Unexpected bills catching us out
June 19, 2007 by admin
Filed under News, News-Banking
We are regularly being hit with a bill or expense that we have not budgeted for.
That is according to new research by Abbey which shows that in the last 12 months, 79 per cent of us have had to fork out an average of £1,375 on an unexpected outgoing.
Abbey calculates that we have spent a combined £48.7 billion in this way in the past year and says that home repairs are the most expensive unexpected cost.
Around 36 per cent of Brits spent £1,206 on home repairs, 42 per cent had to stump up for surprise bills and 29 per cent spent £447 in the last year on unanticipated travel expenses.
Most of us might feel pretty hard done by if we were hit by an unexpected cost but Abbey points out that if we kept control of our banking situation, we would be prepared to deal with the surprise expenses.
“You never know what life is going to throw at you. However, you can prepare for the unexpected through building up a ‘buffer savings fund’ to help deal with these shock events,” said Reza Attar-Zadeh, head of savings at Abbey.
“Most experts recommend that you build up a fund of at least three months salary in an instant access cash account.”
The research also found that people living in Wales were the best budgeters, while those in the south-east were the worst.
