Agree with this. There’s a fashion girly in the US sharing content on how she got into a similar level of debt (~50k too) that I always watch when her videos pop up on my FYP, she’s younger than YC and married so a dual income household (with no kids!) but acknowledges that her predicament has set her back *years* and that she may financially never catch up in trying to pay down a property and save for retirement. She’s also rushing to pay down cards as their promo periods end, which feels far more realistic than the mythical infinite 0% rates YC claims to have?
On one hand I think not being panicked is a great attitude to have, but on the other I’m like how can YC not see what a ticking time bomb it is? I don’t believe anyone who doesn’t know exactly how much debt they’re in has managed to plan it to be completely at 0% APR. I also don’t believe you could borrow that much at 0% APR in this higher base rate economy, outside of the ~18 months 0% promos CCs flog their APRs are like 30%?! I’ve never had a loan so correct me if I’m wrong but the MSE comparison page has APRs of 6-10%? Assuming the debt is blended between the two with a conservative avg APR of 15%, that’s £5k in just interest payments per year, whilst being at the mercy of further base rate rises increasing that! I know she’s delulu about income which is a huge part of the problem, but that’s around month’s gross pay for her just for the privilege of maintaining that much debt
There’s then the horror of when it’s time to remortgage her high LTV home she’s told us she’s maxed out on affordability on, I can’t imagine being foolish enough to risk losing my children’s home because I didn’t want to make concessions to my (fairly high consumption) lifestyle?!