Debt-free?

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fire2029

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Who here is debt-free? (Home loans, car loans, credit card all count as debt for this discussion)

Question edited - as hardly anyone is debt free.
If you are not debt-free, how many years away from being debt free are you?
 
Last edited:
Do bonds count as debt in this discussion?
 
3WA said:
Do bonds count as debt in this discussion?
Click to expand...
Home loans / bonds count as debt for this discussion. Sorry.

Quesiton edited. As I realise, I do not think anyone here is debt free
 
Debt free is great for subsistence living. Personally, I have no deep desire to be debt free as I quite enjoy making money with other people's money.

Positive net wealth / asset value, that is a far more useful metric.
 
I would like to be idealisticly. But debt is a valuable tool to buy nice things now and have your future self stress about how to pay for it. So a house and a car.
 
I try stay out of debt completely. If you can't afford it now or can't save the money for it, you don't need it.

Some debt is "acceptable" like a a bond or vehicle finance (for a necessary vehicle), but you should always be paying back more than the installment. If you can only just afford the installment then you have over extended yourself.
 
am debt free,
got a CC paid off, no finance on a car, paid off,
renting, not a bond

how did I do it? was disciplined and pedantic about paying off debt.
that's why FNB now tries everything in their power now to get me to take MORE Debt...
even offering me 200K loans and other such nonsense.

will I take in the future? maybe, but again IF I can afford it...
and I know I can pay it off comfortably with lots of wriggle room.

but yes, definitely enjoying being Debt free, when everybody around me is Broke as hell.
 
I've got my credit card and my bond, the credit card was used recently to do some renovations that were needed :-(
 
If I threw everything at my bond it would be gone in 3 - 4 years, but I'm not going to do that.

I also like to think of part of my cellphone contract as debt, since that's pretty much what it is, so I have another ~R2000 of that over the next year.
 
I've only got a home-loan. I'm about 3-4 years away from finishing it off, but this number fluctuates because I also use it as my emergency savings account (best interest rate on the market).
 
The biggest debt I had was a home loan. I sold the apartment and now I'm debt free and just renting. I have one item on CC budget, but it's not that big.
 
I'm only two years into a bond so I've got a looong way to go and would need to move to a bigger place sometime soon.
My asset value does exceed my outstanding debt though.
 
Yup. I also wanted to be debt free by 40, and paid off my bond in my late 30’s. I have no other debt.

Generally, my strategy was to live far below my means. My first house I paid off in 8 years, my flat in 4-5 years and my next flat in 3 years. The bond amounts I took after the first house were only a small fraction of what was offered to me.
 
cguy said:
Yup. I also wanted to be debt free by 40, and paid off my bond in my late 30’s. I have no other debt.

Generally, my strategy was to live far below my means. My first house I paid off in 8 years, my flat in 4-5 years and my next flat in 3 years. The bond amounts I took after the first house were only a small fraction of what was offered to me.
Click to expand...
Nice. My bond took 8 and a half years. Would have been sooner but we had crazy medical expenses crop up from about 3 years back pushing back a lot of stuff. Scary thing is I thought post my debt being cleared I would be in a position to save most of what I was paying on the bond. Fact is with inflation outstripping my salary increases I am barely able to save half my old bond amount. Not sure where I would be this year financially if I still had that bond repayment as the timing of paying it out kind of bailed my budget out in a big way.
 
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