Ask someone how much they earn and watch them squirm.
Ask them how many hours they spent doom-scrolling last week and they will probably just laugh and tell you.
We wanted to know how Britain really feels about money in 2026. Not the polished version. The honest version.
So we asked 1,679 UK adults a set of questions about saving, anxiety, control and the little money habits nobody usually admits to.
The headline finding says everything about our relationship with money: 70% of people would rather share their screen time report with a friend than show them their bank balance.
Money, it turns out, is still the last great British taboo.
We will talk about almost anything before we talk about what is actually in our current account.
Here is what the rest of the data revealed.
Key Findings At A Glance
- 70% would rather share their screen time report than their bank balance with a friend.
- 80% would rather stick to a strict budget for a year than a strict diet.
- 83% feel anxious about their finances at least sometimes, and 32% feel anxious often.
- 46% feel less confident about their finances now than they did at the start of 2026.
- 32% (around 1 in 3) are not confident they can save any money over the next three months.
- 21% (around 1 in 5) feel out of control of their weekly finances.
- 43% would cut back on eating out first if they had to reduce their spending this month.
- Saving money (37.5%) is almost neck and neck with getting fit (39.1%) as the thing people find hardest to do.
Survey of 1,679 UK adults, conducted by Up The Gains between 10 April and 13 May 2026. Full methodology below.
Would Brits Rather Share Their Bank Balance or Their Screen Time?
Their screen time, and it is not close.
70% of people said they would find it more uncomfortable to share their bank balance with a friend than to share their screen time report.
Only 30% felt the other way around.
Think about what that actually means.
People would rather hand over a brutally honest record of every hour they have lost to their phone than let a mate see what they have got saved.
We have somehow ended up in a world where your spending is more private than your screen habits.
This is the quiet reason so many people struggle with money.
You cannot get good with something you refuse to look at, let alone talk about.
The friends who openly compare salaries, share what they pay in rent or swap pension tips tend to be the ones who get ahead, because secrecy is where bad money habits go to hide.
Are UK Adults Anxious About Money in 2026?
Yes, and overwhelmingly so.
83% of people feel anxious about their finances at least sometimes.
More tellingly, 32% feel anxious often, with another 51% feeling it sometimes.
Just 2% said they never feel money anxiety at all.
So if you lie awake occasionally running the numbers in your head, you are not the odd one out.
You are the overwhelming majority. Four in five of us are carrying some level of money worry around day to day.
A bit of financial anxiety is not always a bad thing.
It is the feeling that pushes people to build an emergency fund or finally cancel the subscriptions they forgot about.
The problem is when it tips from useful nudge into constant background noise, because that is when people start avoiding their finances altogether rather than facing them.
Are People Confident They Can Save Over the Next Three Months?
For a lot of people, no.
Around 1 in 3 (32%) are not confident they can save any money over the next three months.
That breaks down as 26% who are not very confident and 6% who have zero confidence at all.
The flip side is more hopeful.
68% are at least quite confident they can put something away, including 28% who are very confident.
So most people still believe saving is within reach, even if a sizeable chunk feel locked out of it entirely.
The link between worry and saving is stark.
Among the people who feel anxious about money often, the picture flips completely: 58% of them are not confident they can save anything over the next three months.
Anxiety and the inability to save feed each other. The less you can put aside, the more you worry, and the more you worry, the harder it is to make calm money decisions.
Do Brits Feel in Control of Their Weekly Finances?
Most people feel like they are just about holding it together.
Only 31% feel fully in control of their weekly finances.
Nearly half (48%) feel only slightly in control, and 21% (around 1 in 5) feel actively out of control.
That middle group is the interesting one.
Half the country is living in a kind of financial grey zone, getting by week to week without ever feeling like they have properly got a grip on it.
It is not crisis, but it is not comfort either. It is the feeling of money happening to you rather than you running it.
The good news is that “slightly in control” is the easiest group to move.
A simple weekly budget, knowing your real numbers and automating your savings can shift a lot of people from getting by to genuinely in control faster than they expect.
Are People More or Less Confident Than at the Start of 2026?
