What's your 'comfortable' figure

midlander81

Hi Guys,


Now I know that we are all aiming to be debt free, hence our posts on here but I have been thinking about my debts and how I feel about the situation I am in. My debts are coming down by around £1300 per month from a starting point of over 40K!!!


My immediate goal is to get them down to 30K. This is still a scary amount for me but less daunting that the original 40K. Getting them down to 20K will be a massive thing for me mentally as this is the level of debt I had around 5 years ago before it spiralled.


I think that I will only feel 'comfortable' (this means not worrying, thinking, adding up debts all day everyday) when I get to below the 10K mark. I cannot wait to see the day when I owe £9999.99!!!! I will not stop until I get to ZERO but mentally I feel a lot better being in single figures!!


Does anyone else have a 'comfortable' figure at which you will stop worrying so much and feel more relaxed about your debts.

abby1234519

We owe 17k, my comfortable figure where I think yes we can make it will be 5k.

Not 10k as thats still high but 5k as that's then about 10 payments left.

spot3

Not a figure so much as a number of creditors, when i'm down to 2 I'll feel a lot happier

[Deleted User]

I'll relax a bit when all my debt is paid and my mortgage is at £45k. However, I have often thought about the comfortable figure over the years. I've come to the conclusion that if you lose your income for some reason it doesn't matter what the figure is, a million or a hundred, if you can't pay you're in trouble! So conclusion for me is the true comfortable figure is a big fat ZERO!

MrsSave

Getting under £10,000 will be a start, but reaching £0 will be where I'll be comfortable.

Pepperoni

£0 of debt to be honest. I just want rid of if as its on my mind a lot. I'm sure as it comes down I'll gradually relax more and more but I really want to never 'borrow' again and just hope OH agrees. I manage our finances so its more on my mind than his and I try not to bog us both down with it. At the end of the day we are very fortunate and could have cleared it a lot quicker than we have but we are a bit stupid with our money - something I'm going to try and fix!

FireWyrm

Actually, I've come to the realisation that as long as I am actively paying towards my debts and they are coming down, I am actually alright with it and the number itself doesnt bother me quite as much as not paying at all and it remaining static. We've had a couple of knocks this month and I have needed to divert the normal monthly debt payment into a pot for house repairs anticipated within a month or two, but even that does not bother me quite so much because I know that the money is being used for a good purpose, even though it means adding an additional 2 months to the debt repayments.

It does however bother me to spend money frivilously and not pay the debts and those months where I have stumbled a little still rankle. I use YNAB and so can see to the penny where it all went and I have been ruthlessly honest. No hiding the spends on credit cards - being frivilous literally means robbing another pot to pay for it and it makes me think very hard before doing it, which, of course is the point.

I do long to be truly debt free, but I can take solace in the meantime that money is being spent carefully and with consideration rather than simply disappearing with no idea where it went.

lazer

Zero debt and £10k in the bank is when I will feel confident to spend.

katejo

lazer wrote: »

Zero debt and £10k in the bank is when I will feel confident to spend.

Does your Zero debt include mortgage? Just curious. My mortgage is the only debt which I can tolerate. I don't like it and will pay it off asap but don't view it in the same way as I would credit card debt or loans.

shoe*diva79

Comfortable for me will be having paid off 4 catalogues and 1 very high APR credit card.

That will then leave 1 credit card at a much more reasonable rate, my car loan and small loan for sofa. the car loan is due to finish in 2 years, the sofa will be paid off by next Christmas.

So basically this time next year ill be free of catalogues and awful CC and be able to manage much more effectively. The hundreds of pounds I put at these debts at the moment will have the normal CC paid off within 6 months so all being well November 2016 ill be debt free - earlier if I find I decide to chuck all money at debt next year (like I am doing this year) instead of using some to enjoy life.

kermit2601

I've not got masses of debt, a car loan at £5.5k, one sub £300 credit card, one £1k+ credit card (0%) and a student loan sitting at around £2k. I'd never really thought of having a "comfortable" figure but thinking about it now, I'd like to have both credit cards gone by march 2016 (0% ends) and a fair chunk of the car loan done.

I'll feel MUCH more comfortable when the total debt comes down to £5k but I'm hoping to eventually get a comfortable figure of mortgage only (when I get a house) debt and £5k in the bank.