high income high debt!

optimizm

Just looked and the average is £27.6k so we’re quite a bit above this thankfully- we need to be with our level of debts

CakeCrusader

Yes, but people earning the average salary won't have 40+k's of debt, they probably won't have half or a quarter of this. My unsecured debt is 7% of my income for example (and I think this is high).

optimizm

Minimum cc payments are 1kish. Most are on n low or 0% but not all. We’re spending about £250 on interest which isn’t great and we are keen to lower this if/when possible.

The 1400 includes a loan payment.

I’m trying to take a practical approach towards tackling the debt and trying not to catastrophise things or become too stressed. It won’t help me deal with things

Mumoffourkids

From your basic figures, it looks as though you have around £2000 a month 'spare'. I would split this and give yourselves a little bit of fun money, put some into an emergency fund and then chuck the rest at the debts. Work out which one has the highest interest or has the 0% ending the quickest and pay that one off first.

It is doable especially as your bills seem low. But you will need an emergency fund to stop you from having to use credit again in the future.

I managed to pay off around £10k of debt in 9 months and that was with us still going on holiday to Cornwall for a week. I got lucky in that two of my debts have made the commercial decision not to chase and one seems to have disappeared completely. So that £10k doesn't include these other debts.

System

optimizm wrote: »

Just looked and the average is £27.6k so we’re quite a bit above this thankfully- we need to be with our level of debts

But there are two of you...

Lauralou79

Welcome OP, if you stick around and listen to advice on here you can get some great tips from people in the know. I've seen similar posts with similar incomes so I'm sure some posters will come along and help.

It really makes no difference wether it's an average income or not. You've realised your mistakes in spending and want to sort it out which most people here have done at some point. Advice on a SOA will be valuable when going forward and adjusting your lifestyle so you can get the debt reduced. Good luck

optimizm

Hi

Yes there are two of us, but there are two of us earning 78K per year, not 55K..

buythedip

Discount your take home for the 1.4k you pay towards debts per month and you’re painfully average.

Best of luck with the next 5+ years paying it back.

buythedip

And yes, that ratio is very high, you’re basically knackered should one of you lose your job etc.

optimizm

buythedip wrote: »

Discount your take home for the 1.4k you pay towards debts per month and you’re painfully average.

Best of luck with the next 5+ years paying it back.

You;re right, in fact if we discount the £1400 then we are probably are just about average as this leaves us with about 3600 per month. Thankfully out other bills/mortgage are reasonable, so we are still left with some surplus income that we can use to make additional debt payments.

We are going to pay it off within four years.