Savings struggle: households not putting cash aside

The UK economy might be recovering, but Brits finances are not, a new study has found.

The amount of money households can save has dropped by a tenth in the last four years, and will keep falling through to 2018 unless something is done about it, according to the Post Office Future of Savings Study.

The research, which examined the savings habits of 18 countries with a comparable cost of living, found that the average UK household could potentially save £3,781 each year.

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This is almost £5,000 less than Australia, which was the best-performing country, and £3,286 less than the highest placed European country, Switzerland.

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"Should this trend continue, we predict that by 2018 this amount will have fallen to as little as £3,000 and will place the UK below the majority of advanced European economies in the savings league table," the Post Office said in a release.

"Worryingly, this makes UK households far more vulnerable to economic shocks, such as a repeat downturn, redundancy or wage cuts."

Interestingly, the US fares even worse than the UK, with a pot of only £3,442.

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