The level of household debt has been steadily increasing for the last 20 years in Canada so it should be no surprise that it continued to rise again this quarter. The average Canadian household now has an average of 19.6 cents of debt for every dollar of networth and household debt is averaging about 123.8% of personal disposable income.
This is a frightening figure at this stage of the financial cycle as it is much more likely that interest rates will be rising than decreasing. An increase in interest rates will of course make managing this debt much more difficult for many Canadian households. How does your household debt compare to your personal disposable income?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
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12 comments:
Does this include mortgage debt?
My only debt is my mortgage.
Not sure how exactly you are to calculate this.
I know I could pay off my mortgage is two years if I put my mind to it.
Yeah, I'll post mine if I know how to calculate it. Does this just include like consumer style debt like Student Loans, Car Loans, Personal Loans etc divided by your gross income (line 150 of a tax return?) and do you include mortgage debt etc. . .
I'm happy to have zero consumer and zero mortgage debt!
Same question as other posters, does this include mortgage debt?
One issue I have with such statistics is that the demographic is not well described. It's very different story if a 25 yr old has a mortgage and a Debt/Asset of 20% vs. a 55 yr old in the same scenario.
Also a little misleading. If I have 15-30% leverage on a $10 million account, would this be viewed as a 'high' debt load? As others have alluded, type of debt is critical.
If it does not include my mortgage, my household debt only takes up 26% of my disposable income. If it does include my mortgage, it's 345%. Another way to calculate debt load is the debt-to-income ratio, kind of like the D/E ratio assigned to companies. Anything below 0.4 is considered good. You take monthly debt payments and divide it by monthly take home income, including any expected annual bonuses divided by 12. Mine was 0.3. That sounds good!
Ok, so from your post today it sounds like we take all your debt, including everything you awe and divide by your income after taxes so:
(All Debt) / (Income - Taxes - Fees)
From the sounds of it I get to around 300% for my total debt load. I'm 28, just purchased my first home last year.
I think I need to work on that :)
The problem is that most people are not responsible enough when they have a credit card or a loan. They don't know exactly what the consequence of their actions can be. That is the reason of their problems.
You're right. My sister-in-law and her partner are about to lose their house this week as a result of irresponsible spending habits over the past 10 years.
I'm happy to be in the same boat as Tom. No mortgage and no debt. My credit card is paid off monthly and I have never paid a cent in credit card debt in my life.
That should have read "I have never paid a cent in credit card interest in my life."
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Deborah
Term Life Insurance
Oh this is bad issue.
Finance Bookmark
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