ASK families if their finances have improved over the past year and they are likely to feel perky. Australians gave more positive answers to that question this month than last and more positive answers than they did a year ago.

Ask about the economy and their answers are little changed from recent months.

Westpac economist Matthew Hassan says anxiety over family finances is "surprisingly" high.

But ask about family finances over the coming year and the answers are so overwhelmingly negative you need to go back to 1990 to find feelings so bad.

Just 18.5 per cent of those surveyed in this month's Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer survey expect their finances to improve in the year ahead. A much bigger 32.2 per cent expect them to get worse. The gap - 13.7 percentage points - is the widest since the eve of the last recession in November 1990.