The country is almost perfectly split.
54% feel more confident about their finances now than they did at the start of 2026, while 46% feel less confident.
That near 50/50 divide tells its own story.
For every person who feels they have turned a corner this year, there is almost another who feels they have gone backwards.
The cost of living has not hit everyone the same way, and this is what that looks like in the data: a country pulling in two directions at once.
What Do People Cut Back On First When Money Gets Tight?
The fun stuff goes first.
When we asked what people would cut if they had to reduce their spending this month, 43% said eating out, followed by 30% who would cut entertainment like nights out and the cinema.
Only 19% would touch their food shopping and groceries, and just 9% would sacrifice their holidays.
So the order of operations when money gets tight is clear: lose the restaurant meals, then the nights out, protect the weekly shop, and whatever you do, do not touch the holiday.
It makes sense.
Holidays are often booked and paid for months ahead, and the weekly shop feels non-negotiable.
The discretionary treats, the meals out and the cinema trips, are the first things people mentally file under “can live without.”
Worth remembering next time you are looking for breathing room in your own budget.
Would People Rather Budget for a Year or Diet for a Year?
Budgeting wins by a landslide.
80% of people would rather stick to a strict budget for a year than a strict diet.
Only 20% would choose the diet.
We find this one brilliant, because it completely flips the usual assumption that people hate budgeting.
Given the choice between watching their money and watching their food, four in five Brits would rather track every pound than count every calorie.
Even the people who told us saving money is the hardest thing they do still chose budgeting: 75% of them would rather budget for a year than diet for a year.
So the takeaway is not that budgeting is easy. It is that a strict diet sounds even worse.
If you have been putting off getting on top of your money because you assume it will feel like deprivation, the rest of the country quietly disagrees with you.
What Do Brits Find Hardest: Saving, Getting Fit or Keeping Tidy?
This was the closest race in the whole survey.
39% said getting fit is the hardest, 37.5% said saving money, and 23% said keeping their home tidy.
Saving money and getting fit are basically tied.
That tells you something about how hard people genuinely find it to put money away.
For more than a third of the country, building savings is as much of a grind as dragging themselves to the gym.
It is not a knowledge problem. Most people know they should save. It is a discipline and habit problem, exactly like fitness.
Which is also the good news, because the same things that make fitness stick make saving stick: start small, make it automatic, track your progress and do not rely on willpower alone.
What This Actually Means for Your Money
Put all of it together and a clear picture emerges.
Britain is anxious about money, split on whether things are getting better, and would genuinely rather do almost anything than talk about it openly.
Most people are not in crisis, but a lot are stuck in that “slightly in control” grey zone where money feels like something happening to them.
The encouraging part is that none of this is fixed.
The people who feel fully in control are not earning some secret salary. They have usually just done three unglamorous things: they know their real numbers, they have automated their saving so it does not rely on motivation, and they have stopped treating money as a taboo.
If you recognised yourself in the grey zone, the fix starts with the basics.
You are not behind. You are normal, and normal is a very fixable place to start from.
Methodology
This report is based on an online survey of 1,679 UK adults, conducted by Up The Gains between 10 April and 13 May 2026. Every response included was a completed response. Respondents answered a fixed set of multiple-choice questions about their financial confidence, money anxiety, spending priorities and money habits. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number, so some totals may not sum to exactly 100%.
This is original research conducted and owned by Up The Gains. We are sharing the full findings openly so that journalists, writers and researchers can use them.
Cite This Report
The data in this report is free to use. If you reference any of these statistics, please credit Up The Gains and link back to this page so readers can see the full methodology.
Suggested citation: Up The Gains (2026), The UK Money Confidence Report 2026. Available at: https://upthegains.co.uk/blog/uk-money-confidence-report
For media enquiries or the full data tables, contact us at invest@upthegains.co.uk.
About Up The Gains
Up The Gains is a UK personal finance platform helping people get confident with their money through clear, jargon-free guides and tools. We cover everything from budgeting and saving to investing, pensions and ISAs, all written for real people rather than the finance industry. Learn more at upthegains.co.uk.