Rising household bills, mounting food costs and the financial strain of the holiday season are pushing millions of Britons to the brink this Christmas, forcing them to rack up credit card debt and resort to buy now, pay later schemes.
An estimated 5.6 million parents of dependent children in the UK will still be in debt or not financially recovered from Christmas by spring next year, research from lender CreditSpring found.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International has warned nearly one in four people in Britain are fearful the cost of the festive season this year will plunge them into debt.
It’s a struggle that Anthony Lyman knows all too well. The 39-year-old father has lived through holidays where the heating was switched off, the lights stayed dark, and there wasn’t enough food to feed the whole family.
This year, he’s relieved to at least be able to cook a turkey for his children, something he once believed would never be possible.
Christmas for him has meant tears, panic and crippling debt, with no sign of a way out. For years, he sacrificed his own meals to make sure his two children had something to eat, all while trying to chip away at bills that never seemed to shrink.
Speaking to The Independent, he says that while life is still difficult, he deeply understands what so many families are facing this December, because he has been there himself.
His lowest moment came during Christmas 2018. He was sick and didn’t have enough money for food, or even to keep the heating on. “As much as I put extra blankets on, I still felt cold, I felt it right in my bones, and that was the year, which was my darkest year.”
The situation is one faced by countless people across the UK, who are on the brink of poverty and battling the cost-of-living crisis and the added strain that Christmas brings.
Of those who celebrate Christmas, 58 per cent are worried about how the cost-of-living crisis will affect them, their friends or family.
Many Britons will have to turn to loans this year, with 25 per cent of people expected to use credit cards to help fund Christmas spending and one in seven expected to use buy now, pay later schemes, according to a survey from banking app Thinkmoney.
Buried in debt, Mr Lyman had no option but to declare bankruptcy. “It was one of the biggest stresses, you’d get letters through the door, you get people knocking on the door, you’d get phone calls…but no one’s offering you a solution at that time,” he said.
He said he faced a lack of understanding from creditors, who he believed initially to be supportive, but offered him no help and threatened him with debt recovery.
“The last thing I needed was people knocking on my door asking for the £500 I couldn’t provide for the gas,” he said. “(There were) dark nights once or twice where you thought, ‘would it be better if I wasn’t around?’”
“In the run-up to Christmas as well, you’ve got people trying to buy their loved ones Christmas presents. It’s a time of year when there’s a lot of financial pressure.
“This year I can at least afford my turkey dinner for the kids. It’s a stretch, I am still going without certain meals to make sure that they have their meals here, because the price of living is definitely above what we’re actually receiving to live.”
Right now, Citizens Advice is helping more than 35,000 people with debt every month, up nearly 50 per cent from 2021.
The charity’s head of policy, Anne Pardoe, said they had also seen a rise in how much people owe creditors, with the average person who reaches out for support facing debts of around £10,000.
She said: “We tend to see a spike in people coming to us around January. We also see a growth in calls through the winter around things like energy bills, because people are really worried about seeing the heating on.
“We know that people are really worried about their energy bills again this winter. We hear from people who are sitting in the cold because they’re too frightened to put the heating on, and we’ve spoken to people who are wearing gloves inside just to try and stay warm without spending any more money.
“Similarly, with water, we see people taking fairly extreme measures to ration their water use. People are really struggling, and winter can hit people really hard.”
According to research by Thinkmoney, financial pressures over the holidays are likely to last well into 2026, with only 22 per cent of shoppers expecting to clear their Christmas spending by the end of December.
Stewart McCulloch, the chief executive of Christians Against Poverty, a charity helping people in poverty and providing debt advice, said he sees the pressure hit many people in January.
“In the run-up to Christmas, it gets cold, people are spending more on heating, it gets dark earlier, so people are spending more on lighting…you’ve got a more expensive period.
“They’re borrowing to buy food, they’re borrowing to pay rent, they’re borrowing in the daily to essentially just get through the month.”
