How people are funding their spending is changing as people are borrowing more and saving less.

There was a 9.4% increase in credit card borrowing in February with economists thinking, rather than spending sprees, people are borrowing to maintain current lifestyles.

The amount of money deposited in savings accounts fell by almost half a billion pounds from £5.5bn in February 2020 to £5.1bn last month.

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Households borrowed an additional £1.9 billion in consumer credit in February, compared with a pre-pandemic average of £1 billion in the run-up to February 2020, the Bank of England report said.

Credit cards accounted for £1.5 billion of the additional borrowing in February 2022,

Experts think that savings build up over the lockdown have now been used up and people are borrowing as costs rise.

Robert Alster, from Close Brothers Asset Management, said: “Strong credit card lending may signal that many households have already exhausted pandemic savings and are sticking spending on plastic.”

Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said consumer credit growth “likely reflects households attempting to maintain their consumption at a time when real disposable income is falling sharply, rather than them going on a spending spree.”

There are concerns that after there was an increase in savings being deposited in the first few months of the lockdown that two years later more people will be defaulting on loan and credit card repayments.

Interest rates and with it mortgage costs are also expected to increase in 2022.