turbomatt

iTrader: (1)

Sure can mate , im not exactly rolling in it but im not hard up neither.In fact we are on less than that now because the other half has gone part time to look after our 8 month old sprogg so its more like £25-26k our mortgage is for £80k (we live up north and bought just before the boooom) its now worth about £130000. But yes we get by just fine.My car is a 99 classic so not quite as flash as some cars on here but it does me just fine for the time being

turbomatt

iTrader: (1)

Having said that sometimes i sit at my pc drooling over pics of the teg dc5 and think to myself "all it takes is a wee bank loan and i can get one " but then common sense prevails and i keep saving

Dieseldog

Like your approach TM.

dpb

But if everybody took that attitude Devildog - the country would be on its knees in weeks

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Trouble is now, whatever I say will be assumed to be typical Scoobynet BS !


I don't owe anything, anywhere to anyone.

Probably better off than most on here yet have a worse car than most on here.

Dieseldog

You're right dpb. Maybe I'm being selfish but, like turbomatt, I live within my means. I'm probably not Gordon Browns ideal citizen - one less car bought, one less flatscreen goggle box which would feed a goggle box manufacturers family for a week and pay for some Government advisors, but where does this end? We've got ourselves into a situation where we must keep on consuming and keep on breeding new consumers who in turn must do the same. I just don't see how it can go on forever. The politicians know this but are only interested in not having it happen on their watch.

I also look to saving £x each month 'cos when I'm shafted on my company pension and the Govt says I'm just the wrong side of the threshold to receive a state pension, that's £x I'll have to support myself...




I'm saving for a fortified bunker and a gun, dpb, and I suggest you do too! <insert crazy madman type smilie here>

2000TLondon

I bet thousands of people said that in the early 90's!

mrtheedge2u2

I owe about 12K..........

WRX_Dazza

i owe about 3k......

cant have everything i want, but don't do badly

life is for living remember.

well done to TurboMatt !!!

speedymonkey

I owe about 3K ish too

Its no biggy tho, should be debt free within 6 months, then im chopping up all my cards, and will get one with 12 months interest free credit, for emergency's only, or those impulse buys
Saves messing about with cash you see

TopBanana

their loss is our gain right?

4X4BOB

Only debt me and the wife have are on mortgages.
Mortgage of £50k on own house that cost £65K but is now valued at £180k+
Then six BTL mortgages of between £20- £25K with each of those houses now valued at £80k+ each. (All bought Oop norf at the right time!)

Would be nice if taxman didn't want his cut when we sold the BTL's

Wifey works 4 days a week at a bank and I work (self employed) when I want to!

apkadb

Great ***** waving post!

On a thread about how much debt you are in, you basically tell everyone how much money you have got.

LOL Only on SN.

Clarebabes

Ha ha, totally agree.

wrx-kris

Yes and no. I was genuinely interested in what peoples debt situ was. Thats one of the reasons I never included mortgage's too.

I'll admit it, we don't have much money but are comfortable - I'd rather save up for something than go in debt. We are happy with this way of life and wouldn't have it any other way.


Money cannot buy happiness!

Matteeboy

So someone in a £300k house mortgaged up to the hilt and being battered by each interest rate rise is better off than someone renting with no debt then?!!

Pull the other one.
Why discount mortgage debt? It really is silly.

StickyMicky

i think a better poll would be, "how much cash have you got in savings"

wrx-kris

MY THREAD MY RULES

Matteeboy

Followed by "how much did your watch cost?"

And finally "When is a big debt not a big debt?"

Clarebabes

Of course it's all relative. If you earn loads and have a £5K loan, it's nothing, whereas it could be a really big deal to some one else. Bit obvious really.

I think the reason a mortgage isn't included is that that is a secured debt and as has been mentioned previously, that is more of an issue if affordability comes into play. E.g. a car loan will never be paid back in its entirity by selling the car as cars depreciate. Hopefully, houses will continue to appreciate, even if the market slows, and therefore a house can be sold to cover the debt.

