Britain's biggest building society has discovered that households ramped up their spending on dating websites, pets and gardening at the start of this year.
Nationwide Building Society said that, overall, household spending in the first three months of 2021 was down compared with a year earlier, however, it said that life in lockdown has led to more money being spent on building relationships with people, pets and plants.
Nationwide's quarterly spending report is based on more than 450 million transactions made by the society's members between January and March.
Spending on pets was among the categories bucking the downward spending trend, according to Nationwide's data.
Overall spending on pets increased by 22 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2020. Nationwide suggested this growth is likely to be due to people acquiring more animals during lockdown.
There was a significant 53 per cent jump in spending on gardening in January to March this year too, while DIY and supermarket spending both increased by 16 per cent.
And it seems the nation has been looking for love during the first three months of the year too with a rise of 46 per cent year on year, while total spending on online dating websites was up by more than a third (34%).
The average amount spent per transaction on travel meanwhile was £7.86 at the start of 2021, compared with £10.77 a year ago.
Mark Nalder, Nationwide's head of payments, said: "Life in lockdown has taught us that our connections are extremely important.
"Many of us have invested our time in our families, gardens and pets, while others are keen to embrace the relaxing of restrictions as they look to start new relationships after a long period of time alone.
"This equates to where we are spending our money and likely the reason why such areas have seen spend grow rather than shrink in line with general essential and discretionary costs."
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