More than a million hard-up families have no savings to help them through the cost-of-living crisis.
A quarter of households fear they won’t cope with surging energy bills and other costs, says the Resolution Foundation think tank.
And nearly a third will turn to friends and family to bail them out.
While low levels of savings are fairly common across society, the poorest 10th of families are four times as likely to have no savings as the richest 10th, says the report.
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It estimates that Britain’s huge wealth divide means that around 1.3million families have no financial buffer.
The Resolution Foundation’s annual wealth audit, to be published on Wednesday, warns that a big rise in energy bill arrears this winter will hit families’ wellbeing as well as their finances.
Its economist Molly Broome said: “Families with no savings are reliant on friends and family to cope with unexpected expenses.
“However, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be in a position to provide support.
“We need to break this cycle of low growth and weak savings that leaves so many families brutally exposed to economic shocks.”
Meanwhile, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says poor families will lose nearly a third of their income to energy bills next year.
