Poll: what is your debt to total asset ratio?

[Sarpy]

I answered <10%, but only owe monthly CC bills, which I pay off totally every month. Oh well. Results will be off a bit I assume--no way to edit that I can tell.

 

[Meadbh]

I answered <10%, but only owe monthly CC bills, which I pay off totally every month. Oh well. Results will be off a bit I assume--no way to edit that I can tell.

Actually, you answered correctly, just as the poll was designed. Thank you!

 

[GTFan]

It seems to have been designed for those that lean towards the pedantic, IMO.

 

[Totoro]

I disagree. At the party, he/she would be over in the corner splitting hairs with me and (assuming he/she is not too serious/earnest about everything) we would be enjoying ourselves.

I like hearing outlier points of view when they have logic to back them up.

+1.

Also, much can be said about this forum, but not that we have too many average people here.

 

[Meadbh]

It seems to have been designed for those that lean towards the pedantic, IMO.

I was a scientific researcher before RE. Precision is important.

 

[B0bL0blaw]

If you moved here, you could buy a nice 4/3 house on 1/4+ acre for $210k (paid with current equity) and change your situation to 110K student loans and 450k assets in accounts..... COL matters

My guess is that my income would take a serious hit as well! But I do expect we'll move to a LCOL area if/when we RE.

 

[Nemo2]

Also, much can be said about this forum, but not that we have too many average people here.

It has been said that the 'average person' has one testicle and one breast.

 

[Meadbh]

This poll has now closed. There was a good response to this study, with 292 participants. The results show that over 51% of respondents indicated that they had no debt. Their posts make clear that many of this group do in fact have short term credit card debt, meaning that the true percentage without "any debt whatsoever" is smaller. The cumulative percentage of this "no debt" group and those reporting a debt to asset ratio of <10% is close to 85%. The curve is significantly skewed to the left. My impression is that the majority of the respondents, at least those who participated in the (lively) discussion, were already retired.

I had not anticipated a normal distribution, but I had thought the skew would be less pronounced, based on the never ending discussions about paying off mortgages in retirement. One poster indicated that the categories should have increased by 5% rather than 10%. To implement such a study design would have required many more categories, which would have made the study more difficult to interpret with a small dataset, or a lower cutoff, which would have masked the fact that a small minority of respondents have a debt to asset ratio of >40%.

The results are informative and I thank everyone who participated. Mods, please close this thread when you feel it appropriate.