How much debt are you in?

[eyelinerpencil]

Was chatting to a friend earlier who is in over 500k of debt, which she thought was ok but I think is astronomical.

No debt.
Mortgage paid off
Credit cards paid as I go along. I do use them for bigger purchases, tickets etc for consumer protection.
Car paid by bank transfer.
All bills up to date.

£150.62 on the credit card, (I pay off in full at the end of every month) Only have this because I use it to pay for Amazon purchases.

I am retired on work pension, ( not state pension age yet) house is paid for,all bills are on direct debits. I lease my car for convenience, and because I dont want to own too many 'things'. Had the housing rental market been more secure and affordable, I would not have bought a house.

I bought my first property aged 21yrs, between 20's and 50's there have been hard times, including when I had a £54K mortgage and a £15k second mortgage to pay for essential house improvements/repair. Sometimes it was hand-to-mouth, sometimes I had very meager savings.

That £69K debt was a tortuous burden, so relieved and thankful when it was all paid off.

Same here, I make sure I max it out every year.
My mortgage rate is something like 3.84% and the conservative market average is 7-8%. I'm way over that and I'm not doing anything risky.
I know there is certain appeal in being mortgage free but financially it wouldn't be wise for me atm.

Depends what you count as debt really? We still haven't paid off our student loans, but that is just an extra tax we will have to pay until it is cleared (we have about 20k left to pay between us), no one is going to be knocking at my door asking for payments though. Our mortgage is tiny too (about 20k left). We don't have any what I'd consider actual debt, no credit cards and nothing on finance.

I'm very much a live within your means sort of person, we don't have flashy cars or a huge house, but we have a high disposable income left at the end each month. We could buy a much bigger house and new cars on finance if we wanted to, but we don't. Everyone makes different choices, some people are happy to be financed up to the eyeballs and present a certain lifestyle. I guess if you have the income to service all the things on finance then you aren't actually doing anything wrong, it's just a choice people make. 500k debt with an income of 150k, is v different to 500k debt with an income of 20k besides.

Yes I am always amazed that people are so keen to pay down mortgage in this economic climate. My ISA is up 30% this year and that's in a safe wrapper. I wouldn't pay a penny extra off the mortgage unless I had maxed out ISA x2 plus pensions.

It depends if it's a mortgage or unsecured debt. If she genuinely thinks £500k is fine and needs an objective look at it, tell her to try Helena.Finance. I found it a while ago, you just chat to it about your finances and it proper helps to ground me.

So sorry for your loss ❤️‍🩹

This is very interesting to me, I’ve learnt something about how mortgages work and what people use them for (never had one). To clarify I wasn’t being mock naive, I didn’t have parents to teach me about this stuff and largely don’t know.

I’d rather be in your friend’s position, than yours, OP.

No mortgage, no debt.

I only have a two bedroom house, but it's big enough for me and nice to be mortgage free at 50. I would sooner that and work part time than have a bigger house, a mortgage and need to work full-time

£325k on the mortgage and about £6k on credit cards.

Are we counting student loans? Add another £30k

Why?

Happily it’s now 2026 and things like Google exist!

I don't think Google is good for this stuff though. If you've been raised to think of all debt as bad and to be avoided then most people are not going to seek out sources to go against this.

It's one of the ways that wealth is entrenched. People from poorer backgrounds will often make very conservative and risk avoiding financial decisions. Over a lifetime you end up much worse off.

I know what you mean, I was brought up with the idea that you should never spend money you don't have (necessary when you're poor) and that if you want to have more money you need to save. It was a long time before I realised that rich people don't get rich through savings and hard work, and that as long as you've got a bit of a cushion there are things you can do to be 'clever' with money rather than just frugal/sensible.
You can't google something if you don't know it exists.

OP says she didn’t know how mortgages work as her parents didn’t teach her … you can use google to do research even if you don’t want to actually do it yourself.

You can use it for research … there’s plenty of information on there.
You can type things in such as how to make my money work for me … or even look at everything which is available or the banks website that you bank with. It’s not that hard.

325k mortgage 44k student debt, credit cards 7k - making overpayments on all.
10 years should be 'ok'

Are you British, OP? My bestie is German, and she had the same perspective on mortgages for a long time. It can be a cultural difference, I think. (She actually ended up buying a home with a mortgage a few years ago and now says it's the best thing she's ever done).

None now. But I’m 60 so the flip side of being debt free is being old haha.

Thank you, that's very kind.

Mortgage debt is still debt, yes. But it's different from owning money on a car or getting a holiday on credit.

Your paying off a (typically) appreciating asset, which at some point you will own 100% of. For a lot of people that's in their mid 50s say, so from that point onwards you're living rent free effectively.

Plus you need somewhere to live whether that's a mortgage or renting so you'll be paying out that monthly payment anyway.

That's why people don't think of it in the same way as other debt. So lumping it all together is misleading.

Someone £100k in debt on a house is not the same as someone owing £100k on a boat, with no house

Our mortgage was £500k 15 years ago. Not paid off yet because not a priority, prefer to invest my cash rather than overpay the mortgage. It will be paid off before I take (early) retirement, that’s all that matters. No other debt.

My only debt is mortgage, it has £460k left to pay (I’m in London). I have credit cards but pay them off in full every month

You're not getting it, are you? It's not that I or others on here didn't know how to use Google (not that Google even existed when I was a young adult)
It's that when something is so, so far from your experience you wouldn't know to go looking for it. As a young adult I didn't research how to make my money go further, because I didn't know that was a concept that existed.
I'd suggest you should research emotional intelligence, I think that's possibly your blind spot that you haven't realised you're missing.