Christmas expenditure 'expected to be cleared within a month'

Consumers in the UK believe that they will clear the debt they accumulated over the Christmas period within a month, it has been reported.

A survey from Sainsbury's Bank show that 61 per cent of people think this way, with 15 per cent stating that they will pay it off in two-to-three months.

The research also found that there are 438,000 people (one per cent) who expect the debt will take over a year to clear, while 12 per cent do not know when they will be free of it.

Sainsbury's head of cards Donald MacLeod commented that close to nine million people put their Christmas expenditure on plastic.

He said: "We estimate that around 18% of Christmas spending was placed on credit cards."

This comes as supermarket giant Tesco has reported that revenue over the Christmas period stalled against the previous quarter.

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