What's an acceptable amount of debt?

[piffle]

Just from another thread, I was just curious to see differing views on what debt means to most people and what it means to others.
Fir instance if you're asset rich :ie: good equity and little borrowed debt but with a massive mortage is that more ideal, than a smaller mortgage, less equity but more short term debt - credit cards, store cards
Do people pay off cards every month?
Personally I have one credit card that dp has nothing to do with, I regularly F* it up and over spend but claw it back over a few months, this is how I am. I am SAHM but keep all of dd's DLa and child tax credits/child benefit but do all the household spending.
DP pays everything every month, he would rather use his o/d than have credit card interest charged.
I am fascinated truly as he thinks I am abnormal and a spendthrift and I think he is too rigid and boring about money!
I know some people are not comfy talking about this, I'm not wanting to know exact details, just more of a money pysche thing ya know
In other words he's abnormal not me right

One vote for Mr Piffle

Dp would spend every penny we could access if he could, with no thought to how to pay it back.

I will not allow debt in my house. I haven't got any. Dp has a £600 loan to pay off, that he idiotically got for a work colleague (but that's another thread entirely) and when that is gone, that is the end of it.

I think the poorer you are, the less tolerent you should be of things that will make you even more poor, such as interest on debts.

No I think he is normal

We have no debt aside from mortgage. According to Alvin Hall (yes DP bought me that book for xmas [angry} )we are doing well etc
I am careful my idea of whopping month on my credit card os £150, to dp it's GRRRRR
Basically I want a new kitchen and I'm priming him

No interest on credit cards for me either. Cant afford too. Will not tolerate £1.50/£1.75 cashpoint charges either. Check the prices of everything.
Dp couldnt give a toss. Causes friction.
We owe my mum over a grand and always have a managable amount on the credit card, paid off every month.
No mortgage, we rent.

We are still paying off two car loans, mine is paid off next year. Don't owe anything else.

well ours at the moment is too much [frown]

But Mr. Piffle is right

We don't have any debt - credit card is paid off each month. What worries me more is that we don't have a private pension

Thanks to the wonderful computer system at the tax credit office, we have about £3,000 worth of debt.

No, we don't pay it off every month. We used to, before things go fked up.

my god is there no one who has moments of frivolity with money here
I feel very very bad now....
Amazing DP will say, for years I've been saying you're a loose cannon with money, 5 mumsnetters tell you you're reckless and you reform !!!!!!!!!!
Bah humbug

I wish we could have no debt, but that isn't going to happen any time soon.

No mortage. We rent.

No private pension, either.

expat, I know we ended up with £1200 worth as well, was collossal screw up by them
It's being dealt with by an lawyer accountant just now

we used to have loads of moments of frivolity with money, that's why we don't do it now We were students with massive debt at one time, after spending all our earnings on paying it off we don't want to go down that road again. A friend of mine is 20k in debt. She works part time and all her earnings go on the debt so basically if she didn't have it all she could be a sahm if she wanted to be

They gave us £100 worth of compensation for collossally screwing up.

Last week, the BBC had a documentary about people like us - one lady was £5,000 in debt thanks to their cock ups. Another family was £3,000 in debt b/c of their errors.

And all they said was, 'Too bad, so sad.'

I saw that, I know that I used to be a working single parent toally dependent on the assistance, it used to come thruogh your paypacket, it was easy it worked
this new scheme is F*ing useless
I cannot imagine how depserate ot must be for people on the breadline already dealing with removal of benefits like this.
Colossally wrong

Piffle - I am the frivolous one like you and DH is sensible! When we do spend though, he tends to buy a few big expensive things each year & I buy lots of cheaper things. I think you have to limit it based on your worth, e.g. no more than a month's wages on credit card etc. We do have a whacking great mortgage but have some equity in the house too so am not too worried. You have to have some fun! Just limit it to little inexpensive things.
Re which one of you is right on the credit card vs. overdraft - depends which has the higher rate of interest.....

That poor lady who was a single mum w/a disabled son and having to sell her house. It made me SO angry! I wanted the show to give some money. I would have, had I had it to give her.

She got £200 of compensation. And then come to find out they'd underpaid her.

expat, I saw that and thought of you (as they say).

One poor woman was losing her house.

I was interested in it as they cocked up how much we should get (very little) and sent us hundreds of pounds each week which they then refused to have back until the end of the tax year) which was awful as we were reading about people who had no food and we had all this money which wasn't ours.

Our appeal was upheld. They said we were overpaid by £4000 over 2 years. But then they'd inflated our income by £2808 for each of those two years by having DH on JSA he never got. So they basically called it a draw.

After leaving us having to use a credit card to pay council tax and buy food until DH found a part time job driving and valeting hire cars for a hire care company.

Unreal... Expat honestly
Now
Dp got a bonus this year when his company got bought out
He bought outright a new motorcycle, which needed new leathers, new boots, new gloves, new leather protector for top box and allsorts, new mobile phone, mp3 communicators for his helmet, oh yes ne helmet too. He does travel a lot.
it would have been better for him to take our car and buy me a run around right?
So although my spending is more frivolous, I doubt it even comes close to what he spent on himself this year on that bike.

We have a mountain of debt. And I'm talking Kilimanjaro! I can tell you with absolute certainty that Mr. Pifle is right.

Colditz, I'm interested to know how you enforce the "I don't allow it policy"? Do you control the finances?

We're very cautious about debt. We never pay credit card interest. We have some mortgage debt, but not much. It will get worse, with the coming renovations, but we'll cope.

I think being mortgaged to the maximum allowed by your income is unacceptable, never mind other debt.

Thankfully DH and I are pretty much on the same page on this stuff.

uwila

I don't control the finances as such, but I have told dp if he ever gets another loan out without me agreeing I will leave him to wallow in it, and never speak to him again on any subject bar children. I consider financial deceit worse than having an affair.

He got us into so many messes that I have only just got sorted out, if I didn't 'control' the finances, there would be no control. For this reason, we have seperate accounts, and the bills we are responsible for individually are in 1 name only.

I should be Mrs Piffle.

£300 on a card with a 5k limit.

Colditz

I remember that thread, what was the outcome did the work colleague ever pay him back ??