At what point in life or at what debt amount should we really question the direction of our financial security? Are we getting too comfortable living a life of consistent debt and payment plans? Is $5,000 okay, $25,000, $100,000, or how about $0?
I wasn’t really planning on writing anything today, but after a conversation last night with several neighbors while traveling together it really opened my eyes to how most people are living a life of debt. I should know better than most people live with debt than do not, but why are we so comfortable living this way?
Your Relationship With Debt
- Are you too casual?
- Is it a long-distance relationship?
- Are you on again, off again?
- Is it getting hot and heavy?
- Are you and debt taking things to the next level?
- Are you getting uncomfortable and need to cut things off?
- Is a divorce in the near future?
The Debt Drive
So I spent about 3 hours in the car with several of my neighbors last night. We were all headed to hang out together and the conversation quickly went to debt because of a Facebook post from one of our other neighbors. I wrote about it in my post yesterday on college debt possibly crushing our financial plans. But here is the post from the neighbor.
“My husband and I have loads of student loans. And by loads, I mean LOADS! Like, our loan payment is quite a bit higher than our house payment.
We are tired of making that huge payment and feeling like we never get anywhere. It will take us 25 years to pay them off at this pace. And we want to speed that up. Significantly! We are tired of having the payments weighing us down, and feeling like we can never get ahead because of that payment! If you are in a situation where you a…re tired of debt, you may want to join us!
We are starting a support group on Facebook to help support others who want to pay down debt.”
That is great they are working on it. It’s better than hiding your face in the sand and hoping it goes away. Their debt is in the high six-figure range which is just amazing but unfortunately happens.
My Debt is Better Than Your Debt
The amazing part of the conversation in the car was realizing I was the only one without debt (besides my mortgage). It was amazing to hear the justification on how absurd one neighbor’s debt was because it was six figures, but that their debt was ONLY $60,000, and was okay with it. Of the 6 people in the car, the lowest debt amount was $30,000…except my $0, but I didn’t really join the conversation, I was just a listener.
So it got me thinking that maybe we’re just a little too comfortable with debt. Has it just become acceptable to live life with tens of thousands in debt? The compound interest that should be building up in our investment accounts is instead spending time building up the opposite direction increasing our debt load and going to other places than our pockets.
Other Options
Rather than just accepting that debt is good and everyone is doing it, is there another way we could think about debt? Should we hold off on a purchase until we can buy it in whole? Maybe we could live without it.
I know when we purchased our last car 6 years ago we decided to finance half of it and after 3 payments my wife said, “This is ridiculous, let’s just pay it off.” She was right. It made no sense just to have a payment to just have a payment.
So how is your relationship with debt? Are you quickly heading toward divorce or are things getting hot and heavy?
