To ask how much debt you are in?

[Sunshine3013]

Just that really.
Wondering how much debt the average person is in.. Including mortgage, loans, credit cards, overdraft?

Just curious!

I'd be interested to hear how people have paid off their mortgages so young.

I'm 32 and we are hoping to have paid ours off in the next three years.

4K on CC
4k loan
16k car loan

Trying to reduce slowly

@sst1234

It would be more useful to know debt to assets ratio. Someone with 0 debt and no assets is worse off than someone with £100k debt and £1M assets. Net worth is what matters, debt helps you accumulate net worth. Debt is an enabler for growing your net worth, not a bad thing, provided you have self discipline. This is why 0% finance is so readily available and a great mechanism to use someone else’s money for free.

I’m not going to go into assets but let’s just say that I’m the sort who doesn’t exist, according to some Mnetters

Average when it comes to debt is pretty meaningless. Some people are in a dire situation through no fault of their own, some people are born rich. We all get a unique return on our investment into life.

This ^ - as Persimmon has said, some people's circumstances mean that they have a struggle to live daily - others will never want. For most of us, we can coast relatively comfortably unless something catastrophic happens - like this pandemic, and then the spiral into debt can be terrifyingly quick.

It would be quite a good article if it was about research, data quality and the importance of selecting representative samples if you want the results to reflect the population at large with any accuracy
😊 Indeed.
OP I'll show you mine if you show me yours...

None. Mortgage paid off. No loans. Nothing on credit card.

Mortgage £250k+, but

133k on the mortgage.
I’m 27 so if I don’t move, I’ll be debt free when I’m in my 40s. It’s a big enough house but I think I will move so that’s a pipe dream! We do overpay though.

I’ve always been very ‘good’ with money from a young age (probably because my mum constantly lived in her overdraft & couldn’t even get a littlewoods account) & as PP says I’ve been lucky enough to never have been in a position where I’ve needed to accrue debt. I wasn’t born rich by any stretch (grew up on a council estate / no ‘inheritence’), so it has also been lifestyle.

I’ve no student debt as I didn’t go to uni but got a full time job out of school & worked my way up. I was tempted recently to take out a loan for 25k to get a brand spanking new car (desperately needed one) but I decided to part exchange and use a couple of grand savings instead & ‘be sensible’.

I think it’s a mix of lifestyle & unlucky situations at the end of the day. Not everyone in debt is silly with money, but from my friendship group, a lot of people in their 20s are!

Just the mortgage, which we're on course to pay off by the time we're 50 but hoping to overpay and get it cleared a few years earlier. I had a student loan but paid that off a few years ago. We've never had any other loans or credit card debt. I am thinking about doing a Master's degree which would involve a postgrad loan. This would be repaid via monthly salary deductions and having looked into it the repayments are very manageable so I'm not concerned about that.

A lot, all from when I got divorced and pretty much paid everything I had to get XH to leave, then struggled to even cover the basics for me and DS for some years.
I have no savings. I have a full time job and also do freelance stuff from home in the evenings and weekends.
All my time, energy and spare money goes to paying it off. If I continue at this rate, I'll pay it off in three years if I'm lucky and don't have any surprises like losing my job, getting notice on my rented place or unexpected expenses.
It's exhausting. Worrying about it keeps me up at night.

Mortgage and a credit card with quite a bit on it.

Me and ex were mortgage free, but I bought him out in the divorce and took on a new mortgage in my late 40s.

The divorce wiped my savings, but I am very much back on track now.

Just a mortgage of c £400k, no other debt. We have savings.

We use our BA Amex as much as possible for the air miles, pay it off in full every month.

None

If it is for an article then maybe a better enquiry would be how much debt were you in by the decade?

In my 20s: mortgage, credit card, overdraft, all to as much as they would carry. Both worked NMW jobs and paid off minimal amounts every month. Lived very much hand to mouth. Had a mortgage as it was cheaper than rent!