BUT for God's sake don't let Homebuyer Man anywhere near you! (Not from personal experience BTW)

Matteeboy

So say you suddenly can't work and insurance don't cough up (they often wriggle out of it) - then that house and the huge mortgage can't be paid back. Suddenly that "non debt" is one HELL of a debt and gets repossesed, losing you a fortune.
If that isn't a debt, then I really don't know what is!!
Not knocking mortgages but find it interesting that people forget about them conveniently when talking about debt.

Default on a mortgage and you really are in the deepest of deep merde.

Clarebabes

But if you can't pay your rent, you're in the same situation.

Matteeboy

If you can't pay your rent, you don't lose thousands of pounds built up in mortgage repayments, fees, etc
You just move somewhere cheaper. See it's not a debt.

scoob_babe

We have a loan on our current car simply because it costs less than taking the balance out of savings and losing that interest!

PS TurboMatt - A DC5 ain't all it's cracked up to be. Much preferred our scoob to it!

Clarebabes

Same with a house. Can't keep up the repayments? Take the equity that has been built up for years and go live mortgage free somewhere smaller

Matteeboy

Which will take months and months to sort and incur massive fees.
I'm talking about those really mortgaged up, not those who are not far off paying one off.

Some property musings from a rather astute and wealthy person I know...



Buying and selling prices were main question.

It seems, we thought, that mortgages will become more difficult to get and terms will be less atrractive.

Although govt has "injected" money into market it will not help future loans much or for very long - and it can't drop interest rates much or £ will drop (really low against € now) so much that imports will be expensive etc etc....

And what made me think more than anything else was that - even if house prices do not fall directly, the impact of mortgage constraints is huge.

If some one has £5000 available for deposit (the sector he is dealing with) then they used to be able to get a 95% motgage (or 100% or 110%!) so could buy a house for £100,000

But now it is very difficult to get better than 80% LTV (?) ie 15% reduction - So we initially thought they will only be able to pay 15% less - but actually their £5000 has now got to be 20% of the value - so actually the house value can only be £25000 - which seems too low - but makes you think.

It's what they call leverage!

But it if you think about it, it really explains why house prices have risen so much over the last 10 years. The norm was mortgage LTV of 80%. But as lending terms became easier LTV's increased to 95 - 100% which allowed house prices to triple or quadruple - which they have done (ish) - use the £5000 deposit example as above - at 80% LTV ie £25000 house price and then at 95% LTV and house price = £100,000 And of course as a rising market became the norm lenders didn't worry about security too much, because prices would rise and cover them anyway - and on it went!

Well I thought it was really interesting!!

And it proves what we have been saying ie that there isn't a shortage of houses - but, actually a surplus of money. It looks like now there will be a shortage of money - which ought to be good news.

Prices aren't going to fall from £100,000 to £25,000 overnight, but it will mean that sales will stop to those people - which means prices will hold or drop a bit - which means that lenders will need a bit more deposit % - but buyer has still only got £5000 deposit - which means that prices will need to drop a bit more - and so down it will go - just like it went up.

speye91

I owe £40 to me Dad.

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

I have no mortgage, cannot afford to get one, not stupid to even try at these rip off prices for shoebox houses and owe about as much as my annual salary. k thx bye.

finalzero

True say. When I was contracting I was earning silly money, too much to deal with that I ended up spending without thinking and then got caught out eventually.

Ran up a few debts, nothing major but I made a promise to myself to deal with em and I have. I never borrow anything from anyone unless I know I can pay them back as I don't like the idea of being a slave to debt.

Unfortuantely we live in a society where we are told to spend more than we earn and save.

I have started saving some money now and building a bit of interest on it, not huge amounts but its there for my kids when they grow up.

Have to have some restraint, I am much more cautious about spending my money now. I allow myself to indulge the odd month and buy games or new clothes (or something for the car), otherwise I will ask myself if I really need xyz item or I can wait till next payday.

Safest option as I found out, had some work done on the house, a few other problems came about, out of pocket to the tune of £10k but at least I had the money saved to cope with the trauma of a huge bill

blot

Yup, because they have an asset which history shows, will be worth far more than £300K in 10 yrs time, but that does of course depend on how up to the hilt you mean?