The United Kingdom's state-owned savings bank says that nearly a quarter of Britons were unable to save even a single pound in the last three months, the Financial Times Adviser reports. A survey conducted by the National Savings and Investments bank revealed that 23% of the population of the country couldn't save any of their earnings in the last quarter. The result was a 6% drop from the previous year, when 17% of British people had been unable to save at all.

 

The amount of U.K. citizens who reported putting money aside in case of an emergency situation cropping up had also dropped significantly, according to the NS&I survey. In the recent report, only 25% of respondents said that they were saving for an emergency, 7% lower than the 32% who responded in the affirmative to the same question a year ago. Fifteen million people were unprepared for such an eventuality, the report said.