If you want to adopt a very risk-conservative profile, then being debt-free can be a good part of that. But I think a lot of people would struggle to buy a house without a mortgage.
Debt lets you smooth out payments across your entire life - it lets people like Uni students borrow against their future income (for example). It lets people with lots of assets and low expense needs lend those assets to those that have higher expense needs (matching net savers and net borrowers). Risk taking for potential reward is a fundamental part of the market. You just need to find the appropriate risk profile that your comfortable with. The same principles apply to people, to companies, to governments. That doesn't excuse reckless borrowing. But the idea that all debt is bad all the time for all people is terribly misguided. If people couldn't lend their surplus assets to borrowers, then the temptation would be to spend it while you can, and that would cause other problems. Cheers Ken From: Jon Harris [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, 13 January 2009 3:22 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Would this be good for IT, or what? (UNCLASSIFIED) That is the kind of stuff my dad and mom beat us kids over the head with for years. My dad said if I did not have the money to pay cash don't buy it, if I could not justify it to someone else don't buy it, and the only good debit was $0, with the exception of a home mortgage and even that should be paid off early if possible. Both of my parents lived through the Depression so they learned the hard way themselves. That was not lost on any of us kids either. Jon On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Jacob <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: +3... heard him on the radio a few years ago. Went from 25K in debt to 0 in less than two years. Amazing how much I was wasting money on c...@p!!! Nothing like being debt free, other than a mortgage payment. From: Sherry Abercrombie [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 8:05 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Would this be good for IT, or what? (UNCLASSIFIED) Yup, +2 for Dave Ramsey. Very sound financial principals. On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 9:43 AM, David McSpadden <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: +1 Dave Ramsey ________________________________ From: David Lum [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 10:32 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Would this be good for IT, or what? (UNCLASSIFIED) +1 times ten! We'll spend thousands sending out kids to college but never teach them the basics of money and not using credit for anything but a house. My parents didn't teach me that, it took me over 40 years (until Feb of last year) to really "get it" (thank you Dave Ramsey). Funny the things we think we *need* to have. Pretty sure 99% of these items our ancestors got along just fine without. Veering nearer to back on topic, adding the need for several thousand IT jobs can't be a bad thing, but I am interested in hearing from IT guys in the healthcare industry what obstacles need to be overcome. It's one thing to say "digitize healthcare records", another entire to pull it off - there must be dozens of little "gotcha's". ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
