Who is responsible for our debt?

cantcope · 12 May 2006 at 8:17AM

i am definitely to blame for my debt. However it now outrages me that it is sooooooooo easy to spend tens and hundreds of thousands on gambling sites. I easily blew my months salary the day i got paid! Never again.

babe_ruth_3 · 12 May 2006 at 8:26AM

bobbiebob wrote:

Just to add,

[PHP]Why in the UK must we all strive to own our own homes.[/PHP]

Throughout the rest of mainland Europe people tend to rent. Why is it we as a nation feel we must own our castles.

Look at the cost of housing these days its absolutley rediculos. No wonder kids stop at home longer its almost impossible to get anything affordable unless its in a slum area.

If I sold my house tommorow (which I bought 4 years ago) and spent the money on a round the world Cruise and a Porsche, I could not afford to repurchase it due to the asking price..

Wheres the sence in that...

Assuming you can get a mortgage surely its better to pay back monthly repayments into your investment than dead money to a landlord?

halloweenqueen_2 · 12 May 2006 at 8:35AM

I chose to get a mortgage instead of renting, therefore heaping debt on my head! We did get into debt more at one stage as there was a bad illness in the family and we couldn't pay the bills - it took a while to pay off. I wish this site had existed then! Had we stayed renting it wouldn't have been a problem but now we have come through the other side of it, there are things I would have done differently now.

Creditcardkid · 12 May 2006 at 8:39AM

My debt - my fault. Easy as that!

Bunnie1982 · 12 May 2006 at 8:49AM

My fiance tells me that his debt is due to his own lack of self control when he was younger

Aidenr · 12 May 2006 at 8:56AM

Creditcardkid wrote:

My debt - my fault. Easy as that!

Yep me too !

Stupidspender_2 · 12 May 2006 at 9:02AM

What a refreshing attitude here to many of the forums threads on this site!
mm2000 but who's fault was the debt in the first place? I personally did not hold the government responsible when I was out spending on wine and cloths "because I deserved a treat" or sod it “ive been good this weeek” .

Is it realistic to blame Tonny Blair that I paid for my car with a loan with a high APR then some car repairs on my credit card because I had not built up a emergency fund in cash.
Neither could it be conceivable that the nightclub trip and holiday was forced on me by Gordon brown?
However when I looked at all my horrendous debt a couple of years ago, I too was looking for someone to blame. The thing is I only started clearing the debt when the penny dropped that it was me and no one else that was to blame.

Iona_Penny · 12 May 2006 at 9:09AM

Clearly each person is responsible for their own debt; that said what we 'need' is determined by the society we live in:
When my mother was a young woman (early 40s) people were paid in cash each week and that's what you had to spend AND save out of; she lived at home and paid lodging and wear and tare money!!! and so had little left. 20 young women where she worked formed a club and paid a tiny amount each week (probably less than a shilling) and each week 1 person bought a new pair of shoes. The longest you had to wait for your shoes was 20 weeks.

In 2006 we would think they were mad. New shoes no money oh well I'll get them anyway. We need to learn to budget and increase our income if we want to increase our expenditure. I have fallen into the debt trap and I worry about my 19 year old son; he pays all his keep, petrol and money for car insurance each month when he gets paid but then spends the rest in 2 weeks. He has just got a credit card :eek: and I am very afraid although he says he is 'hardly' going to use it he wants so much in the material sense. I try and quote Martin and say its not a credit card
IT'S A DEBT CARD !

mandyc · 12 May 2006 at 9:28AM

Hester wrote:

Certainly the system of student loans was launched fairly rapidly, and therefore in that respect was quite unfair to those just about to go to uni. Same with the top-up fees about to be introduced. In future, families with aspirations for their kids to go to 'college' will have to shift to the American model of planning for this from infancy, with the child concerned working and saving towards that goal from their early teens. That will take quite a cultural shift which will be a while sinking in. Student loans do seem to have been a dramatic innovation for which the current student generation could little prepare for. Also, this government-sanctioned change normalises debt - if you're in considerable debt from age 18, however 'cheap' the financing of it, it doesn't set a good precedent. (Edit: See yesterday's Motley Fool article, 'Gradiates at risk of overstretching', on the government's refusal to share info with the rest of the banks on who has student loans and how much, thereby allowing graduates to get credit they may not be able to afford, or not to get any credit because it seems they have no credit record.)

