Report: UK household debt expected to continue growing

The way U.K. consumers spend sometimes, it's difficult to tell the country is in the midst of tough financial times.

A recent report by Google API revealed that families in the U.K. built up debt in 2012 that was 50 percent higher than in 2011. In order to manage their debt, nearly 3.5 million British adults are projected to take out loans in the coming year.

Those trends don't appear to be slowing down in the first quarter of 2013, according to a Credit Action report. An article from ClearDebt cited statistics from the study, which found that January's average household debt in the country approached £54,000, while borrowing grew from £3,195 in December to £3,213 in January.

This might sound like a normal problem-and-solution scenario - many consumers are facing debt, so they took out loans to get their finances in order. The issue, however, is that traditional loans and credit cards have extremely high interest rates right now.

What, then, can U.K. residents do instead? Alternative credit offers a more cost-efficient solution.

Alternative short term lenders provide people with varying types of funding, from prepaid cards for smaller payments to other methods for bigger investments. And because they employ Payment Reporting Builds Credit scoring methods, even subprime consumers have the chance to secure loans.