keeping up appearances

 

As many as 15 million Britons are using credit cards and loans in the struggle to keep up appearances as they mistakenly consider themselves to be middle class.

New research from Moneysupermarket.com has shown that around a quarter of the UK population are so desperate to live up to the middle class ideal that they are mounting up debts of almost £13,000 per person.

According to the research, 6 million Britons purporting to be middle class earn as little as £15,000 a year. The average annual income for working class households is £23,000, whereas middle class families earn an average of £33,000. This gap illustrates how wrong 6 million Brits are in classing themselves as middle class.

As a result of lower earnings, millions of actual working class Brits are turning to unsecured credit and loans in order to keep up with their middle class peers. The research showed that although many turned to secured credit, 2.7 million had resorted to unsecured loans or credit card debt, with a collective secured and unsecured debt of £35 billion.