How much debt does your household carry, not including mortgage?

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Besides the mortgage? Nada. We live on one salary. DH builds (yes, builds) and repairs our cars, takes care of all the carpentry, plumbing etc. our old farmhouse needs etc. No, we don’t have fancy cars or a fancy house but I think we are doing GREAT!
 
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FormerFetus:
My only issue is now that he makes alot of money, I’m trying to get him to contribute more to charity. I give what I can, but several times he’s asked me to stop or outright told me he does not want to contribute to something. He would not let me contribute to the Dec. 24 tsunami and only let me give $100 to Catholic Charities storm relief for Katrina. I want to give more, but he won’t let me 😦
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My DW and I had a similar conversation. I said I’d be willing to reduce my own spending so I and increase charitable giving.
 
My DW and I had a similar conversation. I said I’d be willing to reduce my own spending so I and increase charitable giving.
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same conversation here and i did the same thing.
 
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Pug:
Why not include the mortgage? It seems to definitely be a debt as well. Also, does the poll include balances paid in full each month on the credit card? To me, any credit card is debt, to some extent. The credit card company pays the grocer, so the grocer is paid, yet you don’t cough up the money for a month. That seems to be debt for a month, but just for a month. After all, if you died, the estate would have to pay it.

Also, there is always the annoying medical bill. You receive the service, but they don’t collect any money. Rather they bill the insurance company, and dickering ensues. It can be three months before you yourself pay whatever they decide is your portion of the bill.:hmmm:Wouldn’t it be nice if it were even possible to know what a medical service will cost you before you receive it! Grrr.
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**IMHO a mortgage is no more then rent. A home is never really yours. You will have to pay taxes and assessments as long as you live. Yes, you owe money on it and need to pay it but as a debt it negates itself. You have to live someplace right. But, to extend yourself because someday we will make more money forgets to take into account the raise of taxes, insurance and repairs to the house as it ages. We also don’t want to see the possibility that someone can become ill and/or unemployed.
Your budget should take into consideration rent, utilities, food, medical, insurance, church/charity and taxes.
Some debt is to be expected in life. But should be kept to a min if at all possible. Unfortunately I speak from experience. No, we did not take vacations, buy big cars etc. But, due to medical expenses we maxed out a few credit cards (all paid off as of last week:D .) So yes they may sometimes be a necessary evil.

Debt in the form of credit cards as in that which is owed and usually for luxury items should be avoided. Now don’t yell but if most of us were honest many of the items purchased with plastic could have been put off till a later time.
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KathleenElsie said:
But, due to medical expenses we maxed out a few credit cards (all paid off as of last week:D .) So yes they may sometimes be a necessary evil.

Debt in the form of credit cards as in that which is owed and usually for luxury items should be avoided. Now don’t yell but if most of us were honest many of the items purchased with plastic could have been put off till a later time.
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i think medical expenses are one of the few reasons it is ok to go into debt. Congrats on getting them paid off. ITA that most of us could have put of the plastic purchases
 
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KathleenElsie:
IMHO a mortgage is no more then rent. A home is never really yours. You will have to pay taxes and assessments as long as you live. Yes, you owe money on it and need to pay it but as a debt it negates itself. You have to live someplace right. But, to extend yourself because someday we will make more money forgets to take into account the raise of taxes, insurance and repairs to the house as it ages.
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If you mean that you should buy what you need and not fool yourself into thinking that a house beyond your needs is an “investment”, I’d have to agree. Buying a house is a living expense. As an investment, it is real estate speculation… not the place you want all the eggs in your basket.

Still, we rented for a long time, and buying isn’t renting. We don’t have to call up the bank to ask if we can change the paint color, change the landscaping, or change anything else for that matter. If the kids put a hole in the wall, they put a hole in our wall. When the roof leaks, we get it fixed, and we have no one to hassle with over who pays or who should do the work. Oh, and since we don’t have an ARM, we know what our monthly mortgage payment is going to be out until the mortgage is paid off. Outside of Berkeley, most rent payments don’t come with that guarantee.

Also, don’t think that the costs of taxes and maintence aren’t passed on to renters. Landlords don’t buy rental real estate as a charitable work. They make money, and in the long run that doesn’t come by speculating in the rising price of an empty unit. It comes from you.
 
