Vocal Voices

Some 11 million of us have unsecured debts (credit cards, loans, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) or other borrowings) which is roughly £75bn of personal debt.

This is in a report by the FCA. It advises getting help and debt advice by contacting a "free" independent debt adviser. It says that by doing so it will not affect your credit score: that is something I do not understand. Surely if you are in debt then the last thing you need is a credit score that will allow you to borrow more?

The best advice would be to slowly and surely pay off your debts. Rein in your spending - forego the latest phone, cancel Netflix and Prime, make your own sandwiches, skip Megabucks Coffee, forget fashion and wear your clothes out, learn to cook instead of doing takeaways.

Yes, it might be hard going for a while, but it will be a lot better in the long run. The country cannot afford for so many of us to be in so much debt for so long.

I have credit card which I use to buy petrol, food and big items.

It is paid in full each month so no debt.

I prepareand cook most of myown food.

cruiser2 wrote:I have credit card which I use to buy petrol, food and big items.
It is paid in full each month so no debt.

Same here Cruiser.
The thing is, in a month, I rarely spend more than 25% of my credit card's credit limit. That's the way it's been for years.
Yet, without me asking, they recently doubled my credit limit.
Now imagine if I was someone who couldn't handle money or debt ......

Hardly ever bother with our credit card.Last thing on there was a new sofa and that was paid off straight away.
Only got it because when we came back to UK after living in Madeira for 11 years we had no credit history.
This was all we were continually told when looking for somewhere to live.
We had cash,but after a financial expert said our problem was having no credit history we decided to get a card.Eve. said that if we had CCJ's against us he could help.
Even our bank that we had been with before moving abroad and while we lived abroad said we can't give you a mortgage as you haven't got any credit history.
There was a time when cash was king.

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No debts here

One problem is that people don't seem to think in terms of overall indebtedness any more.
What they go on is how much do they have to pay per month.
How long they have to pay that for, some people don't seem to consider.
Nor do they take into account what might happen if the interest rate goes up.
Interest rates have been low for so long that people have got used to cheap borrowing.

No debt here either. Credit card gets paid in full every month. I try not to use the debit card much, instead using cash as much as possible, each week I think of what we are doing that week and withdraw cash accordingly. The credit card is used for the Tesco shop and bigger purchases.

I took a 24 month loan because my credit rating is not high enough for the companies to want to give me a card with a limit high enough. For instance I just bought flights to Canada and had to use a debit card and cash in the bank because the whole journey and all the extras was more than my card limit. Which means I have to forego the protections a credit card would allow me.

I did buy some additional stuff with it and I will deliberated overpay it and pay it back early which goes on the credit rating. Normally I use my credit card like a charge card, we have zero debt of any kind otherwise. I buy used cars for cash, we have no mortgage and that's it.