Reply personal responsibility is a crock: here is why

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1. The thing is that one person can interpret the scriptures one way and another person can interpret the scriptures another way. What exactly is the correct way to interpret them? And, how can we be expected to interpret them properly especially if they were written or inspired by a perfect being and all of us are imperfect and flawed? In addition, let's add to the mix that some of us are autistic, some even more then others. And, part of that is we have problems with subtext, context, semantics and pragmatics.

2. I've been told to not overthink by various people from different walks of life. And, I will tell you the same thing that I tell others. I don't know how to not overthink. And, I've been to therapy since I was four. None of them was able to treat or cure me of this. Overthinking, we could argue is part of my given nature that God imbued me with if we want to go this route.

3. What do we have to do to have God's grace and salvation. I'm told that salvation cannot be earned and his grace can't be earned but I find this troubling as well. My pastor said that he came not to cancel the law but to fulfill it. This means we're under the law but the penalty for transgressing the law (which everyone does and will do) is canceled if we accept Jesus as our lord and savior and to have faith in him. Others seem to agree with this notion. Yet, isn't this a form of earning salvation? Doesn't faith become a form of work we must do?

4. And, this is the problem right here. If I don't choose to give Jesus Christ my loyalty and my faith then I'm to suffer under the penalty of transgressing the law.

How can I cheerfully give Jesus my faith and loyalty which is what God seems to want and demand under the threat of suffering the penalty if I choose not give him my faith and loyalty? A cheerful giver cannot coexist with compulsion and reluctance. Can it? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=ESV

5. It is true that I have a choice to have this faith or not but it is also true that if a robber threatens to shoot me if I don't give the robber my money that I have the choice to give this robber my money or not. What choice truthfully exists if the alternative is extremely negative? Accept Jesus Christ as one's lord and savior or be damned. Give the robber your money or die. This is not much of a choice at all. Both scenarios have elements of compulsion behind the choices. How do they not?

They don’t. Think about it. Why is it people will appease a robber to save their life but will refuse salvation to lose heaven for all eternity?

Here’s what I think—and I could be completely wrong here, but just my opinion—I think that people LIKE their material existence too much to consider eternal consequences. God/Jesus are too inconvenient to worry about. It would just be easier if they didn’t exist. If you bother at least believing in God, eternity shouldn’t be an issue as long as we’re good enough people, so what does it matter if I follow Jesus, Buddha, etc.? And that falls on the false premise that humans are sinless by nature and capable of earning their way into heaven.

My answer: The robber putting a gun to another person to rob them of their money is something that is tangible and concrete. Here are the tangible things that exist and we can prove to exist. Robbers, Money and Guns. All three have specific characteristics that describe what they are and proof of these exist in tangible existence.

God, heaven, hell, Lucifer, ,etc is simply an abstract in a number of people's mind. An idea that has no tangibility that has been given characteristics that are simply questionable. Has anyone ever had a true face to face conversation with God, Jesus, Lucifer, etc? The problem is that we're expected and demanded to have faith in something that has little to no tangibility and the characteristics and properties of all of these things are questionable at best. We're expected to have this faith and cheerfully give this faith at the metaphorical barrel of a gun while accepting the idea that we can't give under compulsion. And, we're to do all this with absolute devotion, obedience and without question at all.

Speaking of compulsion.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compelled

Let's look at the definition of compelled and compel which are root words of the word compulsion. And it seems to me that pressure and using pressure tactics is a form of compulsion.



By the way, there are Christians out there who say that we don't have free will at all and go with the idea of Calvinism. In their mind free will means the ability to choose God for the right reasons. And, because of the fall we're enslaved to our sin and so we can't choose salvation. We can't choose the prerequisite faith required for salvation. So, God has already made his choice and has already chosen his elect that will be predestined to be saved.

So, no one is good. All are sinful. Sin takes away the ability to choose God. God gives his elect the faith needed to choose him and they do. All God's elect goes to heaven and the rest suffer the penalty for all eternity.

