Britain's hard working and thrifty pensioners.

Spotted by Bob E in The Telegraph:

Many still owe hundreds of thousands of pounds on interest-only mortgages, caught between endowments that failed to deliver and lenders demanding repayment.

Those approaching retirement are hitting the milestone in poor financial shape, with nearly one in five expecting to be in debt on the day they receive their gold carriage clock.

Figures from Prudential released this week show that the average owed by [the one-in-five who retires in debt] is more than £31,000, spread over a mixture of credit cards, bank loans, overdrafts and mortgages. Twelve per cent of them do not expect that they will ever clear the debt, while it will eat into the income of others for several years before they pay it off.

The charity StepChange, formerly known as the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, said it had seen a 44pc increase since 2009 in the number of over-sixties contacting it with problems paying their mortgages. "With many older people taking higher levels of debt with them into retirement, this could be the start of a long-term trend," warned Delroy Corinaldi, a director of StepChange.

This is an advertorial for "equity release' schemes of course, but let's take the figures at face value.

From the comments:

alanr: Any pensioner that owes six-figure sums on an IO deal has likely been severely imprudent, rather than unlucky as you imply.

No no no no no Alan, you can't say that! Haven't you realised there is a determined effort underway to establish an "interest only mortgage miss-selling scandal" in order to push for some sort of bail out for all these "unlucky" and certainly not imprudent/stupid/greedy people?