Do you owe more than $26k, not including a mortgage?

[Thorin]

Over several years I was able to negotiate my MBNA card down from 18%, to 9.9% for the general transaction rate.. Basically I have the promo rate permanently on all transactions.

The only high rate card I have is my PC Mastercard, but I get 2% or so back on all transactions at Superstore with it and never pay interest by carrying a balance on it.

I'd suggest this Capital One card if you want a lower interest rate: Smartline Platinum. 5.99% on both purchases and balance transfers (cash advances are still stupid high). It requires $60k income and a decent credit rating, but I assume you have those. We have this card and they transferred a third of our balance to a 3% "special transfer" section, I guess as a thank you for being their customer? I didn't request it and there were no strings or hidden increases attached.

[Lazybones]

I don't carry balances on ether of my credit cards anymore so it isn't much of an issue, if I need to I just transfer the balance to my prime +1 borrowing account before the grace period / bill is due.

[Tom]

I've got a capital one. first card I got. It sucks, but I got the rate down to 14.9 or something. My PC card is 19.8 or thereabouts.

[Lazybones]

Digging up an old thread..

New article / numbers
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/burdened-by-debt-and-slipping-behind-survey-respondents-say-1.3219868

[Mr. Analog]

Not to pick nits but the sample size seems very small, of the 4k respondents how geographically varied were they across the country? We know debut is distributed differently based on where people live/work, not just at a Provincial level but also at a city level within the same Province??

Also who is the Canadian Payroll Association? Their wiki article is somewhat uninformative. So many questions

[Darren Dirt]

Digging up an old thread..

New article / numbers
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/burdened-by-debt-and-slipping-behind-survey-respondents-say-1.3219868

IMO pretty weak-sauce article, not exactly any "news" let alone "...that you can use". And even worse is that its COMMENTS became almost insantly a Harper bash-a-thon. Although I find "#HeaveSteve" to be a pretty clever hashtag

But linked from this one was another -- potentially more useful -- article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/why-september-is-the-ideal-time-to-do-a-financial-check-in-1.3196895

[Thorin]

But linked from this one was another -- potentially more useful -- article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/why-september-is-the-ideal-time-to-do-a-financial-check-in-1.3196895

Hmm, it gives advice for people who might have forgotten to pay bills and give basic advice about how to order debt paydown.  And then it says to save money.  But if you have high interest credit card debt, then you should put all your available monies towards paying that down instead of setting it aside to save while still paying exorbitant interest.

[Lazybones]

I was more interested that the high amount of debt the average Canadian has, stated about the same as previous articles.

[Lazybones]

http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/business/debt-income-net-worth-1.3223917

Average debt to income levels at an all time high.

[Mr. Analog]

Interesting that those percentiles rose in parallel

[Thorin]

So on average, for every $1 of disposable income we owe $1.65 in debt but have $7.68 in assets.  So on average, we could sell off our assets, pay off our debts, and still have $6.03 left over.  So on average, people will be okay.

[Lazybones]

Reading the article that is only if the Canadian housing market doesn't reset.  It's based a lot on the fact house prices are still rising and currently worth a lot.

[Darren Dirt]

So on average, for every $1 of disposable income we owe $1.65 in debt but have $7.68 in assets.  So on average, we could sell off our assets, pay off our debts, and still have $6.03 left over.  So on average, people will be okay.

As Lazy mentioned, a huge part of the "assets" are the real estate that many people live in. But then you've got many people renting so having virtually zero assets (but still comparable debt to the home-owners I am guessing, considering our present uber-consumer society).

On "average" people will be okay, but the "average person" might not be.

[Thorin]

Sounds like you're trying to point out that the arithmetic mean and median are two different things.

That article pretty clearly talks about the arithmetic mean (aka the average).  So for every person with more than $7.68 in assets per dollar of income, there's another person with less than $7.68 in assets per dollar of income.

We'll probably end up disagreeing a whole bunch if we start debating this topic, as we probably have completely different views of what an "average person" is.

For the record, for every dollar of income I presently owe $4.07 in debt and have $4.94 in assets (house, cars, trailer, savings).  If I work out the family income, for every dollar of income we presently owe $3.44 in debt and have $4.19 in assets.  My family and I are well below the arithmetic mean established above, and yet we seem to be living a comfortable enough life and we'll be okay.

[Darren Dirt]

But you are a home owner.

That's all I was saying.

You could do a nation-wide or province-wide or city-wide analysis of a large group of people of one general demographic, and collect stats about their total assets and their total debts, and from that get an average [statistic of your choosing] but what I am saying is there are plenty of "average" people that would be very different in the one way, that they do not have a significant asset under their ownership -- specifically a home; they rent. So they are definitely not okay financially if they suffer a surprise job loss, they have no asset that could be potentially worst-case-scenario liquidated to cover their debt load.


Definitely not interested in debating or anything, no need to analyze meaning of the math of analysis or whatever, just speaking in more general terms. Not everybody owns a house/mortgage (or is able to / wants to). And that can mean a big difference when it comes to the impact of life events (even if in virtually every other way they are "close to the average").


As a personal example, I have essentially zero assets except for the car for which I have a multi-year loan to pay off. But I am other than that debt-free. But I am not the norm by any means, plenty of people who rent would have a car loan as well as a ton of credit card debt etc. and surely some of them have RRSPs or other investments, while others are truly living paycheck to paycheck while ALSO having trouble meeting CC minimum payments... Averages are not exactly useful when it comes to analyzing personal finances of Canadians/Albertans/Citytonians. Other than for news copy