How much debt are you actually in?

[Ghosttalk4]

I'm 29 and have never had any debt, other than my mortgage. I used to work for am insolvency practitioner and it scared me half to death

I owe £140,000 mortgage on my house, that's worth about £320,000. It's my second house and we borrowed a little extra for the building work we had done.

Never borrowed for our wedding or cars, but the lack of a decent pension scares me half to death.

 

[Pinkrose]

Age 33
Overdraft £1100
Credit cards £7300
Car finance £15700

no mortgage BUT got £23000 in saving for house deposit and currently being processed for a mortgage of £360k

so not all debt is against you

 

[bella578]

On Creditfix for 5 years, less than 4 years to go now and I'll be in the clear. Was 9k in debt, but it's taught me a lesson.

Can I just say Donald Trump was bankrupt 5 times and look where he is now. It doesn't make you a failure.

 

[Doingitforthegram]

Have about 7k on credit cards but they are only for when we have made big purchases and instead of taking money out of savings (which is earning reasonable interest) we stick it on a 0% credit card and pay it off before it becomes interest bearing.

Mortgage on the house and then husband has his student loan. Before I was on mat leave we would overpay the maximum we could on our mortgage every year and will continue to do so once I go back to work.

 

[TheWitchIsBack]

Hi all - just advice if possible. So I’m 26 and have roughly £28k worth of debt, luckily I am on a good salary so the repayments were never a problem. Got into debt due to a family member taking a loan out in my name when I was 20 and on less than 10k a year, that’s when the vicious cycle happened. For reasons I will not go into, I couldn’t take the family member to court.
As my interest rates were so high I’ve recently entered into a DMP, now me and my other half are looking to buy a house: he has no history of debt and we have a deposit of £35k on a house value of bran £175-190k.Has anyone had experience with obtaining a mortgage witha DMP, currently I’m able to save £750 a month after paying my monthly DMP payments. Would my other half credit history balance mine out or would lenders see me as untouchable.
I will add that I’ve never missed a payment or defaulted

Get independent mortgage advice - you can definitely get a mortgage once a DMP has been appropriately managed for 12 months providing there’s no other adverse credit.

 

[Reverend]

I really, really hate money. My mum says I take after my dad who basically gave my mum full control of the finances (my gf won't allow me to do that!). I want to pay my mortgage as soon as possible, I would rather go without!

 

[Bec3007]

24. No mortgage currently. Bought my car outright. £100 on Next and £70 on Very. If I can’t afford something I either don’t buy it or I save for it. I use Next or Very for presents mainly, I have 7 birthdays between Nov-Jan one being my sons so it gets expensive around Christmas. Always paid back in full the month after though.

 

[JBinstafun]

We have a £200k mortgage, 6k on credit cards at 0% and £12k on a low interest personal loan. We have joint income of about £95k, 10k in easy access savings and about £150k of equity in the house. I’ve never been twitchy about debt but my job is a bit unstable at the moment so we’re overpaying on the everything to pay it all off in next 6 months just in case I was made redundant (although to be honest if I was made redundant we’d probably be better off!)

 

[LifeOfRiley]

I am 34

144k mortgage house is worth around 400k
5k credit cards (got enough money to clear this in Jan)
14k car but I’m handing it back this month as I don’t need it now was nice to have though!

I’ve been deep in debt so I understand how hard it is, and I ended up remortgaging to clear it all. It was the biggest lesson as my mortgage had got down to under 100k but I’m planning to have no debt in the next decade - just a mortgage. And I’m not plan to do it.

 

[LemonLife]

Just my student loans!

Never had an over-draft as its too risky

Don’t have a mortgage yet

Own my car out-right

 

[Rbarb-bkini]

I don't really consider my SL and mortgage as debt, not earning enough yet to pay off my SL anyway. House prices are low where I live so our mortgage is very manageable.

