No credit here except mortgage, and we don't buy anything we can't afford from savings or what we can put aside for it. We do keep credit cards though partly as access to cash whenever or wherever we need it, partly because of the rewards points they offer and partly the convenience of not carrying cash all the time. I'm flush if I carry £20 in cash, usually its the £1 coins I've gathered in change for a month or so before.
Mrs A is the money tracker in our house and does a fine job of it. Recently I found out that feeding Her, A-Junior and me (including her smokes and the occasional tipple) cost us less week by week than one of my parents was spending on them living alone, probably only around half as much
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We came close to paying off our old mortgage but did that British thing of moving somewhere for a better school around 6 years ago - possible mistake, it may have been cheaper to pay for private schooling instead.
Now we have halved the outstanding amount and with a following wind should have it gone in about 2-3 years time but I'm not panicked if we don't manage it - We plan to sell it and move when A-junior finishes high school which is in 6 years time and go somewhere cheaper maybe even new so it needs no work and we will have no mortgage. Our current place has 2-3 outstanding "spends" needed to complete the maintenance schedule - 1973 and never maintained well until now.
Based on Eisntein's famous quote "The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest" A-junior was brought into the saving habit when we started his pension at 2 years old. And even when he earns pocket money, 1/2 to 2/3s has to go into his savings.
Even though credit is supposed to be hard to get hold of, I still get 2-3 calls a week offering me one from the bank, endless emails offering them too, and when we changed cars the only way we could get the "best deal" in many cases was by taking the credit instead of paying cash.