Income thresholds for the interviews were defined based on income deciles defined in the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS). The middle-income group comprises gross income deciles 3–8 and the high-income group 9–10 income deciles. The goal was to interview a diverse sample of the population including women and men, retired, employed and self-employed people, as well as individuals from different ethnic backgrounds. While no specific quotas per category were set, interviewees that have not yet been represented sufficiently were prioritized. For this purpose, two waves of interview collection periods were conducted so that a more targeted approach could be implemented in the second wave. The first wave took place from mid-July to mid-November 2016 and the second one from mid-January to mid-May 2017. Recruitment of the interviewees was undertaken in a threefold way: (1) running adverts in community centres, local supermarkets, websites and social media; (2) participating in community-related events such as a summer festival as well as specific events organized by NGOs, for instance, an event for immigrants or financial events such as an investment-focused event; (3) employing snowball sampling which relied on referrals by either interviewees or personal networks. This was deemed beneficial because of finance being a sensitive topic. Through using networks, trust was established before the interview and participants talked more openly about financial aspects.

Interviewee profile was diverse with regard to age, income, wealth, employment and gender. Interviewees’ average income was £31,003 (mean income in 2016–2017 was £33,500 [HMRC, 2022]), ranging from £8,600 to £110,000 annual income with 59 per cent of interviewees belonging to the low-or lower medium-income group. The wealth structure depicts a similar trend as in the WAS, with more than half of UK households having a total net wealth of £262,000 compared to 56.4 per cent of interviewed households, however, this includes again a huge wealth disparity ranging from a negative net wealth (asset minus liabilities) of £5,100 to a positive net wealth of £3,070,000.