No accounts with the likes of Very/Next as the thought of not being able to pay it off terrifies me, and I'm always of the mind that I shouldn't spend money I don't have. (Not judging those who do, it's just my personal mindset!)

It helps that my partner is very conscientious with spending our money. He has CCs and shares one with me for groceries etc that we pay off together at the end of the month. He also earns nearly twice as much as me so I proportionately pay less towards bills and mortgage to reflect it.

 

[DCICassieStuart]

We have around 4.5 years left on our mortgage. That works out at around £19,000.
I currently have a couple of hundred on my credit card.
Not sure exactly how much my husband has on his, but I would imagine around the same. We both pay them off in full every month.
I've paid off my car and his is a company car so nothing owing there.

I had a 'friend' of mine (who is in massive debt just to constantly just shopping) make some bitchy comments to me last year when we bought two new sofas and paid for them outright. We'd had the previous ones for 18 years! One was gone saggy as it was the one that was always used (faced the tv) The other one was in near perfect condition as it was rarely used.

 

[Cheyes97]

This thread has been an eye opener for me. I’m in a terrible situation at the moment, I’m I’m about £8000 of debt at 23 years old. Was very stupid with money when I got my first “proper” job and took out payday loans, credit cards etc. It just spiralled and spiralled and got even worse when I had a bereavement In my family last year. I live in constant fear every single day, to the point where I can never relax because I’m so scared. I’m scared when somebody knocks on the door, when letters come through my door, when the phone rings. And the worst thing about it is in I work in finance and would lose my job if I got a CCJ or anything along those lines. I just don’t know what to do but I know I need to something before it gets a whole lot worse.

This thread has been an eye opener for me. I’m in a terrible situation at the moment, I’m I’m about £8000 of debt at 23 years old. Was very stupid with money when I got my first “proper” job and took out payday loans, credit cards etc. It just spiralled and spiralled and got even worse when I had a bereavement In my family last year. I live in constant fear every single day, to the point where I can never relax because I’m so scared. I’m scared when somebody knocks on the door, when letters come through my door, when the phone rings. And the worst thing about it is in I work in finance and would lose my job if I got a CCJ or anything along those lines. I just don’t know what to do but I know I need to something before it gets a whole lot worse.

i feel like I’ve ruined my life before it’s even begun. my friends around me are buying their first house etc and I don’t feel like I’ll ever have that. It’s soul destroying to say the least

 

[boringbsh]

£6k loan
£3k overdraft
£1.5k credit card

Thankfully, I’ve been eligible for a 0% transfer card and so the overdraft and credit card are getting blammed on that.
Also been very fortunate that I’ve recently started a new job with a significant pay increase, so will be sorting that debt throughout 2020. Well, fingers crossed...

 

[Nosymum]

My partner and I have about £160k left on our mortgage but I don't really count this when I consider my debts because to me it's like a utility bill - we'll be paying this every month for the foreseeable so I dont even think about it! We also have quite a bit of equity in our property (house is worth around £500k) so we're in a fairly stable position with it.

I only have 2 debts with 1 personal bank loan and 1 0% interest credit card but combined they are quite high and although we have sinking funds accounts to save for particular things (Christmas, holidays, birthdays etc), we don't have any substantial emergency savings. I don't do store cards etc and I do have a couple of other credit cards but they have no balance on them and I haven't used them for years.

I've got £16k left on a personal loan which was taken out about 2 years ago to buy a bigger and more reliable family car and to do some home improvements, this loan is in my name but my partner contributes half to the monthly repayments. I also have £3k on a credit card and this is what bothers me the most - around a year or so ago I think the total balance on it was about £500, which I was very comfortable with, but it's gone up loads because of various emergencies which we didn't have enough in savings to cover. It seemed like the most sensible option at the time as we're not currently paying interest on it, but it does depress me every time I look at it! Now we just have to keep chipping away at it every month. Once we've cleared these 2 debts, we'll have a decent amount of extra disposable income, not that it'll get us much with the way things currently are.

