How much debt are you in?

[Bottomlesspit21]

Following on from the savings thread, how much debt are you in?

Not including mortgage but including student loans, car finance etc.

I’m not in any debt but haven’t got much in savings either!

I love these threads because people with enormous mortgages look down their noses at someone who rents and owes £500 on a catalogue.

You keep on believing you'll pay off your £800k mortgage in your lifetime on your SAHM salary.

I agree, we have huge debt now being sorted but mortgage is only 70k , so in reality, our total debt is much less than these big mortgages.

@Moomoolandmoomooland

I love these threads because people with enormous mortgages look down their noses at someone who rents and owes £500 on a catalogue.

You keep on believing you'll pay off your £800k mortgage in your lifetime on your SAHM salary.

Most mortgages are 25 years. So well within most peoples lifetimes.

And overpaying by £500 per month can knock years off. Maybe even pay it off by 40 to 50 years old.

And with owning a property, you dont have to worry about paying rent when you retire. Not to mention that the monthly mortgage payment on my current 3 bed house is the same as the rent I used to pay for a studio flat!

£0

Mortgage paid off and no debt.

However it hasnt always been like this. I was 10k in debt, struggling to pay the min on the credit cards etc, couldn't afford a day off work etc.

Dh was 30k in debt when i met him (has now cleared it) and had practically sod all to his name.

Min wage jobs was the problem, its too low and not enough for a decent lifestyle.

Probably around £20k, all student loan. Never seems to go down, however much I earn it just mainly pays off the interest then a token amount of the actual debt.

We had some credit card debt from some work on the house but managed to pay it off before the interest free period ended.

We're lucky enough to be in the situation we're we can save money most months so nearly always buy things out right. That said we aren't flashy; we only just replaced our 15 year old car with a 5 year old car, have 4 year old phones on sim only contracts, and buy most things secondhand.

Most mortgages are 25 years. So well within most peoples lifetimes.

Except that people move house, and the new mortgage term starts all over again. We're in our late 40s and have just taken on a 25 year mortgage.

Currently £200k mortgage, and £2k on the credit card buying flights that I'll pay off before the end of the month. DH paid off his student loan a few years ago and we bought our second hand Astra in cash so that's it really.

@MintyMabel you don’t have to start at 25 years again every time you move indeed, most lenders won’t let you take out a term that finishes after your intended retirement date/state retirement age.
You should make the term as short as you can afford the monthly payments for so that you pay less interest.

@MintyMabel

Most mortgages are 25 years. So well within most peoples lifetimes.

Except that people move house, and the new mortgage term starts all over again. We're in our late 40s and have just taken on a 25 year mortgage.

Well that's OK because you can 'just' over pay by £500 pm. Job done .

£0
I don't "do" debt, and shrug it off as soon as I'm able to. I use credit very carefully, like it were a dangerous tool.

I realise I'm fucking lucky to be able to choose that though, having never been backed into a tight enough corner financially to allow the urserous moneylender vampires to sink their fangs into me good and proper.

you don’t have to start at 25 years again every time you move confused indeed, most lenders won’t let you take out a term that finishes after your intended retirement date/state retirement age.
You should make the term as short as you can afford the monthly payments for so that you pay less interest.

Yes, and for us, that was 25 years. As it is for most. Not every house move comes with a massive financial bonus having sold the previous property. In the early part of the ladder, people are moving to increase the size of the property. It is ridiculous to suggest people buying their first 100k 1 bed property in their early 20s will be able to move up the ladder within that 25 year mortgage term without ever increasing it.

Well that's OK because you can 'just' over pay by £500 pm. Job done

I'll go check down the back of the sofa for it

Yes, and for us, that was 25 years. As it is for most. Not every house move comes with a massive financial bonus having sold the previous property. In the early part of the ladder, people are moving to increase the size of the property. It is ridiculous to suggest people buying their first 100k 1 bed property in their early 20s will be able to move up the ladder within that 25 year mortgage term without ever increasing it.

The idea is that you fund a bigger house by increasing your earnings over your career and building up equity, rather than by pushing the finish line further and further away!

The idea is that you fund a bigger house by increasing your earnings over your career and building up equity, rather than by pushing the finish line further and further away

That's nice, but it doesn't always work like that. Some people go for decades without a pay rise, or even earn less than they did years ago. Many jobs that used to pay reasonably well now pay NMW. Or people have been made redundant and only been able to find lower paid work.

Plus house prices haven't increased everywhere. Some places have been flat for years and have barely risen to pre 2007 crash levels and some not even there yet, eg Aberdeen that's been heavily affected by the recession in the oil industry.

