How much debt?

[simpleyme]

about 12K or so on a car , that does not sound bad but I only made about 26 K a year at the time;-) and the payment on the car was about the same as my mortgage payment, that qualifies as a "what the hell was i thinking "moment when I look back LOL

[m3racer]

$230,000 in student loans.......Damn the Ivy League!!

[pearlieq]

At its absolute peak around 2000 or so, I think we are carrying just over 75k in debt, mostly student loans, but with some credit card debt and a car loan in there as well.

We're now down to about 27k of leftover student loan debt, which we're doing our darnest to finsih off this year.

[Slug]

Interesting that there's so much variability in such a thrifty crowd. I guess we all activate our thrift individually...

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by Slug

Interesting that there's so much variability in such a thrifty crowd. I guess we all activate our thrift individually...

I'm not sure that being thrifty correlates with how much debt you have. In fact, it might be a negative correlation. I wasn't really bothered by having 6-figure student loans because we were very frugal and knew I could pay them off well ahead of schedule. I was paying hundreds of dollars each month extra and was debt-free in 12 years when the scheduled payment plan was for 25 years.

If I was not so thrifty and we had been living paycheck to paycheck, those loans would have been a much greater burden.

[aida2003]

We had a 3-year car loan of $12k+ when we bought my Camry. We took it because it was at 1.9% and because we needed to build some more credit history before buying a house 3 years later. Plus we had cash in CDs earning around 3% at the time (this was at the end of 2002), so I think we pretty much broke even (paid interest to Toyota vs. earned interest including taxes on it) and it gave a good boost for our mortgage interst. So, no regrets, but we are not planning to take any loans even after paying off our mortgage in 4-6 years.

[Caoineag]

40k credit cards, 20k student loans (this is for 2 people, not just 1). I don't think we ever had this all at the same time but we did have it. As to thriftiness, well, since I have never let day to day living expenses rack up (housing, cars, etc), it wasn't that big a deal to us to run this up. We were able to run it back down just as quick.

Doesn't mean we should have allowed this to grow that big, but it does mean that it was never to a level where I was in financial trouble from it.

[CouponAddict]

The most DEBT ever had (not home loan):

When I got married in 2002 my DH had 40K of debt, from a few sources. I was at zero.

Other than that, the highest would have been 13K when I got a loan for my first and only NEW car (the car I am driving 8 years later and has 100K miles on it).

[Spud]

I had a loan on my Alero. I honestly can't remember how much it was -- maybe $12k. But that was it. I've never had any CC debt. I never even got a CC until I was 30, and decided it would be good to get the rewards.

[illinigamer]

Max was right out of college (3.5 years ago):

12k on car
18k student loans
5k cc

I had essentially zero assets at the time. I still have 15k left on the student loans, but they are too low a rate to pay off.

[Pitman]

The most I had was 14,000 in 2005, and that was when I just bought my car, ran up both of my credit cards, and my student loan payments just started kicking in.

3 years later, and I'm cut in down to half, give or take a few dollars. One of my CC's are paid off, and the other CC will be paid off in about 4 - 5 months. My car will be completely mine in Oct, , and my student loan will be paid off hopefully in about another year. I know it sounds like I'm delaying paying them off, but all that debt fits into my savings plan that I've started in November.

[pfodyssey]

hmmm...I think the most debt I carried at one time (non-mortgage) was around 18K:

student loan: 11K
credit cards: 7K

This was right after college. Except for the occasional car now and then (both are currently paid off), I try not to keep any debt other than mortgage and / or real-estate, etc (potentially appreciating assets).

[Thrif-t]

We've never carried any debt except for car loans...i think when we first got married we each had a new car and loans were around 18k for both (1991). Paid 'em off ran em into the ground and have only had one car loan at a time since. I just finished paying off my current car so no more loans except our house

[jodi]

Dh and I both had about $15k in student loans after graduating...mine are currently under $5k, but DH went back to school for his Master's and he's back to $13k.
I had a car loan for about $12k right out of school (bad idea). DH bought his last car with a loan of $8k. Both were paid off several years early. I hope to never finance a car again! We've never had any significant cc debt except for $5000 at 0% (DH's education, one semester) which we paid off before the promotional period ended.

[EdnaLegume]

currently about 115K in credit card muck.

I've been in credit card debt since the day I turned 18.

on track now and paying it all back, one dollar at a time.

[SpiderPig74]

15k on credit cards. It's now zero - but to get there I had to put some on my mortgage...

[tbc32]

$1200 in student loans as an undergrad... but now those loans are growing ($30k and growing) as I do my doctoral work.