Half of Spanish families have 8,000 euros or less in their bank account
Half of Spanish families accumulated 8,000 euros or less in your current bank account in 2022. This is clear from the Family Financial Survey (EFF), the most precise statistical x-ray of the wealth accumulated by households in Spain, which was published this Tuesday on the banking supervisor’s website.
Those 8,000 euros are the median wealth accumulated in the bank accounts that allow payments to be made, a figure that it has barely increased by 200 euros compared to the previous wave of the EFF. Although those 8,000 euros give a general image of the typical amounts that households accumulate in their checking accounts, the most common financial asset, the underlying reality is more complex.
The most agedwhere there is presence of self-employed and those with the most income and wealth generate are the ones who tend to keep the most funds in their bank account. For example, within the 10% of families with the highest income in the country, half accumulate 40,200 euros or more in their checking accounts. However, within the 20% that earn the least, the median is reduced to 1,700 euros.
Older families tend to accumulate more funds in their checking accounts than younger ones. Thus, while half of the households whose head of family is under 35 years old save 3,300 euros or less in these products, the median among those over 65 exceeds 11,400 euros. Households in which the head of the family is self-employed also have more liquidity. The median wealth stored in checking accounts in these cases is 15,000 euros, more than double the 6,000 euros reflected in the data for employees.
70% of the country’s wealth is in brick
Current accounts reach practically all citizens (97% have one), making them the most popular way to accumulate wealth in the country. However, only 8% of the country’s total wealth (38% of that held in financial assets) is kept in the bank account. As is the case in most European countries, The brick is the safe deposit box of the Spanish.
70% of family wealth in Spain is concentrated in real estate, either in the main home (42%) or in other assets such as garages, land, premises… (28%). The rest is distributed as wealth in financial assets (21%) and other real assets such as the value of the self-employed business or jewelry, art and antiques.
On average, In 2022, families had an average wealth of 309,000 euros. However, half of the households accumulated 147,000 euros or less, a figure that reflects the enormous inequalities that exist in the distribution of assets held by households. So much so that More than half of the country’s net wealth (discounting debts) is in the hands of the richest 10% of families in the country. Furthermore, an elite made up of the wealthiest 1% of households in the country hoards 20% of all wealth.
Nevertheless, inequalities between the best-positioned population and the poorest have been slightly reduced compared to previous waves of the survey. However, an important part of this decrease is due to the fact that the poorest households have gotten rid of debt in recent years, which increases their net wealth.
57% of households are in debt
The counterpart to the wealth accumulated by families are the debts that, in many cases, they have incurred to acquire those assets in which they deposit their savings. The EFF points out that More than half of households have some type of debt (57%) with an average amount of liabilities of 28,400 euros. In the vast majority of cases (83%) these are debts contracted to finance the purchase of a home or other real estate assets.
In Spain, one in four families (27.6%) has pending payments for the purchase of their home and another 27.4% owe money for personal loans. Half of the households owed 64,800 euros or more for the purchase of their home, while the median amount pending payment for personal loans amounted to 6,900 euros.