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BLB_Oregon:
If you mean that you should buy what you need and not fool yourself into thinking that a house beyond your needs is an “investment”, I’d have to agree. Buying a house is a living expense. As an investment, it is real estate speculation… not the place you want all the eggs in your basket.

Still, we rented for a long time, and buying isn’t renting. We don’t have to call up the bank to ask if we can change the paint color, change the landscaping, or change anything else for that matter. If the kids put a hole in the wall, they put a hole in our wall. When the roof leaks, we get it fixed, and we have no one to hassle with over who pays or who should do the work.

Also, don’t think that the costs of taxes and maintence aren’t passed on to renters. Landlords don’t buy rental real estate as a charitable work. They make money, and in the long run that doesn’t come by speculating in the rising price of an empty unit. It comes from you.
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I agree with everything you said. But in today’s market IMHO the majority of people have way more HOUSE then HOME. Renter pay for all the taxes etc. The only things is a lot of renters have no concept of how much those taxes are and believe that owners have no long term obligations after a mortgage. Many young people can’t believe that our taxes now are what our original mortgage was 26 years ago and they go up yearly. But this is our home and not an investment. As long as the government does not want the land we are living on we hope to be here till we go home to the Lord and that family will still be living here for many generations.
 
Nope, mortgage is NOT just like rent. We lived in our Chicago suburb home for 5 years before building a new one. The appreciation on it was enough to pay me back every penny of taxes, upgrades, interest (when the tax deduction is removed) and other expenses renters don’t have. And then some!

By carefully selecting a plan and location for our new home that met our needs AND was shrewdly placed, I estimate that we’ve appreciated by about 2x what we spent on all those costs so far in the new home. In effect, owning my own home has produced a profit so far.

When we first got married we had two incomes. We kept seperate accounts while she still worked full time. We lived off my paycheck. Hers went solely to paying off student loans, reducing the mortgage and saving up for a car. Thus we never got used to being dinks!

We avoid any debt on depreciating assets. If we can’t pay cash for a new car, we fix the old one. When we do get new things, we pay for quality basics, not frills. We have a base model Honda Odyssey minivan. I still get the best available engine, ABS, traction control, all the airbags. No alloys, power seats, power doors, auto climate control, leather, Nav, DVD or any such frilly stuff. No way that is worth an extra $10,000!

Same with the house. We only spent a few thousand dollars on upgrades to the base house. The average in our subdivision was about $40,000! That makes a BIG difference over time.

If it ain’t a necessity, it decreases in value over time and you can’t pay cash, DON’T buy it. Apply this always and you’ll kick your debt.
 
Not that I’m proud of it. DH and I paid for school “ourselves” by mortgaging our futures. He went to private school for undergrad and his MBA, and together we owe 68,000 or so for all of it. We owe less than 7,000 on our truck, our other car is owned outright, and we have about 8,000 on credit cards, down from over 10,000 at the beginning of this year. It looks bad when I break it out like that, but not nearly as bad as it was last year. We’ve really controlled our spending to improve it. Sure is nice to know that someday the worst will be over and we’ll be able to have only our mortgage and student loans as debt, then maybe someday just our mortgage. I’ve just about given up on ever being debt free, at least until our child and future children are grown.
 
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Maranatha:
I would put mortgage debt in a different class of debt because the underlying asset is expected to increase in value over time. The debt is also tax deductible making it affordable and perhaps fiscally sound depending on your finances. Also, you have to live somewhere.

The worst type of debt is the debt taken out to spend it on items that loose value.
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Homes can lose value. It is true that you must live somewhere, and overall a house can be cheaper. I’m not sure if it is for most folks. Of course, I live somewhere with outrageous taxation, and those darned voters can’t be stopped.
 
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Peace-bwu:
We have between 15,000 including our car loans, but if you count our studen loans, sadly combined we have almost $30,000 in student loans from the Uniersity of Dayton. :crying: Being too poor to go to school is no fun, and being too rich to qualify for grants is also a pain. Lower Middle class white kids without a perfect highschool GPA (mine was 94.3, his was 97something) get the stick!

