<p>We have owned our home for 22 years, have 7 years to go on a 5% mortagage which accounts for about 10% of our equity. No student loans for D who graduates in Dec. I always have maintained an active HELOC (with nothing owing now) for emergencies.Cars that we bought used are all paid off. No credit card debt and I have always kept a years living expenses in liquid investments “just in case”. H has been out of work for over a year and I still havent cracked the “just in case” savings, since in my point of view “it could be worse”.</p>
<p>VeryHappy, I would be careful about buying a certified pre-owned vehicle from the dealership. Sometimes, those cars are disguised lemons.</p>
<p>BCEagle, sorry I meant B, not M. Not that I feel any better about it! I guess subconciously I was hoping it was only millions.</p>
<p>We have 9 years left on our mortgage, at 4.5% interest rate. We could pay it off now but choose not to. Other than that, no debt.</p>
<p>Paid off our mortgage last week - Woo Hoo! - use credit cards a lot but carry no real debt, sometimes husband gets lazy and writes an even number check, carrying over $100, for example.
We are looking to buy some other property maybe for retirement, so may have a home equity loan soon.
We have had good luck buying dealer’s cars. My husband is still driving one of the earliest Ford SportTracs - the dealer got it all tricked out for his wife to drive around town and drum up interest (it turned heads when we got it), and he’s still driving it.</p>
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<p>I am glad there are these threads periodically. It provide some commaderie and validation for something that does not come easy. It is easy to drive nice cars, fly first class and buy that Frank Mueller watch. It is not easy to count pennies and shop at the dollar store. ;)</p>
<p>^^^ Munchkin-
I guess we are comerades. I don’t even know what a Frank Mueller watch is! :o</p>
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<p>Ummmm, never knew who/what Frank Mueller is until visited with my bff in Singapore. She was telling me now she wants a “Frank Mueller” and pointed it out to me at a store… :eek: in addition to her diamond studded Rolex (gift from husband and too “vulgar” ), the Omega (or was it Gerard Perregaux ?) and Cartier Tank. :eek: :eek: </p>
<p>I kinda hid my $50 Citizen after that. :p</p>
<p>Luckily friendship built up over 40 years are like part of oneself. Pretty unshakable. I treasure her friendship and I know she treasure mine.</p>
<p>But it feels good to know other fellow careful savers out there .</p>
<p>I read “Millionaire” years and years ago, and really disliked it. Here’s the quote that really bugged me:</p>
<p>I am a tightwad. That’s one of the main reasons I completed a long questionnaire for a crispy $1 bill. Why else would I spend two or three hours being personally interviewed by these authors? They paid me $100, $200, or $250. Oh, they made me another offer – to donate in my name the money I earned for my interview to my favorite charity. But I told them, “I am my favorite charity.”</p>
<p>Blech. There are so many many ways to be an excellent tightwad, and this is held up as the exemplar of tightwadhood?</p>
<p>I’m happy with our used Toyota from the dealer. NY has a lemon law, though I don’t know exactly what it entails.</p>
<p>^I don’t t remember the above quote. </p>
<p>I got from that book to drive cars for a long time (we do). Always try to live beneath your means. It does not matter if you make a lot of money if you do not save enough. The lower income savers will do better in the long run then the big income big spenders. <= That helped us feel better since we never seem to be able to make a lot of money. </p>
<p>I always try to donate a certain amount to charities every year. Now that we are older and more financially stable we are thinking of donating more money and time as well. There is a difference between spending on oneself and helping others less fortunate.</p>
<p>We haven’t had the luxury of being in a home long enough or in the right markets to be able to be close to paying off the house… many job related moves in bad markets and none in good markets. We still owe about 50% of value but that’s because of the market, not because we bought some grand mansion in the last decade .
OTOH, we have never had credit cards not payed off each month or car payments for more than 6 months. Buy a good one and drive it until it dies of old age…</p>
<p>Shoot, I gummed up the quote above, sorry about that. It’s from the first chapter, giving an overview of characteristics of the millionaires interviewed for the book:</p>
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<p>Though now that I think about it, it does make more fiscal sense to take the money and make the donation yourself so you get the write-off. 
Doesn’t seem that’s what the tightwad is doing, though.</p>
<p>What you owe relative to the value of the house isn’t really the relevant question, be it 20%, 60%, whatever. </p>
<p>What matters is how much can you afford relative to your income (or better yet, your future income in the worst case scenario).</p>
<p>We’ve been in our present home 32 years, paid off our mortgage five years ago. We are going to do a big remodel next year all without any loans. No other debt.</p>
<p>I remember back in the early days of our marriage, I remarked about the new vehicle friends of ours had just purchased and said to DH, “Wow, they must have a lot of money!”
He remarked, “Yeah…or a lot of bills.”</p>
<p>I’ve always remembered that when I get a bit jealous of the ‘stuff’ others have~</p>
<p>We see the “light” approaching at the end our mortgage–probably 4 years to go. We’ve always paid an extra $100-$200 toward the principal, so we’ll have it paid off before the actual end of the mortgage agreement.
Always pay the balance on our credit cards. Cars were purchased ‘slightly’ used and we’ve had good luck buying that way. We’ve decided to let somebody else suffer the initial depreciation on new vehicles…</p>
<p>Perhaps ours is not a very sexy lifestyle, but we’re not in debt and it’s a nice feeling to live within our means!</p>
<p>I bought our current vehicle new. My previous vehicle was bought used and the maintenance costs were pretty bad. It’s often hard to tell what you’re getting. A friend of mine that does his own work about 90% of the time bought a car with some very odd engine problems (it had been in an accident) that was very cheap and he had to give up on it because he could resolve the problems. Yes, there is depreciation but there’s some comfort in knowing the complete history of the vehicle.</p>
<p>The other place where I would buy a used car is from someone at work that I know has maintained a vehicle well.</p>
<p>We always use carfax to check the history of a car’s title. It’ll tell if its been in a wreck, if it was a salvage car (stay away!!), if it has had multiple owners was a lease or company car, etc. I also always have our mechanic look over the car before buying it. Thats worked out pretty well.</p>
<p>My wife and I are in a different stage in our lives than most of you. We are very fortunate. Our child is out of the house, and we have two generous pensions, jobs, social security (me), lots of money left over from the sale of our house in NoVA, and IRAs that remain untouched. Medical care is assured. </p>
<p>We took on a large housing debt last year in order to get the condo we wanted after having deferred gratification during our child rearing years. Equally as important is that we wanted to use our mortgage interest payments to protect as much of our income as possible from taxes. We are also putting a substantial amount of income from our present positions into very conservative pre-tax investments, which will be used to boost the amount of income we receive when we retire from our current jobs.</p>
<p>We are thinking about buying a vacation place in Chicago using the pre-tax money we are currently setting aside. Chicago has an overstock of condos at falling prices. Over the long run, a real estate investment may be a better place to put our money especially since we really enjoy that city, it’s only three hours or so away from us, and we may decide to move there in four or five years.</p>
<p>Not bad for a history major and a sociology major.</p>
<p>tsdad–
No offense, but this line
made me laugh. Chicago isnt the first place that comes to mind when I think “vacation home”. LOL</p>