How much debt?

[disneysteve]

In 1990, I finished school with about $102,000 in student loans. Much of it was deferred until 1993 when I finished residency. By then, I was married and DW still owed a bit on her car, probably a few thousand. Nothing much. So I'd say a total of about $106,000. Neither of us has ever had any credit card debt. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I seem to recall DW had a small student loan also but I don't remember how much it was.

Of course, the following spring, we bought our house and added another $113,600 but you said not to count the mortgage debt.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Yep because not having mortgage debt is pretty much impossible unfortunately. It doesn't count if you paid it off or had debt then rolled over equity. If you ever had it, it counts.

But this is more I guess unsecured debts like CC, Cars, HELOC, student loans.

[maat55]

The most debt I ever carried was $0.

How old are you? 10. How did you do this and what is your credit scar, I mean score?

Despite the few disadvantages to never having debt, I think it would be the least stressful way of life. Congradulations!!!!!

[Ima saver]

I have been mortgage free for 30 years. The most debt I have ever had is $30,000 for car debt. (I only buy new cars)

[maat55]

I have been mortgage free for 30 years. The most debt I have ever had is $30,000 for car debt. (I only buy new cars)

I guess someone has to buy them new before I can buy them used. At least your not loosing big on mortgage interest.

[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]

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.