In my 30s: I'd got rid of the overdraft and was working through the credit cards; both went to Uni, so lost 8 years worth of salary in total. Sold the flat, paid off the credit cards, saved what was left

In my 40s: rented and both worked our socks off, now had professional jobs, had a salary rather than a weekly wage. Saved and saved and saved. We'd got used to only having one wage, that was helpful!

In my 50s: free of debt. Own the house and have savings, working towards pensions - only started that in our 50s.

We don't have kids. We don't have a lavish lifestyle. Both are fairly miserly when it comes to spending on holidays, cars, phones etc.

Does that satisfy your curiosity/editor?

About £5k in credit card debt, I'm chipping away at it but it'll be another year before its gone I reckon.

About £1.5k left on my student loan, and no mortgage.

My only debt is my mortgage- I still owe £120,000.

I have a mortgage which should be paid off in about 23 years, and DH has student loans. I don't have any as my home country doesnt do student loans, so I took a bank loan but paid it off by 25. No other debts or loans. Quite a bit of savings (for house extension). I am 30.

Mortgage
I have some credit card debt at 0% interest

*I owe money on credit cards but I have about 10x the amount in savings.

That's just madness.*

Not if they're looking to build their credit rating an it's on 0% interest.

This is so not representative of real life - people who have any kind of debt are shamed into silence on MN, and those who aren't want to sing about it from the roof tops.

I have had an unhealthy relationship with spending. Just over 2 years ago I read a similar thread to this, but it was from the perspective of a mner who had found out her husband had thousands in debt. All the mumsnetters were saying they would leave.

At the time I had just over £15k on credit cards, a student loan and an overdraft I always spent each month of £500. Seeing what people said about this MNers DH shocked me into changing things.

Now just over 2 years later I have:
Mortgage - £340k (shared between DH and I)
Credit card - £2,960 (this is a 0% credit card I've been paying off for 33 months. I have 3 payments left)

In the last 2 years I also paid off my student loan and we did save for a wedding that never happened, so had we not have saved for that I could easily have paid off the credit card.

Mortgage about £200k left

Mortgage only for us now. We did have a £9k credit card debt that had been following us around for years but we've been fortunate and been able to pay it off with the money we have saved on commuting and socialising this past year.

Years ago, I was in debt, with the usual array of HP arrangements, credit cards, loans, store cards, as well as a mortgage. We paid off most of them (very) gradually and got rid of store and credit cards.

I am due to retire this year and have been managing finances differently in preparation. We paid off the mortgage from DH's retirement lump sum several years ago, and now I have the tail end of a home improvement loan, around £6K, which will be paid off from my lump sum.

Nearing 200k on mortgages and student debt. I was proudly going to exclaim I have no debt so this was a shocker lol

god. Shitloads. I grew up in very chaotic circumstances not really understanding money or debt and then married very young to someone from very similar circumstances. We didn't cope very well financially. When he left me, he moved abroad and left me with quite a lot of debt. I tried my best but it spiralled from there and was basically left with loads more.

It was £17k - in unsecured loans, catalogue payments, credit cards, student loans (which were defaulted on through a very complicated set of circumstances involving three loans being sold off to three different companies and me really fucking the whole thing up).

I eventually sorted out a Debt Repayment Order after getting advice from StepChange and now it's about £14k. Still loads. Will be paying it off for years. My credit score is on the floor.

BUT my now DH is good with money. We manage pretty well. We also don't have a mortgage as his parents bought our house and we pay them monthly (we'll eventually get the house and a proportionally smaller part of the inheritance). That's the kind of good fortune that was unimaginable to me from my background. If I hadn't met him I think I would have sorted myself out - I'd started to earn a decent-ish wage and get help, but there's no doubt my life is so much less stressful now.

I'd never judge someone in debt. I do want to make sure my child is financially educated though so she never gets caught up in the same cycle.