@PattyPan

Yes, and for us, that was 25 years. As it is for most. Not every house move comes with a massive financial bonus having sold the previous property. In the early part of the ladder, people are moving to increase the size of the property. It is ridiculous to suggest people buying their first 100k 1 bed property in their early 20s will be able to move up the ladder within that 25 year mortgage term without ever increasing it.

The idea is that you fund a bigger house by increasing your earnings over your career and building up equity, rather than by pushing the finish line further and further away!

I plan to move again at 40, for the final time And take another 25 year mortgage.

But by overpaying each month, will aim to pay it off by 55. So it can be done.

(Thats my choice to pay extra each month and will need to forgo the luxuries to be debt free).

£40k not including mortgage

A combination of long term sick leaves on both side and horrendous bad luck

In my 1st mortgage, i overpaid, and my current mortgage I overpay as well. I dont have extra income to spend on holidays/cars/eating out. I know people who will never be well off purely because they spend 99p of every £1 they earn. Whereas I spend 50p of every £1 tbh.

Firstly I think the aggression towards the OP is plain weird. Frankly, it is really important that discussions about debt are normalised and not a source of shame. Refusing to talk about debt is not helping that. Why not be open and honest about what you owe and how you manage it, to support others to acknowledge their own debt challenges?

This, plus I'm sure if OP hadn't disclosed whether she had debt or not herself people would be having a go at her for that instead. Did people expect her to lie so that they could feel better about their own situations? This is literally an internet forum, people are free to ask questions, you are free to not respond should you not want to. This really didn't need to be made into a thing, any talks about money will always be 'sensitive', do people want us to just never discuss it?

@BarbaraofSeville but then you can’t afford to buy bigger house in those cases then can you? It’s not a god-given right that everyone gets to keep moving up the ladder forever.
My point was that it is not the default to take out a new 25 year term every time nor is it possible to do so once you reach a certain age, because the banks do expect you to actually pay it off within your lifetime (which is why most lenders have age limits), which minty was disputing.

About £3000. Should be paid off by the end of the year, then I can get back to working on my savings.

Plenty, because I like having nice things and going nice places and I don't like waiting to save for them!
It's all manageable though and I couldn't care less about them. I'd feel much worse sucking the joy out of life through scrimping and saving so I could come on here and proudly proclaim I was debt free 😃
I have been in a position when my debts spiralled out of control and were unmanageable, it wasn't nice andto anyone in that situation

[quote littlepattilou]@Bottomlesspit21

I don't like these kind of threads either. And further to what a previous poster said, the 'how much SAVINGS have you got' thread is just as bad, because it makes people (who are struggling financially) feel like shit when someone says they have £50,000 to £100,000 savings.

A thread asking 'how much is in your private pension' was on here about a year ago, and some people were claiming £500,000 to a million pounds. If that WAS true, I bet they haven't got that much now, as many pensions have tanked.

Most people lie on the internet anyway, and especially on here.

Me and DH have ZERO debt and no mortgage by the way.

Or we may have a £200,000 mortgage and £75,000 of debt. Who knows? Who cares?!

I know people are free to scroll by and not read the thread, but as a few posters have said, asking 'how much debt are you in?' is pretty insensitive, and crass.[/quote]
But you sound just as bad, obviously bitter because people have money in their pensions. A lot of people have those sums in their pension and that amount doesn’t actually give you that much yearly. Why would you gloat that their pensions may have tanked? Very strange.

@IJustWantSomeBees

Firstly I think the aggression towards the OP is plain weird. Frankly, it is really important that discussions about debt are normalised and not a source of shame. Refusing to talk about debt is not helping that. Why not be open and honest about what you owe and how you manage it, to support others to acknowledge their own debt challenges?

This, plus I'm sure if OP hadn't disclosed whether she had debt or not herself people would be having a go at her for that instead. Did people expect her to lie so that they could feel better about their own situations? This is literally an internet forum, people are free to ask questions, you are free to not respond should you not want to. This really didn't need to be made into a thing, any talks about money will always be 'sensitive', do people want us to just never discuss it?

I don’t think people want anyone to lie to make them feel better about their own situations, but I suspect they’d like them not to judge others’ situations based on their own, which is what’s happening. Many of the people saying they have no debt are also then saying “because I don’t smoke or drink or go on holiday or drive a flash car or buy Starbucks coffee”. But if you read the responses of the people who are admitting to having debt, the majority are ascribing it to loss of income during periods of redundancy or ill-health, business failure, student loans, and loans for essentials they couldn’t wait around to save up for. They aren’t in debt because of lavish lifestyles but mostly because of unfortunate circumstances. Essentially, the former group are making a judgement about the financial habits of people in debt, which doesn’t actually appear to be accurate and it’s pretty obvious why people are going to find that irksome.

About 100k not including mortgage which is in arrears