I wish I knew what I know now....

painted_lady

I really enjoyed reading your post, which was very well written. Parts of what you say echo my situation and my family.
Good luck.

tryhard_2

brilliant post!

nevadagirl

Really enjoyed this post, sums up 'the slippery slope' perfectly.
Thank you and good luck with achieving all your goals.

ZTD

dfwz wrote:

This isn't corrupt in the sense that the bank is looking out for the interests of themselves and their shareholders and just being wise with their money.

When I say "corrupt" I mean it more in a moral than a legal sense. They are swayed away from the truth, and away from your best interests by the money they can make out of you.

Mis-selling pensions for example. PPI for another example. Cahoot loans... etc.

There are other trades that when you pay them your money, they find out about you to look after you. In finance, anything they find out about you, they attempt to use to gouge you even more.

It wasn't always like that, which is why older people still have trust in the banks and still teach younger people to have that trust. Many here have found the truth the hard way.

Unfortunately the hard way is still usually the only way. If not you directly, then someone else who then enlightens you.

dubgirl

Thanks for that inspirational message. It certainly struck a chord with me - could of been reading about myself.

dfwz

dfwz wrote:

Last year we were 30,000 in debt and rising, we are down to 15,000 now and will be debt free in the next year or two, maybe sooner.

Turned out it was sooner through some luck (and a bit of cheating).
A massive pay rise came my way, that helped a lot.
We consolidated our debts with our mortgage which is cheating slightly, but we do have 20% equity so technically our assets outweigh our debt.
We also managed to get a mortgage at high street rates, through an excellent IFA, and not the insane high risk rate we had before.

So we are now about £300 a month better off and have a lower interest rate on our mortgage which is our only debt. Things are going pretty good. Now hopefully we can stick to the budget we've been on, which we're comfortable with, get some saving/overpaying done and build up something to prepare for our kids futures.

smileitconfusespeople_2

:j :beer: Well done ,now to save that Xtra money with care, best wishes:rotfl: :T :j

sammy115

Great post. Could have been written by me (except for the debt free bit!) I am now desperately trying to teach my daughter about budgeting. She is about to get her first pay cheque and is trying to save for her first car.