Pay off debts, or extend the house?

PinkPoppies

Total no brainer- pay off the debts.

If you continued to put the £405 into savings each month you'd be back up to £60k in less than 2.5 years AND you'd earn a helpful amount of interest on the £48k in the meantime.

Wow, you have SUCH a brilliant opportunity to really secure yourselves financially- don't throw it away!

Lungboy

It seems rather coincidental that the building work just happens to be almost the same as the money you inherited. Did you tell the builder how much you had to spend?

lee111s

You're mental if you don't pay off your debt. Absolutely bonkers.

Pay it off and then get a whole bunch of quotes for the work you need done. If they are all around the 60k mark (you must be having a hell of a lot of work done) then either look to ways of bringing it down by either, doing some of the work yourself, sourcing materials yourself or reducing the cost of fittings and furnishings.

If you can't do any of that, then save up the £400 per month that you're paying off debts and have the work done on your house in a couple of years time.

moohound

If it was me, I would start with a cheeky 30% full and final offer to the ones with the DCA and go from there.

lovinituk

I find it completely unbelievable that anyone even needs to ask this question! Has the general culture of acceptance of being in debt turned people stupid? It certainly appears so!

DawnW

A bit harsh Lovinituk, but there is certainly something in what you are saying

lovinituk

DawnW wrote: »

A bit harsh Lovinituk, but there is certainly something in what you are saying

I make no apologies for my statement. Some people (the OP in this case) just seem to defy logic!

Jagraf

If I were you I would just be feeling overwhelmed at the possibility of the financial burden coming to an end. Ecstatic actually. I wouldn't even be thinking of bricks and mortar. You must have been through enough stress with having DCAs.

Pay off your debt. For goodness sake, pay off your debt . Is it that important to have a square kitchen and a different coloured bathroom suite.

Then financially plan and make your money work for you. Please.

HurdyGurdy

Thank you all. I am the one who wants to pay the debts off, and as stated by Pink Poppies, if we save the £405 that we aren't using to pay off debts, then we will soon have plenty of money available to do what we want.

We have spent SO long in debt that for me, the chance of being debt free AND having savings is just breathtaking. But my husband, who is the one who has inherited this money, can't seem to see where I'm coming from on this. He wants to have something tangible for his money - and in an ideal world where we had no debts, I would probably just go along with it.

And because it's "his" money, I don't really feel I can stamp my feet and insist we spend his money on paying off our debts.

This all started when he went to his work colleague's house and saw the huge extension that they are having built, with walls etc being knocked down internally. All for about £45k. And so he just fell in love with the idea of extending our house.

And actually, I have just remembered that there's that website where you can put in your debt and the amount you want to pay each month and it will show you how long it will take to pay them off. Maybe that will sway him, when he sees how much interest we will pay, just to earn a teeny amount of interest on the money while we decided what to do with it, and then have a hugely extended kitchen - just at the point in our lives where our chicks are starting to fledge and apart from visits, there will only be us here.

I do like moohound's suggestion of making a final offer to the DCAs though!

Thank you all again. I will definitely show him this thread and the snowballing things (is that what it's called?) and hopefully he will see the sense in doing it my way. (It doesn't usually take me this long to persuade him that I'm right )

And lovinituk - I completely agree with you. No need to apologise. Except for the assumption that I (the OP) was the one who was being frivolous :D

PinkPoppies

I don't envy your situation HurdyGurdy (well, apart from the 60k maybe ). Sounds tough.

The website you are thinking of might be this one- http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx? If you check out NISA and other savings interest rates you'll be able to find online calculators to work out the interest earned on the inheritance money too which might help your cause?

I guess my question to him would be- what's the rush? Presumably a whopping great 60k's worth of work takes some careful and serious long term planning- why not enjoy getting it all planned to perfection over the next couple of years and then go for it debt free in the knowledge that you are so much more financially secure?

A couple of years is nothing in the grand scheme of things and it sounds as though you are perhaps not 100% on board with the idea of having the extensive work done anyway? Perhaps if you can bide a bit more time the urge to spend the 60k burning in his pocket might fade a bit?

Best of luck xx