In debt, but by how much?

Personal Debt: £0 (I do use a credit card for on-line purchases but it is taken in full each month via DD and I do not use it to buy things I cannot afford)

Business Debt: £500 (A small loan I took off of a family member when I started up, could easily pay it back as the business account is "OK" but they have said to not worry about it- I will pay it back though, when I can easily afford to give them back twice as much :) )
 
Only debt between me and the wife is a personel loan we took out 4 years ago which only has £1670 left to be paid off, gotta say getting the loan which wasnt really needed and wasted well not all of it has really opened my eyes in that i would definantly never consider having another unless there was no other option.

This will be paid off in 2 weeks when we finally get out of this flat, just brought a £170k house and with what ive made on the flat (doubled what i paid) we will only have a £130k mortgage and a nice £20k+ in the bank for new home improvements, family car plus money to help with our baby which will be due in 5 weeks :D

Gonna be a stressful couple of months ;)

so only debt we will have is the £130k mortgage which we can comfortably live with :)


=GAMMO=
 
Morba said:
thats the funny thing, if the market crashes because the %rate gets silly, then a house will cost less, but the repayments on it will still be massive, so just as unaffordable!

that doesn't sound right. I would rather pay 10% interest on a 50k house than 5% interest on a 100k house.
Repayment mortgage:

50k@10% =£459pm for 25 years
100k@5% =£591pm for 25 years
 
Last edited:
About £30k at the moment (down from about £40k this time last year). At current rates, it will take me 3-4 years to clear. I could, at a severe push clear it in about 18 months but I wouldn't have any money to enjoy my life in that period, so I prefer to take the longer term option and enjoy life.

I got into this state due to being crap with money and being on **** wages for most of my life. Now that I'm earning good money, I have no intention of scrimping and saving in order to pay off debts it took me 25 years to accumulate in a year and a half - they'll just have to wait a little longer :p

Incidentally, it's amazing how long you can fob creditors off before they bring in the heavies - I managed to pay nothing on a £7,000 credit card bill for 2 years before I got a CCJ ;) (Disclaimer: I do not recommend you try this, I may have been clever/lucky).

Stan :)
 
about £3500 on a personal loan (motorbike) and £2000 on a credit card.

Compared to this time last year

£15000 on a personal loan, £4000 on the loan mentioned above and about £4000 on credit cards.

Safe to say, the 100% profit I made from the sale of my house has helped a lot. We were really struggling back then and the pressure almost ended my relationship with GF of 6 years.

Some people have no idea how quickly that easy money catches up with you :eek:
 
bottletop said:
that doesn't sound right. I would rather pay 10% interest on a 50k house than 5% interest on a 100k house.
Repayment mortgage:

50k@10% =£459pm for 25 years
100k@5% =£591pm for 25 years

i cannot see houses dropping by 50%, infact i cannot even see a crash yet.
worst case scenario is prices slow down.
also, the current average price of a house is a lot more than 100k :p
 
Morba said:
i cannot see houses dropping by 50%, infact i cannot even see a crash yet.
worst case scenario is prices slow down.
also, the current average price of a house is a lot more than 100k :p

there is in my opinion very little chance of a crash, slowdown and let inflation/wage inflation catch up a bit yes, crash..no.

I would hardly see equity as savings though because the only time you're ever going to realise the money is if you a) don't have to live anywhere.. eg you die b) you release it all to pay for your retirement and dump on your kids if you have any or c) your parents peg it and leave you a house to sell to pay off the house you already have (my preferred route to no mortgage and frankly the most likely!)

A quick straw poll at work does show me that I'm by no means the minority, there are a lot of people in my office who have unsecured debts of approaching or over 1x their entire pre tax annual salary.
 
kitten_caboodle said:
With up to 75% of the debt written off. A public declaration of insolvency is far better than losing your home which is the situation some people are faced with.
Whilst losing your home is no doubt devastating, playing devil's advocate you could argue that if you spend money you don't have, you should be required to sell everything you own to pay as much of it back as possible. Why should someone be allowed to write off a significant percentage of their debt yet retain possession of a significant asset such as a property?
thedazman67 said:
Currently have a student loan totalling £4600 when i finish my course will probably top out at £16,000 i dont really count that as a debt like fox said its free money and you only pay it back when your earning, but apart from that no debt for me.
With respect, I think you need to stop kidding yourself. How slowly you're allowed to pay it back is utterly irrelevant. It's money you've borrowed and which has to be paid back in full, i.e. debt.

Concepts such as "free money" and "not having to pay it back until whenever" are very dangerous ones with which most people in serious credit card debt started out.
 
More debt than I care to mention on here :eek: finally back in employment, but I'm having to start right down at the bottom again.. high living and travel costs compared to the level of pay leave absolutely no money to repay anything, never mind have any social life.

Scraping together the money to file for bankruptcy soon as possible, then I'm having no form of credit other than maybe a pre-paid card after I've been discharged.
 
Did have £15k of finance on my car, but then wondered wtf i was doing, so i got a bank loan, cleared finance, sold car, and paid bank loan back with a bit left over from the sale of the car to put in savings.

Bought myself an old volvo (reliable!) and now have no debt and about £5k in savings and growing.

Still living at home, so have it pretty easy at the moment :) and a fair job to keep the money rolling in.
 
3 Months Ago

At home, with no job (I quit).

CC #1 - £500
CC #2 - £700
Overdraft - £800

Now

I punched myself in the face after two months. I got a job in China, moved here, three months in:-

CC #1 - £0
CC #2 - £0
Overdrat - £800

Once the overdraft is paid, I will cancel it (except for £100, in case of emergencies) and cancel one of my CCs (the one not with my DD Account (Natwest)).

Then... well, I have glorious plans. :D :p

I hate debt. It feels low, selfish and stupid.
 
using my parents as my student loan, due to the possibility of my course (architecture) being stupidly long depending on how it goes after 3 years i could end up with a student loan repayment twice the amount i borrowed in the first place. taking advantage of interest free overdrafts with the money i would have spent in savings earning me some holiday spending money (well... a weekend away spending money).

if i had a part time job (i have tried :( ) i could quite easily come out of uni with not much debt and into a placement, but then i don't have many high expenses like running a car or eating out all the time.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Whilst losing your home is no doubt devastating, playing devil's advocate you could argue that if you spend money you don't have, you should be required to sell everything you own to pay as much of it back as possible. Why should someone be allowed to write off a significant percentage of their debt yet retain possession of a significant asset such as a property?

You're assuming its their fault. People lose their jobs, have partners who leave them in debt ith kids to look after - it's not always the person 'overspending' that makes financial instability happen. Of course in some cases it is - but you can't just assume that. And in a IVA equity can be taken into account and used to pay off more of the debt anyway - it just means they can't force you out and sell it leaving you without a property and unable to get one.
 
£9,000 student loan for undergrad degree, £23,000 taken out as a Career & Professional Studies Loan to get me through my masters....so £32,000, and i'm still in University...joy
 
siandtina said:
£9,000 student loan for undergrad degree, £23,000 taken out as a Career & Professional Studies Loan to get me through my masters....so £32,000, and i'm still in University...joy
£23k for a masters? :eek: What masters are you doing?
 
£5000.00 career development loan. Not to be paid off until I earn more than 17k pa, almost 8 years later and I'm still not earning that and when they asked for payments to begin I said I can't so I defaulted the loan. hey ho The interest alone was 70 quid a month which was about all I could afford. I keep hinting to my boss about a pay rise; it would be nice to start paying this one off... one day :rolleyes:


What was that old saying? "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." hmmm
 
Back
Top Bottom