American debt: Are you in deeper or ahead of the average?

[True Dough]

The Spectator Index
@spectatorindex

The average 🇺🇸 American household owes $10,000 in credit card debt, $58,957 in student loan debt, $241,840 in mortgage debt and $22,612 in auto loans according to a survey by PolicyGenius.

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I'm guessing because this forum skews older, most people aren't as indebted as the average. My wife and I, fortunately, are not. But we aren't prepared for retirement either, which is just several years away.

[multigraincracker]

1. Zero debt.

Been that way for many years now. Not wealthy, but I sleep good. Live on SS and a small pension.

[ret5hd]

33. us also, zero debt since about 2010

[BOSSHOG]

2. My wife and I have zero debt

As a result of 50 years of money management and good luck.

My amateur advice, manage your debt until it dies. I know it’s hard but it tends to rob the plus side of the ledger.

Manage your debt or it will manage you.

52 years ago we had nothing and my wife was low maintenance. Today she is still low maintenance and I am one lucky buckaroo. And I know it.

If I only had the shoebox full of baseball cards my Dad made me get rid of in 19freaking66.

[newdeal2]

5. How much do you think those cards would be worth?

Now or at their peak value

[BOSSHOG]

8. Based on condition and quantity

And this is an amateur guess, at least 10K today. Aficionados would say I’m nuts, they’re worth more than that. I also have an autographed Ted Williams poster dated 30 November 1986. It was a card show in Philly. I witnessed the signature.

[True Dough]

6. Any particular cards you can recall, BOSS?

1966 in particular wasn't a stellar year for rookies, but I'm guessing some of your cards went back years before that.

[BOSSHOG]

7. I know Mickey Mantle

A slew of Phillies, Callison. Rojas, Mauch, Demeter, Dalrymple, and others. Also had a lot of Eagles. That box was full, in order and excellent condition. We moved to another state so we had to cut things out of the trip. For God sakes fathers, if your sons have baseball cards, think of them as college tuition and leave him alone.

[DFW]

11. Some 1952 Mickey Mantle card sold for over $12 million

Heritage Auctions in Dallas sold it. Their Sports division told me that they find rare baseball cards in the weirdest places. A few years ago, some farm in the Midwest somewhere found dozens of boxes full of baseball cards dating back to 1910 in a barn. They got millions for them (again, according to Heritage, who helped them sell them), and went for rags to riches overnight.

What seems like junk to some glitters like gold to others.

[True Dough]

16. Oh great!

Make BOSSHOG feel even worse!

[BOSSHOG]

17. Oh we'll get by

Conservatives promise to make us great again. Like in the 1930s.

[True Dough]

20. And YOU KNOW

they'd NEVER lie!

[hatrack]

25. What was that . . ."A jackrabbit in every pot and a bale of hay in every garage"?

Something like that . . .

[DFW]

39. That's for the NEXT box of baseball cards he finds. n/t

[BOSSHOG]

19. I read an article at least 20 years ago

Which stated there was at least 2 trillion dollars “of value” in attics all across America.

[MerryBlooms]

21. I have my husband's '56 Topps baseball and football

Most of the baseball is 7+ including the Mantle. I have no idea how to sell, without getting ripped off. I have unopened football gum packs... lol

[FHRRK]

38. Give this guy a call

He is in Southern California.

He was really honest with me when I took in father in laws coins. (Hundreds)

Told me what was basically face value, what was likely overvalued, and why, and what $ value to get on other coins. Really low pressure. I did research on the over valued coins and the ones he said had value and he was spot on. Can't remember the exact percentage he said he would take, I think it was 15 to 25%, but he said if you want to sell put them up on EBay or other sites, some of the high value coins might go quick. On other coins he said there just isn't margin in it for him which is understandable.

With that, he is a geek, self described, who basically got into trading cards as a kid and his Granpa was in to Citrus Signs in Orange County so they got into trading. His name is Christian, he may be able to quide you to someone in your area.

https://www.quicksilvercoinco.com/

[fierywoman]

3. No debt for many decades.

[anciano]

4. Zero debt.

I believe in the old adage "live within your means".

[GenThePerservering]

9. I paid down $80k in debt

after a business failure during the dot-com bust. This required working three jobs.

Now I'm allergic to it, so no debt.

[True Dough]

18. Sorry to hear about your business going belly-up

But good on you for hustling to get out from under that debt.

The dot-com period was a wild ride for a lot of people. I remember my wife and I travelled to Los Angeles for the first time on vacation and our cabbie was telling us that he became a millionaire months ago by investing in the right penny stock. But then he eventually moved his riches into a different stock and lost almost all of it. Therefore driving a taxi became a necessity.

[DFW]

10. The average American household is $332,000 in debt?

This must have factored in Donald Trump, who probably owes $4 billion, and cancels out a lot of people who owe nothing.

That just sounds like a number that people either CAN pay, or will never be able to pay. I'm sure that most people who could never pay that don't owe anything like that, either, so it's not an issue.

[multigraincracker]

26. That's why he is pushing hard for lower interest rates.

[NewHendoLib]

12. Debt free here.

[MoonlightHillFarm]

13. Debt

No debt for me. Debt gives me anxiety. But I have been very lucky. And I’m grateful.

[sinkingfeeling]

14. I have none of those. I pay off my credit cards each month. No mortgage, no car loans, and no student debt.

[cadoman]

15. don't know whether to feel good that I'm below average

Or awful because that average is so damn high.

That is over a quarter of a million dollars in debt for a home, car and education.

The real value for those three things is nowhere near a quarter million dollars....

[Ms. Toad]

22. Zero debt.

We use credit cards, but pay them off in full each month. We use the cards as a 30-day interest-free loan. And, we're holding the mortgage for our daughter's house (she was hit with the new redlining - no loans for houses under $100,000) - so she owes us around $100,000 (the purchase price + renovation prices).

