**** the banks. I apply for cards just to get the huge sign up bonuses and cancel before the annual fee is due. It got me two round trip tickets to Italy and I'm currently sitting on enough Chase UR points to get me another round trip flight to anywhere in the world.
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how much credit card debt do you have?
- Thread starter shecky
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Both my credit cards have $30,000 credit limits and I haven't paid interest to either in nearly 2 decades. My credit scores are 800+ but I do have a small mortgage and a car lease.
They both do, as long as they don't skew your debt/income ratio, and you pay them on time each month. In fact, the biggest hit I take each month on my credit score is that a mortgage is my only recurring payment, so I get warned that my score would be higher if I had another loan I was servicing. My score is plenty high without another payment.
I have a few hundred on mine but it's carefully managed and I've never been in serious debt.
A lot of people are proud of not having credit cards or loans but it can be a bad thing. A friend of mine struggled to get a phone contract and even a mortgage because he had no proven track record of debt management. As long as you are sensible, it's a very useful and safe form of payment.
A lot of people are proud of not having credit cards or loans but it can be a bad thing. A friend of mine struggled to get a phone contract and even a mortgage because he had no proven track record of debt management. As long as you are sensible, it's a very useful and safe form of payment.
How dare you not have enough debt. Creditors could be making so much more money off of you!
I am a bad, bad credit card consumer.
Once upon a time, it was even worse. I'd use the "no-fee, 0% financing" offers to not pay any interest on credit card debt. It's been a long time, but that probably cost the banks $100s in finance charges.
I have one day to day credit card that gets paid in full every month, purely for the incentives/benefits (consumer protection, usage bonus etc...), and a second I've just taken out that I've dumped £6000 on.
It looks like there's a serious rough patch coming up at work and I had a £6k bank loan with repayments of £200 a month, switching it to a 0% for 36 months offer means I save interest on the loan and the minimum repayments drop to £60 a month should the worst happen. That gives me a little breathing space to find a new job and catch up on repaying before the offer expires, if the worst doesn't happen and things start to look a bit brighter then I can just pay as and when to clear it off without paying a single penny of interest.
It looks like there's a serious rough patch coming up at work and I had a £6k bank loan with repayments of £200 a month, switching it to a 0% for 36 months offer means I save interest on the loan and the minimum repayments drop to £60 a month should the worst happen. That gives me a little breathing space to find a new job and catch up on repaying before the offer expires, if the worst doesn't happen and things start to look a bit brighter then I can just pay as and when to clear it off without paying a single penny of interest.
Just a random comment on general consumer debt. I'm a loan underwriter and I see literally hundreds of credit reports each month, across all walks of life (800+ credit down to the bottom of the barrel). I would say that 7 out of every 10 reports I see carry $10k+ in credit card debt. It's fairly common to see $20k+ in CC debt. I've seen people carrying over $100k in CC debt.
What's more concerning than the CC debt is the student loan debt. That situation is truly insane. I don't think the general public or the "powers the be" really realize how out of hand it has gotten. I see people in their 40's - 50's - 60's with $50k - $100k in student loan debt. More often than not the loans are still (somehow deferred) or they're only making interest only payments. I've seen people (not in major professional careers) that are in their 60's carrying over $125k in student loan debt. A high % of borrowers I see are carrying at least $20k-$30k in student loan debt and they're working regular "labor" type jobs, making barely enough to cover the interest only payments. The % of these loans that are currently in default/collection/severely late is alarming. And these loans cannot be knocked out in bankruptcy...they will stay with you until you die.
What's more concerning than the CC debt is the student loan debt. That situation is truly insane. I don't think the general public or the "powers the be" really realize how out of hand it has gotten. I see people in their 40's - 50's - 60's with $50k - $100k in student loan debt. More often than not the loans are still (somehow deferred) or they're only making interest only payments. I've seen people (not in major professional careers) that are in their 60's carrying over $125k in student loan debt. A high % of borrowers I see are carrying at least $20k-$30k in student loan debt and they're working regular "labor" type jobs, making barely enough to cover the interest only payments. The % of these loans that are currently in default/collection/severely late is alarming. And these loans cannot be knocked out in bankruptcy...they will stay with you until you die.
