How much debt are you in?

£300k mortgage and no other debt. Cars are owned. £6k emergency pot.

Interestingly I have enough money that I could clear all my debts right now. Including my mortgage, but there’s an early repayment fee on my mortgage and all my other debt is on 0% and I’m earning more in interest on my savings.

Debt isn’t a failure it can be strategic.

None, no mortgage, loans or credit card debt. We recently paid cash for a new car and have around £35,000 in our savings account. I think posts like this get the extremes and don't help anyone. I have a life limiting condition and choose to live for today and treat my DC (adults aged 19 to 31) regularly. I don't need to worry about the long term future but hopefully DH does.

About £67,000… that’s just my student loans. We have no other debt.

My student loan for my undergrad is £65k and our mortgage is £300k. I’m 33 so quite a while left on the mortgage but it’s no different to a rental payment and we can start overpaying once we are free from nursery bills.

My student loan comes out before my salary so just see it as a tax, it’s likely I’ll pay it off at some point.

I’d expect it is pretty normal to have these debts.

You’re a renter ?
You’re in a much more precarious position than your friend with a 500k mortgage.
I hope to God you’re in social housing and not somewhere that can give you notice to leave .

Amongst my peers I can only think of two (that I'm aware of) who had any significant inheritance. Either there's none, because parents were renters, or it's it's gone on care home fees. Appreciate for most who have it it's still bittersweet.
My mum passed when I was in my twenties and all I got was a letter from the housing association telling us we had a week to clear her property before they started charging us!

Zero here too.
And yes we’ve had some debts in the past - loan to buy a car for example. And ofc pur mortgage.
It was never as high because we bought our house 25 years ago, cheap area etc… nowadays, £500k sounds both a hell of a lot and not that crazy….

To be honest we wouldn’t be where we are now without my dad. He doesn’t really have any money to give us but when we got our house it was a fixer upper and he came and did all the fixing up for (basically) free. When he dies I will inherit less, but anything is split between six so I don’t think any of us will be rolling in it.

He needed my brother for a few jobs that he would have struggled with on his own because of his back. He also tells people how much I helped with the reservations and that he was very proud but in reality all I did was moan and make hundreds of cups of tea. Without him I definitely don’t think we would have been able to have gotten a house for a few more years and we would be in a lot more debt either from mortgage or having to pay for the renovations.

£500k mortgage - going to go up soon as we are extending
£1,000 debt in my currant account

Credit card is paid in full every month (although this month is horrendous due to booking a holiday)
Have £250 on PP Credit on 0%.

Mortgage is 270k (joint with DH) with equity of about the same. Technically at 220k as we took 50k out during remortgage for house refurbishment but haven’t don’t anything yet though. Currently toying with doing an extension now which will require more, so mortgage would actually go up!

Student loan is £4.5k, but should be paid off in the next year.

I’ve got savings which could pay off student loan/PP, but given I get a better interest rate on savings than that debt, I leave it alone.

I realise I am in a fortunate position though to effectively not have any debt other than my mortgage.

Well it's true that getting a big mortgage to buy a property that appreciates well has paid off for some people but it can be a high risk strategy.

Property values don't always increase and if you end up in negative equity, that could turn tens of thousands of pounds of deposit into a similar amount of debt - when we bought our first house, the people we bought it off had paid £8k more for it two years earlier and spent money doing it up. Now that might not sound like a lot of money, but that was more than my annual salary at the time.

Buying and selling can involve high costs - stamp duty and estate agents/solicitor's fees etc that are 'lost'. There's no help with paying a mortgage if you lose your job, so you need expensive insurance or savings to fall back on.

If you rent, it's a lot easier to move if you need to and you might qualify for help with housing costs depending on circumstances. Renting can be 'dead money' but how does that compare with mortgage interest?

I don't think it's beneficial to compare with other people especially when not accounting for any detail such as life stage, income, family size etc. Too many variables makes it meaningless, you just need to make the best of your own circumstances.

Quite a lot of people get inheritance at a young age and it may not necessarily make them “rich”. My mum died when I was 38 (we didn’t have the best relationship, I was her only child and only relative) and we inherited enough to pay off our mortgage on our 3 bed semi detached in Norfolk. It’s worth about £370k which is a lot to some and not a lot to others! We could - in theory - have moved somewhere bigger, got a larger mortgage etc but we’re just not that interested in doing that. We are holiday people, that’s our biggest outgoing so for us paying off the house and staying put was a no brainer. I do appreciate that is an incredibly privileged position to be in compared to many.

I don’t feel very rich I can assure you 😂

but yes, objectively if we sold everything we’d have at least 2m cash.

True! I'm always amazed as I consider myself pretty lucky financially, have disposable income and no money worries. Small terraced house, one car, no kids and two of us able to work full time in professional jobs (not amazing pay but solid enough) I have no idea how people manage to pay off mortgages and have lots to save when kids, family sized houses/cars, nursery fees etc are all added in.

I still remember what it was like having some debt and not panicking about it. When I was younger and skint, £50 of debt was terrifying. It's so different if you're able to have an income larger than your outgoings.

No debt yet.

I/we have about £200k on 0% credit cards, which we use to offset our £150k mortgage so we pay no interest, the remainder is in the highest I terested savings accounts we can find.

Been doing this for about 15 years, have paid very little interest on the mortgage.

Not one penny, no credit cards, mortgage paid off.

I loathe debt and the easy access has caused so much misery and insane house prices.

Wow! You must be rich 😁

No debt but no savings either and no hope of ever owning a home

Close to retirement and mortgage minus savings now in single figures. So looking forward to that last payment then zero debt.
Can’t be avoided sometimes though when families are young.

No unsecured debt. Around £400k mortgage debt across two properties.

House prices and student loan will do that.

Welcome to the C21st.

Is that her mortgage alone or does she share it?

About £2m 🫣 (all mortgage, no loans or cc)

My in laws did the same as your friend - they ended up having very little equity in the house and having to work to pay the mortgage until they were 70. Definitely poor financial management and it does catch up with people.