We have credit cards, but NEVER use them, or at least we haven’t used them in well over 6 years. I don’t like credit card debt. We use our debit card and checks for everything.
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You know, my DH had a similar problem back in '99 when he graduated high school. He applied and got into a bunch of really nice colleges, but then he found out that the financial aid people said his Dad made too much $ for him to get any aid at all. But they didn’t make enough to pay the $25,000/yr. tuition at the school he really wanted to attend, so he ended up at community college, and now he’s making his way to his BA at the state U. while working. :ehh: I know the aid needs to be reserved for kids that really, really need it, but somehow it seems unfair, what happened…he was accepted at some really nice places (he had an excellent GPA in school as well) but didn’t want the huge student loans to deal with a few years later.

Oh well. Sorry, back to the household budget stuff.
 
We have no debt besides our mortgage. We drive only used cars that aren’t too fancy. My husband hates debt and I’m in agreement. We are also paying down our mortage.
 
I guess I am the only one with lots of debt here. To be honest, I don’t really see a massive disadvantage. I have over $80K in non-mortgage debt. The majority of it is student loans and a car loan. I don’t regret the student loan and we needed a nice car for my wife to tote the kids around. She drove a beat up car and deserved something nice.

As long as I am able to pay off the debts over time, pay the bills and save for retirement, what’s the issue???

I just don’t think debt is always so bad.
 
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Ham1:
I guess I am the only one with lots of debt here. To be honest, I don’t really see a massive disadvantage. I have over $80K in non-mortgage debt. The majority of it is student loans and a car loan. I don’t regret the student loan and we needed a nice car for my wife to tote the kids around. She drove a beat up car and deserved something nice.

As long as I am able to pay off the debts over time, pay the bills and save for retirement, what’s the issue???

I just don’t think debt is always so bad.
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If you were as prudent with your educational debt as you should be with home debt, then student loans are not a liability so much as an investment. My rule of thumb, though, is that when finances are an issue, you should make your greatest investment in what you expect to be your last educational institution. If you get your PhD or your JD from Harvard, nobody cares that much where you did your undergraduate work.

If you have a state school available with the facilities and offerings you need and the quality to get you into the post-graduate environment you’re shooting for, don’t shell out money for an expensive undergraduate institution that you can’t afford. You shouldn’t be going into hock to go to a Carlton or a Reed unless those you plan to make use of the unique character of those fine institutions. Don’t spend the money on a private Catholic university unless you are going to pursue Catholic friends and a Catholic education while you’re there. If all you’re after is Catholic adult ed, there are more frugal ways to get it.

Do not get me wrong: there are opportunities at more expensive institutions that some less expensive ones don’t offer. Just make sure you use what you’ve paid for and only pay for what you’re going to make use of.

As for the car loan, I have this caveat, which may or may not apply to you: it is a mistake to start living at the standard of living you can expect to arrive at based on your educational goals before you’ve arrived. I see this again and again: medical students and law students driving fancy cars, friends who just agreed to take a great job in 6 months instantly starting to live as if the new paycheck was already arriving, and so on. It is far better to continue to live at your old standard of living after the money starts arriving, or as close to it as you can. What you’ve never had, you miss much less.

If you don’t lock yourself into some big paycheck, you will have much more professional freedom, as well. Once you’ve mortgaged your future on the plan of making partner at that big law firm, changing to a more satisfying but less lucrative alternative becomes much more difficult. Once you’ve arranged your life around two paychecks, it is tough to scale back to one. But if you’ve always lived as if you make less, you’ll not only be used to living on less, you’ll also have the savings in place to make the change.
 
