result. Government certainly cannot solve all these problems alone.