Non-Essential Spending Habits Assessed

Monday, July 27, 2020 - 16:47 by Graham Miller

Payment card operator Barclaycard has published new data looking at the kinds of products which people in the UK purchased during the national lockdown that ran for much of the spring and early summer.

On average the outlay on items considered to be non-essential was £771 for each consumer in the country, equating to a total of over £40.6 billion for the country as a whole.

It is worth mentioning that many of the products which are considered as non-essential in this report are related to entertainment, with everything from books and videogames to streaming service subscriptions included in the figures.

This reflects the fact that everyone was required to remain indoors and thus had to find ways to stave off boredom for months on end, turning to a variety of purchases to achieve this, many of which were made via safe shopping online.

There was an interesting gender divide revealed in the report, with the average male consumer spending almost twice as much as their female counterparts: £1014 compared with £572.

Londoners were also on average the most likely to splash out more than their regional equivalents, with the typical spend for people living in the capital pegged at £2812. Meanwhile, people who have children living at home had a similarly steep average spend of £2070, according to Yahoo Finance.

Respondents to the study were questioned about how they felt about their non-essential purchases made during lockdown, with just six per cent saying that they regretted their decisions.

The vast majority of people said that they were satisfied with their shopping habits, while almost a third said that their lives had been markedly improved thanks to being able to buy non-essential items online. Part of the reason for this is that many of these purchases also helped to facilitate the hobbies adopted to pass the time during lockdown.