Does anyone else feel like their debt has increased since the start of the cost of living crisis? Because I certainly feel like mine has

Absolutely! My electric bill has gone from
£180 ish to £350 for a 1 bedroom
Bungalow! So that extra money has to come from
Somewhere. I’m so careful only do washing at night, heating on as little as possible and I wash st the sink in cold water so the 1 hour at night I have hot water on is ready for my toddler. Honestly panicking at this point. Good luck with clearing your debts you can do this xx

 

[Demiseoftheinfluencer]

Age 31
Mortgage 46k
Credit card £1800
Personal loan £2900
Owe my mum £1750 from when she helped me buy out an ex a while ago
I definitely regret a lot of credit card purchases and don’t buy anything new on it, just slowly clearing it.

 

[caitlinbullen]

80k mortgage
8k car loan
4k credit card
1k Next store card
£500 Argos card

It gets me down and I worry about it a lot, but slowly we chip away at it while trying to make the most of what we have.

 

[TheWitchIsBack]

This thread has been an eye opener for me. I’m in a terrible situation at the moment, I’m I’m about £8000 of debt at 23 years old. Was very stupid with money when I got my first “proper” job and took out payday loans, credit cards etc. It just spiralled and spiralled and got even worse when I had a bereavement In my family last year. I live in constant fear every single day, to the point where I can never relax because I’m so scared. I’m scared when somebody knocks on the door, when letters come through my door, when the phone rings. And the worst thing about it is in I work in finance and would lose my job if I got a CCJ or anything along those lines. I just don’t know what to do but I know I need to something before it gets a whole lot worse.



i feel like I’ve ruined my life before it’s even begun. my friends around me are buying their first house etc and I don’t feel like I’ll ever have that. It’s soul destroying to say the least

I hate reading that you feel this way, I’ve been there and done that and know how crippling it can feel. I promise you it can get better - you just need to put in some effort and hard work to get through it.

I’d recommend signing up for the MSE credit club. It’s linked to Experian and gives you access to your credit score but also matches you with lenders you’re likely to get credit with so try and look at 0% interest balance transfer cards and get any high interest debts transferred so you’re making a bigger dent in them with your payments.

Work from the highest interest debts to the lowest, and try to set up direct debits to pay a chunk towards each one you have each month - do the minimum payments for all but the highest interest debts and get the highest cleared first then once that’s paid off move onto the next.

I promise you it can and will get better, even if it doesn’t feel like it now.

 

[ChrissyPoo]

Mortgage and student loans. We have a credit card, but only for emergencies and it's not currently being used.

Had a bit of debt back when I was 18, and it was easy to just buy clothes and nice things from a catalogue on credit. They then kept upping the credit limit, which was tempting as a uni student. I then gave my head a wobble, paid it all off, and haven't touched a credit catalogue since. They truly are dangerous things, and it's all too easy to fall into a trap - having seen it happen many times to people I know personally.

We're fairly comfortable because we're cautious with our money, and I save a lot. If we don't have the money for it, we'll save for it.

 

[Marshallmum1982]

Way too much but not as much as I was 2 years ago! I've always been bad with money since I was 20, using credit cards and not clearing them. Then adding 2 lots of maternity leave to the pot and and continuing to try and live as I was while working caused an absolute shit storm. My husband didn't know the half of it until I added it all up one day and it was £40k! I felt sick, had to confess and it wasn't pretty. Luckily my husband is amazing with money and helped me devise a payback plan and cleared my overdrafts for me. I owe about half that now, and some days I can feel myself slipping back into the overspending ways but I just have to think back to how dissapointed my husband was when I confessed and how hard he works to make sure we have a nice house and and can have holidays. He actually offered to pay off most of the debt but I wanted to do it myself- my mess, my responsibility! Its so easy to do but the feeling I had on the day of realisation was so horrendous I couldn't go through that again.