MarkJackon

It intrigues me how much money gets spent of cars by people on Scoobynet, just wondering whether people load up the credit card to do it cos I just cant bring myself to go into debt.

Ps I know its none of my business, just nosey ?

Markus

I'm not one of the major spenders on my car, but I have spent a fair bit on it over the past 4 months.

Loaded? nope. debts? yup. Big debts? yup!

If I cleared all my debts then I'd be even more silly with my money than I currently am. I am a 'buy on a whim' kinda chap, which is very, very dangerous, especially given the fact that I have access to the internet at work.

suffice to say i get by with no real problems and there are people standing in the shadows to help out if things did get nasty, which is always nice.

sammyh

iTrader: (1)

Ditto Markus (saved me some typing)

NotoriousREV

Loaded? Probably would be if I didn't have all these finance payments to make

sammyh

iTrader: (1)

Although when I advertised soemthing on here the other day I had a response of 'how can you afford that living in a council house?' which whilst being a little offended about it (its not a council house) shows that just because someone seems to have loads off tasty stuff, they might not be loaded.

Markus

sammyh,
very vaild point! i still live at home with my parents, which is one reason i can afford some of the stuff I have. ok, it's a bit 'sad' but I can't afford to get a mortgage for event a decent house in my own home town! and that really winds me up.

Olly

Mark, it should be a familiar story living where you do. Lots of serious wealth in Wilmslow, but lots of surface wealth as well.

Go in The Braz of a Saturday night. Full of people talking loudly and drinking Krug with the keys to a £40000 Beemer on the bar. Pity they owe £37000 on it, and there's bugger all in the fridge at home. In any case, they never let us scruffs in.

BOB.T

Absolutely rock bottom broke

MarkJackon

I drive a grands worth of old Golf and see all that lot around Wilmslow but I dont think half of them are as loaded as they make out and some I suspect are up to there eye in it.

I however dont show off !

PS I would never set foot in anywhere called the 'Braz', cos the name alone registers highly on the Wilmslow Wankyometer. I just live there, its a nice place but there is a bad element. This is why I could never buy a TT or Boxster, I would lose it in the Sainsburys car park amid a sea of them. In fact I have developed a big sense of inverted snobbery. If I see another School run mummy in an X5 (well you dont really see them thru the blacked out windows) I will puke.

MarkJackon

Sympathies to those who havent yet set on the housing ladder, it was bad enough 5 years ago but now, good luck and enjoy the Scoob in the meantime.

I am being sincere there by the way !

JoeyDeacon

MarkJackon,

But don't forget the inevitable housing market crash that is coming any day now.....

People were telling me I was a fool to buy a house when I first started looking 3 years ago as house prices were stupid and had to crash soon. Remebering vaguely what happened in 1989 (I was 16 at the time) I must admit I was a little concerned about what might happen.

The same people who told me that 3 years ago are still refusing to buy anywhere and saying the same thing today.

Personally apart from my Mortgage and my car I have absolutely no debt. The problem is that today it is far too easy to borrow money and once you start it turns into a downward spiral.

My one piece of advice would be if you have no self control for gods sake don't ever get credit cards. It's far too easy to spend a load of money on things you really don't need and before you know it you are in a terrible mess. I have a friend who had over £12,000 on credit cards and the amount he was paying each month was just about covering the interest.

MarkJackon

SOmethings going to happen, however there is a lack of decent housing, it all gets snapped up if its half right, I dont think we will have the situation that prevailed in the eighties with huge negative equity but surely things have got to settle down soon.
Agree about the downward spiral, I have a mate who always manages to **** things up financially, buys a big bike that he cant really afford the payments on, crashes it, cant afford the renewal, sells it for half what he owes and spends what he gets for it to buy a boat of all things.

Some people dont help themseleves

Sparks

Good question! I am amazed at the amount of money some have.

My house has gone up from 76.5k to 100k in a year, admittedly I have probably spent about £7.5k on improvements and decorating, but even so.. Im not surpised that some can't afford to buy a house/flat now.. problem is renting isnt any cheaper, more expensive if anything.

I know of a guy who is 23 or so.. he has 2 loans ( to pay off his credit cards ) and more cards still on top of that.. He spends money basically because he can, all on cards though. We reckon he is about £10-15k in debt.. And he still lives with his folks..

Will have some debt soon to buy a scoob...

Jen

It's too easy to spend loads!