We're lucky enough to have worked at decent paying jobs whenever we wanted to work, our spending choices are not luxurious (we've never had cable TV, our phone bill is $30/month for two phones with unlimited talk/text/data, etc., when we were approved for a $125,000 mortgage 35 years ago we bought a home for $70,000, etc.), and we took advantage of several child-free years to get a head start on retirement. And - I was lucky enough to work for 11 years in a position with a defined benefit retirement plan, and left my money there when I moved on. Decades later, I returned to another position in the same system - and doubled my guaranteed retirement income because the payout is based on the highest 3 or 5 years of earning.

But yes, I do know how lucky I am - and that a lot of it was the luck of having parents who valued education, who modeled living within their means, and the luck of being in the right place at the right time.

[multigraincracker]

28. I only use my pre-paid debit card.

Load $1,250 the first of the month. Use to just carry cash. That card is great.

[Ms. Toad]

36. I prefer the benefit of keeping my money in the bank earning a smidgen of interest for an extra 30 days.

Most pre-paid debit cards I'm aware of charge a fee to purchase (I don't know about reloading). That net cost + losing the interest free loan make that option a no-go for me.

We're actually carrying cash more recently - a number of places are charging a service fee for using cards. When that is the case, we pay in cash. I use cards because they are a net financial positive for me. I don't mind that places are now charging a service fee - it has always seemed unfair that the fee paid by merchants to the banks was spread among all customers, not just the ones who pay by credit card. But it means I have to pay more attention to how much cash is in my wallet.

[multigraincracker]

40. This debit card is a Preferred Customer benefit.

I have a large money market account. With a debit card there are no fees.
Use to be a discount, about 3 cents per gallon for cash at some stations.

[usedtobedemgurl]

43. You may want to watch what they charge you at stores.

One of my jobs is to go around making two purchases from stores - one cash and one debit. Some have signs stating they will give a cash discount or charge for card use. (Debit or credit). Others just charge more for card use). As I understand it, they are not allowed to do this, thus my job in seeing if they are abiding by the rules. So, it is not necessarily your bank charging the fees. A lot of businesses do.

[Ms. Toad]

44. Merchants are still paying processing fees -

Perhaps not as much as for a credit card, but there are processing fees. So eventually you may get hit with the service fees that they are starting to add for credit card use.

Even if my bank offered a prepaid debit card, I'd still opt for a credit card - for the two month difference in when the money comes out of my account (you're paying up to a month in advance for your purchases - I'm paying a month or more after for mine).

[BluesRunTheGame]

23. 28 years debt free.

I’ve never had a credit card.

[essaynnc]

24. Now I'm confused

It says the average American household has 320,000 in debt. How the hell can that possibly be? How many people don't own houses in the United States? Rentals , apartments, or rented condos. That means the rest of America owes a pile of money! Can someone make sense of this?


Update: a quick check on the internet says otherwise. Just over a hundred with a mortgage, just over 20 without a mortgage.

[Iggo]

27. I got out of debt about ten years ago.

And that’s it. No más. If I can’t pay for it, I can’t have it.

[haele]

29. We're deep enough

$30k should get us as a household out of debt. Buuuuuttt... 0ld age and a multi-generational living situation with underpaid Millennials there's still costs that outstrip the ability to save, and I'm still not going to be able to retire from my higher paying job even if we do pay off all our debts.

[róisín_dubh]

30. I guess in the middle

But that’s because I quit my job in the US so my credit card debt is just there. I can’t pay it off because my UK salary is a pittance.

[LudwigPastorius]

31. I'm in under $5K, but...

I don't have a mortgage (or a house).

[W_HAMILTON]

32. Overall, I'm less indebted, but I'm more indebted in some of those categories than everyone else.

[radical noodle]

34. Zero debt

But we're in our late 70s and past the age of buying much. Oddly enough, my credit score was lowered recently because I don't have any installment debt. Take out a loan, they said, to raise your score.

[True Dough]

41. Yes, the credit score system needs some refinement

It's preposterous that people should be indebted to "improve" their credit scores.

[DET]

35. No Debt

BUT it took a long time to get here. Mortgages paid off. Cars and big ticket items are paid in cash. Credit cards paid off monthly. I don’t know how young people do it with huge student debt and ridiculous house prices (run of the mill SFH around here is 800k to a million).

[comradebillyboy]

37. I have zero debt. I've always paid my credit cards off

every month. We have always lived within out means and avoided unnecessary debit. We always put as much money into employer retirement accounts as we could. Now at the end of our lives we are financially comfortable. It hasn't always been easy but we were diligent.

I paid my mortgage off a while back. Now my biggest financial problem is where to spend the mandatory disbursement from my deferred income accounts every year.

I've been a wage slave all my life and I never thought I would be this well off.

[usedtobedemgurl]

42. We are ahead.

When the orange one came into office, we paid off our house. Our cars have been paid off. We pay off our credit cards at the end of each month. Our bills are our pets, heat and light and water. We don't even have food bills, because I mystery shop. I either do grocery stores or restaurants. It has been a month and a half since we ate anything but takeout. I just ate a lovely bacon egg and cheese biscuit, but I try to get great stuff for us. Over the last month and a half, we have had great stuff like chicken alfredo, hibachi steak, lots of Chinese and Mexican food and more. We have pizza and General Tso's chicken sitting in the fridge right now. The pizza is from a small hole in the wall. Tastes like it came from new York!

I am blessed in life and with my job. I have chronic pain, so it is a life saver to have someone cook and do the dishes. We use paper plates, as my hubby has cancer and I have 24/7 pain.

We are way ahead. We are lucky.