Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the "The more debt you have, the less financially resilient you are" was the more important message.
But this isn’t true, one has to consider the debt ratio, not just the debt. Someone with a million dollars of debt is financially resilient if they have a debt ratio of .1
How I think about debt
31–40 of 445 posts
Re: How I think about debt
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
You simply restructured your debt and borrowed from parents instead, no? That is to say, you owe them for those ten years. Not saying there’s anything wrong with it. Most people in average circumstances owe a lot to their parents.
>> You simply restructured your debt and borrowed from parents instead, no? >> That is to say, you owe them for those ten years. To me that seems like a strange take on it. I saw no indication of a debt owed in the GPs comment.
2: to be attributable an idea that owes to Greek philosophy
Re: How I think about debt
#33This guy's entire life (He's a VC) is about pushing debt in the form of promissory notes and equity-debt onto companies in exchange for his own ownership How does he reconcile the fact that the companies he lauds in the beginning, would completely shun any business with him (an investor) for precisely the reasons described? I feel like investors and VC are unaware of their own values
There's a difference between business finance and personal finance. There's a difference between what needs to be done to start a business and what needs to be done to keep it going.
Apple started in a garage, but it is no longer run out of one. Apple started with loans and investors, Apple now has a large pile of cash (though also bonds that it needs to pay).
Re: How I think about debt
#34Today, I started picking up what I started some time back -- the book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber goes deep into the details of Debt. I've heard good reviews and I hope this is a good book as they say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
Re: How I think about debt
#35I want to have opportunities to create my own business, make profit, enjoy profit, hand modest generational wealth to my descendants and die without regrets.
Thousand year business are not the way to achieve my goals and my goals are not incomplete with debt.
I hold debt on my house. My future is tied to that debt and I wouldn’t have it another way (I mean unless you want to pay off my house).
Re: How I think about debt
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought Dave Ramsey was pretty much completely wrong about student loan debt, at least if I remember his position on it being "you shouldn't have student loans". But I agree that most debt is probably bad to have.
It might be extreme but 15 years ago he was telling people not to be so flippant about taking on enormous amounts of debt for degrees with a questionable payback and I think he was right. I always thought the snowball method was dumb but as time goes on I can see how it makes sense psychologically, even if not mathematically.
What I didn't like about his take was that it also kind of also excluded getting into like $20,000-$40,000 of debt to go to a decent state school. That's a bad take; getting a degree (at least in a technical field) substantially increases your earning potential, and while $40,000 is a lot of money, it's not out of reach for virtually anyone working in tech or engineering or something adjacent, at least not in the US.
I guess my frustration with his perspective is that it felt extremely reductive; he acts like the only student loan debt you can get into is Harvard-level stuff, but I think that's just not true, and not even the average case. Most people don't get into Harvard, (I think) most people who go to college end up at a state or local university, and as such they're not getting into the obscene levels of debt that you'd get from these yuppie private schools, particularly if they state within state.
Re: How I think about debt
#37I don't think all debt is equal, and I don't think all debt hurts your ability to handle volatility. I have a 30 year mortgage on my house with a 2.75% interest rate. That has effectively given myself "rent control"; outside of a potential rise of property taxes, my "rent" payment will not exceed a certain number of dollars. That means that if the housing prices rise rapidly, I'm covered. If I had decided not to leve…
The author on paying down his mortgage:
> It just increased our independence, even if it made no sense on paper. So that's another element of debt that I think goes misunderstood. And a lot of that for both of those points is this idea that people don't make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They don't make them in Excel. They make financial decisions at the dinner table. That's where they're talking about their goals and their own different personalities and their own unique fears and their own unique skills and whatnot. So that's why I kind of push people to say like, it's okay to make financial decisions that don't make any sense on paper if they work for you, if they check the boxes of your psychology and your goals that makes sense for you. And for me, extreme aversion, what looks like an irrational aversion today, and I would say is an irrational aversion to debt, is what works for me and what makes me happy, so that's why I've done it.
Re: How I think about debt
#38I don't think all debt is equal, and I don't think all debt hurts your ability to handle volatility. I have a 30 year mortgage on my house with a 2.75% interest rate. That has effectively given myself "rent control"; outside of a potential rise of property taxes, my "rent" payment will not exceed a certain number of dollars. That means that if the housing prices rise rapidly, I'm covered. If I had decided not to leve…
Are you going to live in that house for 30 years? What’s your plan when you need to move?
So my plan if I move is exactly what it sounds like: I sell the house and then buy a new one wherever I'm moving to. As long as I'm staying for like 5+ years at that location I think it's still worth it.
Re: How I think about debt
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the "The more debt you have, the less financially resilient you are" was the more important message.
But this isn’t true, one has to consider the debt ratio, not just the debt. Someone with a million dollars of debt is financially resilient if they have a debt ratio of .1
Re: How I think about debt
#40when you have cash you do what you want. when you have debt you do what someone else wants.