We've got the mortgage and the car, and I've got to pay of student loans...but it's not out of control. Purposely only use one credit card with a limit of 2500 and have one as "spare" incase of emergencies...for example, when the recent accident happened in the Scoob and we had a 750 excess to pay. We save every month, and if we want something for the car - we save for it! ...does take alot of self control though.

oh - houses -we live in south hampshire - brought our house in December (first one) as we were renting at 550 per month and it was going up!..anyway, brought a two bed semi with garage on the side: 105,000


It's now worth 130,000 - in 5 months! We looked around the estate agents and we could only aford a 1 bed flat without a garage if we were buying now. Mad.

JoeyDeacon

My girlfriend used to work as an estate agent down in Hastings until she moved to Surrey with me. Went down there a few weeks ago and met up with a few of the people she used to work with. One of them told me he hadn't sold anything to a first time buyer this year, every single flat he has sold this year he has sold to people who want to rent them out/develop them.

When I tell them the prices that things are going for where we live they can't believe it. Some new flats have been built near me and they are selling for between 210K and 400K.

Most of my friends earn decent salaries (certainly higher than the national average anyway) and they haven't got a hope in hell of buying anywhere to live now. So is that it now, unless you have rich parents or are an IT contractor you are never going to afford to buy anywhere to live??

MarkJackon

It is amazing how much prices are going up, trouble is that unless your trading down or selling after a bereavement its fairly academic except when you are trading up or starting out, then its very difficult.

We paid 60 for our first house, sold for 82 cos we had filled it with kids, my wifes gran died and left us some money, cashed in all our investments bought at 162k about 4 years ago and now its worth, er well, a little more.

Now have bugger all disposable income !

NotoriousREV

I bought my 3 bedroom, detached house with garage 4 years ago for £47,500, it's now worth around about the £80,000 mark. Like someone else said, if I was trying to buy now with the same money, I'd be living in a considerably smaller house.

About 30 years ago, my Dad and his brother bought their first homes. My dad paid around about £2000 (which bought a small family home) while his brother paid around £20,000 (which bought a huge bungalow in the middle of nowhere on a private road). His brother sold his house last year for nearly £500,000. Not a bad profit for 30 years investing. The house my Dad bought would probably be worth around the 60 or 70k mark now.

Sparks

As Jen says if you want something you have to save for it. Some property in South Hants is *really* silly money now. Opposite where I work is a burnt out church.. its a listed building and hence has stood derelict for 10 years, boards have just gone up stating a development of 12 apartments. I reckon they will be 160k+. Just down the road there are 1/2 bed flats going for £155k brand new. Its not exactly a posh area either. far from it.. but it has good road/rail/air links. I feel lucky that I got onto the property ladder when I did, because I wouldnt be able to afford it now.

IMHO CC Companies are only too willing to give young people big credit card limits.. because they know young people spend more. I asked for a card from my bank simply because I wanted the protection when buying a few bits from the US mail order.. came through with a limit of £3800, now upped to £4500. A mates' dad ( who has never had money/debt problems ) can't get a card with more than a £3k limit.. my mate who still lives at the same address who earns less has a £5k limit..

MarkO

We've got fed-up with the ludicrous prices, noise, pollution, crap water and so on in the SE , so we're now going to bail out and move to bonnie Scotland .

One of the great advantages is that we'll be able to take out some of that lovely equity in the house. Instead of just ending up with a bigger house and bigger mortgage, we'll end up with a bigger house, much smaller mortgage, and a free car to boot. And of course the quality of life will be far better.

imlach

Don't bank on getting a bigger house if you're coming to Edinburgh!!!

I just paid £250k for a 4 bedroom wreck!!! It was offers over £145k.
Decent 1 bedroom flats are now £100k+ in Edinburgh.

There were 16 offers on the house I bought, and 3 of the offers were within £1k of me!!

MarkO

Shouldn't be a problem, actually. We're not moving to Edinburgh - although I'll be working there - we'll either move to somewhere around Perth (or possibly slightly north of Perth, for example we like Aberveldy), or else the Peebles/Galashiels/Melrose area.

In fact, when we were up there hunting a couple of weeks ago, we found a perfectly suitable new build, which we wanted to buy. 5-bed (so one more than we currently have) but with all of the rooms larger than our current house (which isn't small). It had a 1/4 acre plot, and was situated right in the middle of the country, set back from the road via a little stone bridge over a river.

The price was such that with the move we'd knock 30% off our mortgage and pay for my STI replacement (Jag X-Type 3.0L Sport) outright into the bargain.

The only problem was that we needed to exchange contracts in 21 days, and our house isn't on the market yet , as we weren't planning to move quite this soon....

Anyone want to move to Kent?

