Parents are having to dip into their children’s savings as cost of living crisis starts to bite

Trine Jensen-Burke

Sorry, kids.

Prices are soaring, and everything from petrol to electricity and groceries have increased, and we are all feeling the pinch.

Last week it was reported that desperate parents are now finding themselves having to steal baby formula to feed their children, and now, a new survey has found that UK parents are stealing an average of £8.5million a day to afford household bills and day-to-day living expenses.

According to a survey for The Telegraph, it was revealed that families had withdrawn almost £300 on average from their children’s savings so far this year. It found a third of the 2,000 people questioned had raided their children’s funds this year and suggested a total of £1.4bn has been withdrawn so far.

Almost a quarter said they had extracted the funds to pay for increasingly expensive food shops, one in four said they had done so to help pay for exorbitant energy bills, while 6 per cent said they used their children’s savings to pay for travel.

In fact, more than a quarter of the people questioned said they had either reduced the amount they were keeping aside for their children or grandchildren, or had stopped altogether due to the cost of living crisis.

Living standards are falling

The survey findings come after figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently revealed that living standards in the UK had fallen for the fourth quarter in a row.

Speaking at a conference in Sintra, Portugal, Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey said Britain’s economy had arrived at a “turning point” in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, the soaring cost of living, the war in Ukraine and swelling inflation.

“The UK economy is probably weakening rather earlier and somewhat more than others. I think that’s been somewhat evident now for a few months,” Bailey said.

“We are being hit by a very large national real income shock, which is coming from outside. The scale of the shock is very substantial and in and of itself it will have an effect, a big effect, because it will reduce domestic demand and it will pass through into the labour market and it will pass through into inflation.”

Addressing the European Central Bank’s conference he added: “When I look at the UK economy at the moment, it’s very clear that the economy is now starting to slow. We are at something of a turning point in that respect.”