How to pay off loans

What a thoroughly unpleasant person you are. Makes me glad I don't have financially incompetent parents like you do.

Gosh, you misunderstood me entirely. The reason why it is valuable to me is because I have convinced multiple people to get rid of their credit cards and they are much better for it. By having no credit card, I am therefore in a position to provide meaningful and credible (excuse the pun) advice to those who do.

I assure you that it's not at all to "rub their noses in it" as you have evidently perceived.

Rubbing my nose in the fact that my parents are financially incompetent is not appreciated, by the way. My dad has advanced Parkinson's disease at the early age of 60. He can't walk, and it affects his brain severely. Parkinson's is known to impair ones financial judgement.

Yes, I have some severe views. Yes, they may have been brought about in a large part by my parent's situation, but the fact is that they work. I am now in a position, at 32, to pay my parent's full mortgage as well as my own. Obviously a big part of this is because I have a very good salary; however, the majority of people on my salary or above would not be able to afford this because they would have borrowed more, have a bigger house and a bigger mortgage. Because that is just what most people do: they fall for the many psychological traps of consumerism and lending.

Honestly, I expected their to be more kindred spirits on a forum called "money saving expert".

I'm appalled by how judgemental you are - you haven't walked in everyone else's shoes

Please could you be more specific? Who have I judged? I've spoken in general statistical terms. It is a fact that credit card companies make a profit, therefore the people using them, on average, lose out.

I'm not saying that everyone loses out, I'm just saying that, chances are, you do. I suppose that, technically, this is not true of the average reader here because statistically speaking, the average money saving expert reader is likely to be more savvy than the average person, and therefore chances are you don't lose out by using a credit card. But even then, are you okay with the fact that others do?

Obviously I haven't walked in everyone's shoes, and like I said, there will be genuine scenarios where buying something on credit is critical to someone. However, this does not mean that it's a sensible mechanism.

A high interest loan is essentially a penalty one pays for not having the cash at hand. This could be as a result of poor financial management, misfortune, greed, generosity whatever. However, the fact is that the penalty applied is financial. So, you're taking someone who is in a less favorable position financially, and applying a financial penalty.

Is that really a fair and sensible way for the world to work?