ChrisB

I'm just starting to scour the property pages each week and it's quite depressing.

Not exactly expensive to live round here compared to the South but anything half decent seems to sellreally quick. Speaking to one of my customers the other day - they sold their house but their purchase fell through and are having to move into rented as they can't find anything.

No shortage of flash new developments going up for £100k+ - bugger all decent 1st time buyer stuff

MarkO

So go contracting instead.

[Edited by MarkO - 5/17/2002 4:00:47 PM]

MarkJackon

I though the contract market is on its **** ?

MarkO

I don't think it's as bad as a lot of people make out. I still get regular calls, despite the fact that I've been in a contract for 4 years, and haven't returned an agent's call for about 2 years.

Depends how good you are, I guess.

johnfelstead

house prices are nuts at the moment for first time buyers.

Back to the original question.

Nope, i am not loaded, in a decent job though. I never buy anything on credit. My car is paid for cash, i have always bought what i had the cash for since i got stung heavily in the late 80's and had £20K's debt and lost my job for 18 months and decided to retrain when the recesion hit. Dealing with debt collectors for years, most of it whilst being totally skint and just about managing to eat was a big wake up call for me personally. I worked my way up the car ladder and upgraded when i had the cash saved to do it. OK, you may be 18 months behind what you could have if you took out credit, but you are getting interest rather than paying it and i personally wasnt bothered that my mates had slightly flasher cars than me. It's mainly a piece of mind thing, if i suddenly found myself without an income i wouldnt have a problem for years, as using this mentality has allowed me to save a fair bit and yet still been able to run some trick stuff eventually.

I have a credit card, but i use that for purchase protection only and clear it straight away so i dont pay interest. They keep upping it, now sat at £13K limit, which is nuts.

I am pretty disiplined when it comes to money, but i aint a tight git I get out and do things as much as anyone, if not more than most, i just dont pay banks for the priviledge.

P.S I worked as a financial advisor in one of the main highstreet banks in the late 80's, i saw enough horror stories of people getting into debt, which is very easy to do, to put me off credit for life, never mind my own experiences.

I always have been odd. LOL

ian/555

If you look at prices on houses over time you would find that the lows and the highs gradually increase over the previous benchmark, unless there was a full blown war or depression I don't think that you would have prices going lower than they was in previous recessions of the housing market.
If you look at the multiples needed to buy at the moment, you might be thinking that with 2 incomes and low interest rates that you can easily make the mortgage payments, but come the time when interest rates go up by 3% or 4% (which they will) and you go down to 1 income either through having children or because of job loss, then the first thing to go will be the car to pay off the credit card/car loan debts you might have. Then if things don't improve or interest rates go through the roof, people will soon start putting houses up for sale below market price to try and release the locked in capital or to just be shot of the high payments before the bubble bursts (which it will)
The only way I can see this not happening is that what ever Government is in at the time, will buy peoples votes on a referendum over joining the euro currency with the promise of interest rates being slashed by half or more if we do abolish the pound.
So the more debt people have the more likely they are to vote yes (could this be why there is so much advertising for credit at the moment?) to the referendum on abolishing the pound when it does happen. This is of course just my (probably wrong) opinion and if I was someone else reading this I would not base any decisions on it.

ian

[Edited by ian/555 - 10/14/2002 1:47:40 PM]

mega_stream

Short answer for me

I pay cash, cha-ching
In the odd event I do have something on credit card, I always transfer the balance onto a low APR rate for transfer deal card, got 2 going at the moment, both 3.9% till the balance is paid

Good tip here is to cut the card up as soon as it arrives, they get really pi55ed when you do that as they don't make money out of you They sent me a whole cheque book pre-written for 4k each yesterday, ripped it up and binned it

So easy to see how people get into dept these days though with people handing on a plate like that

Bottomfeeder

Up to my neck in it.
Brought a two bed mid-terrace in Herts last year for 90K. Gutted it, and rebuilt it from the ground up exactly to the 'lady of the house's' spec. We're now separated and all I wanna do is sell the place and move on. Guess what the place is worth approx 125 and no bugger can afford it!!!!!!

Sods law eh?

johnfelstead

interesting theory on the Euro Ian! I can see a lot of logic in that, but not so sure new labia are smart enough to conciously do that.

It's quite scary actually when you have people sat in front of you with massive depts or contemplating massive mortgages, especially new couples, as you know that 1/3 of those are just about to screw themselves for years financially when they split up.

Glad i dont do that job anymore, i was way too honest to make a proper living at it anyway. And no, i am not joking there! Banks are robbing *******s. [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]