Financial wellbeing in January 2026

Summary

• Consumer confidence improved this month, with an eight point increase in consumers’ outlook for the UK economy and a four point increase in their future household situation. 
• The proportion of households reporting having made at least one adjustment to cover essential spending in the month to January 16th hit one of the lowest levels we’ve seen in the last four years, at 44%.
• 5.8% of households said they had missed a payment in the month to January 16th.

You can view more data and articles from our monthly tracker survey on our dedicated Consumer Insight Tracker page.

Consumer confidence improves

Consumer confidence in the future UK economy continued to rise in the month to January 16th, increasing by eight points to -40. This follows a similar rise of seven points the previous month. 

Whilst this is a significant improvement in consumer confidence from the deep pessimism seen throughout the second half of last year, it remains that a majority of UK adults think the economy will worsen over the next 12 months. This score of -40 reflects that 14% of adults think the UK economy will improve over the next 12 months and over half (54%) think it will worsen. 

A large disparity still remains between people’s outlook on the economy in general and their own circumstances, with people generally much more confident about their own circumstances.

Consumers’ confidence in their future household situation increased, up four points to -9 in the month to January 16th. Confidence in current household finances remained similar to last month at +24, with 43% of UK adults rating their financial situation as good and 19% as poor.

Consumer confidence in the future UK economy continued to improve

Financial adjustments continue to fall in January

44% of households reported having made at least one adjustment to cover essential spending such as utility bills, housing costs, groceries, school supplies and medicines in the month to January 16th. Adjustments include cutting back on essentials, dipping into savings, selling possessions or borrowing. This is the third straight month we have seen a fall in households making adjustments and is one of the lowest levels in the last four years. 

A particularly encouraging trend in our time series is the fall in the proportion of households reporting that they have had to cut back on essential household items to cover essential spending. During the peak of the cost of living crisis 44% of households reported doing so in September 2022. This has now halved to 21% in the last month, in line with pre-cost of living crisis levels. 

44% of households made at least one adjustment to cover essential spending in the last month

Last month we observed the lowest proportion of households that missed a household payment in over 4 years. This month, the proportion of households reporting that they missed a housing, bill, credit card or loan payment rose by 1.3 percentage points to 5.8%. Despite this rise, this level of missed payments is relatively low by recent standards, with the average missed payment rate being 6.6% in 2025 and 7.2% in 2024. 

5.8% of households said they had missed a payment in the month to January 16th

Summary

After little change in our financial difficulty and consumer confidence metrics in 2025, improvements in consumers’ future confidence and a further fall in financial adjustments are positive changes to start the year. 

Methodology

Fieldwork for Which? 's Consumer Insight Tracker is conducted monthly by Yonder on behalf of Which?. The latest wave of data collection took place between 16th to 18th of January.  A sample of 2,081 UK adults were surveyed online and weighted to be nationally representative.