I am not sure if we have done the right thing. We’re close to debt free but without savings, retirement, and with super old cars and old hand me down furniture.

Is there more to the story than just being out of debt?

Last summer I was offered a balance transfer for 1.99% for life. Stupid me..I didn’t take advantage of it!! I figured there would always be more offers…Nope!

Should have taken advantage of the 2.99% for life transfer offers I received late last year. Now 4.99% for a limited time is the best I am receiving.

$17K Car Loan
$35K Student Loans
$24K Credit Cards

Plus ~$4500 in consumer debt. In the last 6 months we’ve paid off ~$12,500 of consumer debt (wedding plus moving to another country), and were about to pay off the last $4500, until “real life” hit us with several really hard bangs! Looking forward to getting back on track though, once I get a new job and we move to our next country.

Sounds horrible, but in the last 12 months we’ve used bonuses, tax refunds, savings, and every last scraped-together-dime to pay off:
Car ~$15,000
Time share ~$29,600
Student loans ~$18,000

Seriously, though, only debt I have is my mortgage (>$50k).

~18,000 is student loans that will come due 1/08 (but that I’m already starting to pay off).

most of the school loans are mine which were used to finance my medical education.
Hope to have the credit cards paid off this year.

Wow, according to the poll results, your readers are heavily skewed to the zero side. We all must be so smart from reading eh?

mortgage on 2nd home: $85K (used to be where I lived but is now a rental and was bought, luckily, just before the housing boom; was just appraised at $161K)

student loans: $33K

credit card debt: around $8K but is all on 0% promotions and will be paid off before the promotions end

personal loan from friend: $5K (0%)

$8,500 = student loan for master’s degree
rest is credit card debt – mainly from the almost 2 years that husband was laid off and could only get temporary/freelance work.

But within the last year, we paid off a car so we now have 2 paid for cars and also one less kid in daycare, so we can put some of that money towards our emergency fund, then towards debt.

I’m crossing my fingers that things are better this year!

$12,000 in credit card debt at 0%.
$11,300 on a car loan at 0%.
$70,600 in school loans.

Managed to pay off $18,400 in 2006. I hope for even better results in 2007.

It hurt to write that.

http://savvysaver.blogspot.com

We have a plan to pay all of this off in 2007. We are already down to $51,975. Wish us luck.

We have enough to pay it off now, but we figure we’re earning off the money and they are getting $0 off us. It’ll be paid off in roughly a year from now, early enough that we won’t incur any fees or increased interest.

Otherwise, just the mortgage, which isn’t too high.

my student loan 15k
wife’s student loan +/- 40k
HEL for repairs to primary house 20k

Of course, my _business_ has about $80K worth of debt on paper, but that’s a bit of a complicated situation (the debt exists primarily to help shelter business income from US taxes)…plus it’s not personal debt, so I don’t include it.

But the only debt my fiancee and I have that requires periodic payments is the mortgage. It’s a doozy of one, at the moment, but it’s categorically excluded from the poll.

We expect to pay it off by the end of ‘07. Other than that and the huge mortgage we just took, we are debt free. And have been for 10+ years.

Not that it’s everything, but shouldn’t income be factored in? Perhaps just give the ratio of debt (as outlined above) to AGI?

Outside of mortgage debt, we only have student loan debt. Right now, that’s less than $20,000, but it will be climbing quite a bit. The wife starts her second semester of law school tomorrow, and I’ve only paid about half of my student loan debt off over the past 4 years.

Credit cards (7) – $14,650
Student loans (2) – $4,100
Upside down vehicle payoff – $4,100
0% interest furniture purchase – $1,536

I’m actively snowballing my high interest debt as I write this. I am also thankful to have an emergency fund as it allows me to pay out every last penny to the debt without worry.

So we’re in pretty good shape as far as debt goes, but we still fall in the $50k+ category for this poll…

Excluding primary mortgage, I have:

Secondary mortgage (~28000)
Student loan (~22000)
Car loan (~7500) will be paid of by end of 2007
Unofficial parent loan (~14000) (0% interest)

Approximate total: ~71500

Yes, life does indeed suck right now, but I’m working on it. Upside: no credit card debt, and I do have an emergency reserve so I’ll likely never have this much debt ever again. My current plan has this all gone in 5 years.

I plan to pay off our 1 car ($15,000) by September of this year, then move onto either my student loans or my Ridgeline. My wife wants me to pay off the credit cards, but we have 0% interest on them. It’s more of the idea of having credit card debt bothers her.

Our only debt is on a home credit line, on which we only have home improvement expenses. In a way, I consider that essentially part of the primary mortgage, as in theory that expense can be recovered in a sale.

But, for consistancy, I answered the poll to include that line of credit, as it is not technically a primary mortgage.

If you discount the line of credit as well as the primary mortgage, we have 0, and have for mmmm, 13 years.