Hey, Big Spender!

According to a recent ING survey, over one-quarter of the European households does not have any savings. Even more worrying, 48 percent of all households surveyed had debts. The largest share of debt free households are to be found in the Netherlands (59 percent), with the smallest shares in Turkey and Luxembourg (24 and 33 percent respectively).

The most common debts in Europe are the personal loan and the credit card debt. The highest percentage of credit card debtors live in either the United Kingdom or Romania, whereas few Dutch and Germans have credit card debts. Indeed, there is a lot of diversity when it comes to the use of payment methods within Europe. The diversity might increase even more in 2018 due to the introduction of the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2). This, however, does not mean that people in Germany and the Netherlands do not have any debt. Although credit card debt is relatively uncommon, 13 percent of the people in the Netherlands have personal loans or overdraft debts, and over 20 percent of the Germans have outstanding personal loans.