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And it's not going down!
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That's a big number. If you lined up all those Pound coins, it would stretch...well quite a long way.
The number is the total amount of British personal debt, according to the Centre for Social Justice (reported in the
Independent) - an astonishing 'average' of £54,000 per household. And of course, that 'average' includes a lot of households (like mine) that have no debt (or no mortgage), so the 'average' of households
in debt will be higher. OK, most of it is mortgage debt - but that is still
debt. And
debt is effectively consumption before production: you are buying something that you haven't yet earned the money to pay for.
In fact, my household is in significant
negative debt - and eliminating debt is one of the cornerstones of my style of investing.