Is Your Life On Hold Due To The Credit Crunch?

Has the UK Financial Crisis changed your Life?

Only this time last year, you could have been setting plans for some major changes in your life style. Perhaps you were ready to start a family, move to a new home in a different neighbourhood or simply start looking for a new job.

Recent research from CreditExpert suggest that more than likely those plans are on hold today and you will have decided not to follow through on them. Is this you?

Results from this top credit monitoring service indicate that over 70% of residents in the UK ( that’s over 35 million of us! ) have totally cancelled or postponed indefinitely their most important planned items and over 50% are now quite worried about reaching any of the goals in life that they previously had.

Actually every individual in the research sample of over two thousand adults around the UK said that they will have to cancel their purchase of one or more large items that they had previously planned to buy during the coming year.

The most likely sector of the population to cancel key events are those that are currently in the prime of their lives. This equates to over 80% of those aged above 17 and under 35 planning to curtail their spending and delay plans until things get better. Things are not quiet so bad for the older generation as they seem to be proving more resilient as less than 60% of them are postponing major plans and expenditure.

Other Things We Have Stopped Doing…

The effect of the UK’s financial problems has resulted about half of us changing our minds about buying a new car in 2009, one third have changed their minds about buying a new home and just less than a third have cancelled plans to find a new job.

Teenagers too have been influenced by the downturn as over 80% of them have now decided to delay major items that they had planned to do, such as going to university.

Family life has also suffered with 25% of those aged between 25 and 35 deciding not to try and have a baby and over 20% of younger individuals aged 18 to 24 and over 10% per cent of 25 to 35 year olds have shelved their wedding plans.

Unfortunately the fact that they have had to postpone their weddings has added more stress to their relationships and also affected their families, friends and their colleagues.

And The Reasons For All This Are…

Major factors behind changes to major plans

• Cost - Half of those surveyed say they just don’t have the money any more

• Caution – Over 60% say the economic situation has them really worried

• No Credit – Almost 10% say they are think that they will not be able to get a loan or credit

Because of this, nearly 80% of the UK get the feeling that our lives are now dictated by other factors which are totally beyond our control as a result they are very uncertain about what the future holds.

A top director at CreditExpert has been quoted as saying that “Although times are indeed tough for a lot of us currently, you don’t really have to put your life on hold if you don’t want to. If you are able to manage your personal finances carefully by budgeting and keeping a close eye on your credit report then you can actually put yourself in to a much better position to borrow money to let you do the things in life that you want to do.”

“Your personal credit report shows you your credit accounts, including all your credit cards and any personal loans, as well as all of your repayment history. Thus you can easily see how much you owe and if you are making your repayments on time and in full. It will also clearly show you if you are starting to get into trouble.”

You can see your Experian credit report for free with a trial of CreditExpert.