American debt: Are you in deeper or ahead of the average?

[Ms. Toad]

22. Zero debt.

We use credit cards, but pay them off in full each month. We use the cards as a 30-day interest-free loan. And, we're holding the mortgage for our daughter's house (she was hit with the new redlining - no loans for houses under $100,000) - so she owes us around $100,000 (the purchase price + renovation prices).

We're lucky enough to have worked at decent paying jobs whenever we wanted to work, our spending choices are not luxurious (we've never had cable TV, our phone bill is $30/month for two phones with unlimited talk/text/data, etc., when we were approved for a $125,000 mortgage 35 years ago we bought a home for $70,000, etc.), and we took advantage of several child-free years to get a head start on retirement. And - I was lucky enough to work for 11 years in a position with a defined benefit retirement plan, and left my money there when I moved on. Decades later, I returned to another position in the same system - and doubled my guaranteed retirement income because the payout is based on the highest 3 or 5 years of earning.

But yes, I do know how lucky I am - and that a lot of it was the luck of having parents who valued education, who modeled living within their means, and the luck of being in the right place at the right time.