In the UK you don't pay anything back until you are earning above a certain threshold.
Those numbers scare the living daylights out of me.
I am 29 and could never imagine carrying that much debt on a credit card. I did not have any school loans to pay back and I have paid cash for the vehicles I own, all used but new to me. The only debt I have is the mortgage on my house. I refinanced that a couple years ago to a lower rate and a shorter loan term, which kept the payments nearly the same.
I think my parents would beat me silly if I was carrying 10K+ debt on a credit card and they found out about it.
Due to my age, and wisdom
I owe nothing, to anyone, at all.
And I love it.
You're not the only one... !
Why? I don't think anyone I know has any CC debt. Not everyone is bad with money.
Perhaps you need a different social circle?
Poll numbers in a very tiny subset of a particular demographic can really be skewed in different ways and not really represent much as far as a wider majority goes. Reality seems to likely be otherwise based on what's described earlier in a reply at https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-debt-do-you-have.593284/page-3#post-22086468 for example.
To narrow that very tiny subgroup even more, the Community section of MacRumors is not even representative of MacRumors (which is not representative of really any population in general).
To the loan underwriter guy that spoke… I have done some of that work too. But our screens can't tell us whether that student loan income, that is there, is their personal or for their kids. A lot of people in our society still believe that it's a parents responsibility to provide and pay in full for their kids education. My wife and I never believed that. We believed that a young person doesn't really know the value of their own education unless they're participating in it financially.
Eh, I believe it. Some people view credit card debt differently. Some people believe if you pay off your credit card every month you have no credit card debt. Some people (like me) believe that means you always have credit card debt.
And there's a huge difference between no credit card debt and no debt.
Same here. I have no idea how some people sleep at night with that type of debt weighing over them.
And not coincidentally, the number of bankruptcies I see on credit reports is a MUCH higher % of the population than most people realize. I guess why not run up a bunch of debt you can't afford when all you have to do is hit the magic bankruptcy reset button? :S
Agreed - a good portion of the student loan debt showing for older borrowers is likely debt they signed for their kids/grand kids. Regardless, they are still contractually obligated to that debt (and it is THEIR credit that gets drug through the dirt when the kids decide not to pay it). And I agree, it's hard to value a good education (or anything in life for that matter) when you're not paying for it yourself.
My real point though is that student loan debt is truly out of control. Tuition costs continue to skyrocket and student loans are given out with little to no qualification process at all. You have a pulse and you're enrolled in "x" number of credits, you're given a loan.
It obviously depends where the student loan comes from too. Mine is with the 'Student Loans Company' which was the official government subsidised loans company when I went to uni. I owe £8,000 still, but have no intention of paying off a lump sum. Martin Lewis of money saving expert said its one of the biggest mistakes students make when they save up and pay it off. It's a non-enforceable debt with possibly the lowest interest rate going. I think £15 a month comes out of my wages towards it and that's as far as I will ever attempt in paying it. It doesn't affect further loans or getting a mortgage because it's not classed in the same category as a bank or car loan. When I went for my first mortgage I told my financial advisor about the loan and his words were 'that's not a real loan' lol.
These days tuition fees are through the roof and students really do end up in depressingly huge amounts of debt.
Why? I understand not paying it off all 8,000 at once but why not get it paid off sooner rather than later. The interest rate might be low but it does still exist and is costing you money the longer that loan sticks around.
Do you know why he says that?
Why not just double that payment and get it paid off sooner.
Maybe it is just my mind set but having any debt to me is just "wrong." I do have credit card debt but it gets paid off in full every month and the credit card companies have never gotten any interest out of my.
My mortgage is the only thing I carry right now and I intend to keep it that way as long as possible.
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