Most Brits are not feeling inflation

Moneyzine.com has analysed new data that shows most people are concerned about inflation – but don’t appear to have felt much of its impact.
 
Key Findings:
 

• Inflation is the UK’s most common concern, with 43% of people ranking it as their “biggest worry”
• While an average of 57% of Brits who say their own financial situation has “not changed” in the last month.
• And a majority (36%) believe their situation won’t change in the coming 12 months either.

 
Inflation is a major concern for the average Brit: nearly half (43%) say it is their biggest worry; a growing number tell pollsters that the government is handling inflation badly; and a majority even believe the economy is a bigger issue than health.

Given these facts, we might expect that a majority of individuals have felt their own financial situation worsen in recent times. But a new survey suggests this is not the case.

Averaging out readings from last year, twice as many people say their financial situation has gotten worse (29%) in the last month than gotten better (10.7%), neither group accounts for even a quarter of the total population. Instead, the vast majority (57%) say their financial situation has not changed at all.

Why the surprising optimism? It may be a response to the fact that earlier inflation-related fears have not come true. A year ago, over 50% of Brits expected their financial situation to worsen in the next 12 months, yet clearly less than half found that to be the case. As a result, more people predict that their own finances will not change (36%) in the coming year than think they will get worse (33%) or better (21%).

“The new data suggests that people see their own financial health as separate from their country’s. This suggests policy makers have an extra hurdle to jump in persuading people to change their behaviour – because many are not conscious of inflation’s effect on their own finances,” says Jonathan Merry, Personal Finance Expert at Moneyzine.com.