paradoxically, society's rising affluence has blurred the issue of what poverty and need truly are. I've worked in the developing world, where I see that poverty = lack of proper sanitation and clean water, barefoot kids who don't go to school and who eat once a day if that. Now, in this country, poverty means not being able to afford a tv or a foreign holiday - and this 'envy' and spurious sense of inadequacy can make one feel depressed and 'deprived' so one might spend to cheer oneself up rather than be content to live within one's means. People have grown to feel entitled about things like holidays, where as until the second half of the 20th century people often only took a week a year, and that was unpaid. Our sense of 'normal' has altered, no one's fault, it's a cultural sea-change but perhaps again quite a rapid one.

The intersting thing will be the next cultural shift, as the Chinese and Indian economies take off and commodity prices go through the roof - how will we adjust to the fact that we may no all be able to live comfortably, even extravagantly, like the post-war baby boomers? On the last 'Wife Swap' I was amused that the lady in pink marooned in Scotland complained that she couldn't have the heating on all night. such rights and expectations may be short-lived and our children may go back to thinking it's normal to wear extra jumpers when it's chilly and recycle everything!

So, whilst people are mature and adult to admit that the actual debts they carry are 'their fault', which technically is true, there are a lot of nebulous, mitigating sociological circumstances around that fact. So don't be too hard on yourselves and just be glad that you've had your lightbulb moments and are on the way to personal freedom.

Well said, Hester,you make some very salient points.

I wonder if there is a correlation between the rise in the number of University students and the rise in debt.

The government aim to have 50%(or some such figure) of school leavers going on to University. What is the point when they leave University three years later in some "mickey mouse" subject and then can't get a job.

The number of "temps" that pass through the doors of the institution where I work who have degrees in Media Studies, Journalism, Film Studies, etc but who can't find a job in their chosen field is unbelievable. Then they find themselves drifting from one boring temp job to the next in effort to service their debts. Some even decide to go onto post graduate study, incurring even more debt, in the hope of getting a foothold in their chosen career. Most would have been better getting a low paid job in a relevant field when they leave school at 16 or 18 and working their way up but no colleges encourage students to go onto University because I assume it will reflect in their funding - the more who go to University the more funding the college will get.

Anyway, rant over!!!!

jesster_2 · 12 May 2006 at 9:28AM

I took out the vast majority of my debt in order to get my qualifications. So i'm responsible for it, in that I chose to study knowing those were the consequences.

That doesn't mean that it's socially healthy for big debts to be an essential and accepted part of attaining a level of education which an increasing number of jobs (and not all well paid ones either, I can vouch for that!) demand as standard.

Increasing opportunity for everyone to go to college or university is a good thing, because opportunity and education are "good things" and it shouldn't depend on what class you are or how rich your family is.

But it doesn't resolve the inequality, because those of us who don't have a wealthy family prepared to back us financially end up with the big debts, while those who do, don't.

Again, I don't see anything wrong in contributing to an education which you have chosen to pursue, I just think the way this country's doing it isn't really helping a lot of people with their approach to money. There is statistical evidence that the more student debt someone gets into, the more debt they take out once they leave.

The same with personal debt on credit cards and bank loans. No government will want to reduce our spending on credit because while people spend 'fake money' it disguises the real economic situation of the country and buoys up the retail sector so the performance figures are good, even though it's a facade because people don't really, truly have the money that's been spent! The fact that spending's going up and debt's going up with it show that.

So I am responsible for making the choices I've made within this social framework. That doesn't mean that the country wouldn't be a better place if that social framework was changed, and the pervasive culture encouraged valuing what we have in our pocket, not what we drive or wear.

Who is responsible for our debt?

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