We went as low as owning about $5,000 a few years ago and now we’re up to about $35,000 in debt. Car payments, and we only have one car. Credit card payments. Medical payments. We can’t seem to get out from under debt. We have a 90/10 insurance plan and hubby just had surgery, we had to pay the 10% hospital bill up front - a new policy put out by the hospital. With my medications and medical bills and now DH’s, we will have spent $4000 out of pocket for medical bills this year. Last year we spent about $3100.00. A nice chunk of change, which means we do not go on vactions, eat out often or buy new clothes. And now the shocker - these are just for the two of us, my kids are grown and on their own. We’re on hubby’s work ins. policy which only offers 90/10 or 80/20 plans. I took an early retirement due to my health conditions. I can’t imagine how much we’d have to pay out of pocket on an 80/20 plan. We are still relatively young - 50’s. I can’t wait for our “golden years”. 😦
 
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BLB_Oregon:
If you were as prudent with your educational debt as you should be with home debt, then student loans are not a liability so much as an investment. My rule of thumb, though, is that when finances are an issue, you should make your greatest investment in what you expect to be your last educational institution. If you get your PhD or your JD from Harvard, nobody cares that much where you did your undergraduate work.

If you have a state school available with the facilities and offerings you need and the quality to get you into the post-graduate environment you’re shooting for, don’t shell out money for an expensive undergraduate institution that you can’t afford. You shouldn’t be going into hock to go to a Carlton or a Reed unless those you plan to make use of the unique character of those fine institutions. Don’t spend the money on a private Catholic university unless you are going to pursue Catholic friends and a Catholic education while you’re there. If all you’re after is Catholic adult ed, there are more frugal ways to get it.

Do not get me wrong: there are opportunities at more expensive institutions that some less expensive ones don’t offer. Just make sure you use what you’ve paid for and only pay for what you’re going to make use of.

As for the car loan, I have this caveat, which may or may not apply to you: it is a mistake to start living at the standard of living you can expect to arrive at based on your educational goals before you’ve arrived. I see this again and again: medical students and law students driving fancy cars, friends who just agreed to take a great job in 6 months instantly starting to live as if the new paycheck was already arriving, and so on. It is far better to continue to live at your old standard of living after the money starts arriving, or as close to it as you can. What you’ve never had, you miss much less.

If you don’t lock yourself into some big paycheck, you will have much more professional freedom, as well. Once you’ve mortgaged your future on the plan of making partner at that big law firm, changing to a more satisfying but less lucrative alternative becomes much more difficult. Once you’ve arranged your life around two paychecks, it is tough to scale back to one. But if you’ve always lived as if you make less, you’ll not only be used to living on less, you’ll also have the savings in place to make the change.
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Some points here.

I don’t have an advanced degree. And I am out of school as of 10 years ago. I like to think that I’ve arrived after all the debt that I’ve incurred is based on repaying it in the next few years not making a fortune in the future.

We’ve always made it on one paycheck. I view it as my responsibility to earn as much as a two income family so that my wife can stay home and we can still have a comfortable lifestyle.

As for spending money on college, my wife and I both attended a great Catholic liberal arts school. I would not trade that experience for anything. It was worth every ounce of student loans. After all, if I hadn’t gone there, I would never have met her! But it was also a great education.
 
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Ham1:
As for spending money on college, my wife and I both attended a great Catholic liberal arts school. I would not trade that experience for anything. It was worth every ounce of student loans. After all, if I hadn’t gone there, I would never have met her! But it was also a great education.
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Ah, see now, you got your money’s worth. You didn’t have the option of saving up and buying that education later. As long as you don’t go beyond what you can reasonably expect to pay back, there are some cases where buying on time is the most prudent choice.
 
Education is a hard one. Should it be a parents that pay or the child that benefits from the education?

**I joined the Air Force in the mid 1960s and used every bit of the education and benefits that I/we could. So I have two BAs and lots of postgraduate work. We also were the first family in our state to buy a home with VA backing using my benefits.

DD & DS were both well educated and well prepared for any further education they wanted to pursue. We helped as we could but did not put ourselves in a financial bind.

IMHO to refinance your home for a child’s education is to put your future at risk. The best gift we can give our children is to not be dependent on them in our old age. There are some people that can afford to pay for their child’s education without risking their own retirement. But IMHO not many.
**
 
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Ham1:
As for spending money on college, my wife and I both attended a great Catholic liberal arts school. I would not trade that experience for anything. It was worth every ounce of student loans. After all, if I hadn’t gone there, I would never have met her! But it was also a great education.
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I agree that going in to debt for an education can be a wise decision similar to purchasing a house with a mortgage. But, just like the house, you can overspend and get more than you need.
 
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