So, who exactly is right? How exactly do we tell? How are we all with our sinful minds expected to know and understand what is correct and let's compound that will those on wrongplanet who are autistic with semantic, pragmatic and other communication challenges?

Jeremiah 1:5

5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

God made us a certain way. He knew what we would be before we was all a twinkle in our mother's eye. He knew what experiences I would have and he's the one who put my entire genetics package together. Some of us are skeptics and are more inclined to make sense of things using reason. God is asking and demanding of me and those who are of my subtype(lack of a better term) to go against the very essence of who we are to simply believe in him and have faith especially faith in a particular way to read the Bible and God's characteristics.

If things don't make sense then I'm going to ask extremely thorough questions.

Yes.


And yet people are resistant to the threat and reality of hell. With hell being such a horrible place of torment that nobody would rationally choose for themselves, why are there so many atheists and agnostics, let alone non-Christians? To that end, I’ve made two observations: 1) rejecting Christ isn’t rational, 2) they simply don’t want God.

It’s really not that complicated, though I do think that individual experiences are deeply complex. Pretty much if you’ve met one unbeliever, you’ve met one unbeliever. However, I have noticed a few common threads among atheists on WP.

But it all boils down to one simple fact of faith: There’s no such thing as a forced conversion. God doesn’t force you to believe if you don’t want to. Actually…that’s not accurate, it’s just Christianese. If think, more accurately, EVERYONE believes. It’s acceptance of grace that counts. “Belief” in Biblical terms implies action, meaning there are tons of professing, nominal Christians whose actions don’t reflect their words. I “believe” in Donald Trump in the sense that I acknowledge his existence. I’ve never personally met the guy. I don’t simply “believe” in God; I personally know Him.

The human mind cannot be forced to know something, at least not on our present level of existence. Once the human mind is denied its ability to refuse knowledge, even if the mind is delusional, that mind has no choice but to acknowledge that knowledge as being true. It’s apparent that God wishes to populate heaven with minds/souls who freely accept His grace, not those who would ever refuse, thus neither human reason nor the reality of hell will ever serve as elements of force to populate heaven with every human soul. If God’s intention is that a set number of souls will willingly populate heaven while souls have the choice to accept or reject God, it follows as a logical necessity that a number, a LARGE number in this case, would choose to reject God.


Meh…mostly irrelevant. I’m not a Calvinist. God created the world and allowed sin and evil to influence it. The human choice to accept or reject God is part and parcel with the nature of a fallen creation. God is omniscient and already knows who will and won’t make the free choice to accept Him. So is humanity truly free? Well…of course not. Not in any absolute sense. So I agree here that TRUE free will can’t exist. But that also means there’s no TRUE Scotsman either. So if free will is an illusion or follows a similar pattern as a No True Scotsman fallacy, aren’t we really just wasting time arguing about it?

But to address freedom—whether we choose to do good or evil, God already knows those choices. Whether we accept God or not, God already knows. We are either willing slaves of God or we are slaves to sin. We are God’s creation, after all, entirely subject to God’s will. The only choice we are allowed that matters is accepting God’s free gift of grace. The relevant point here is that God’s foreknowledge of the choices we would freely make of our own free will doesn’t change the fact that we freely made those choices. Plus…it is logically possible that EVEN IF free will is an illusion that the choices God made for us were the same choices we WOULD have made if free will were real.

For that reason, I avoid Calvinist arguments on free will—scratch that, I avoid ALL arguments on free will—because neither I nor an opponent has anything meaningful to gain from discussing it. Is human will free? I don’t know, you don’t know, and whether I’m right or you’re right or anyone else is right changes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I feel (unqualified opinion alert) that free will is more parsimonious and will often use free will as a theological and philosophical axiom. I find many things about Christianity easier to understand by presupposing free will. I disagree with many things about Calvinism, I agree with a few things, I don’t deny that predestination is relevant, and at the end of the day Calvinists who receive God’s grace through faith in Jesus are just as saved as I am.


Well, that doesn’t really work either because autistic people and people with disabilities chose to believe.

And everything you do is based on faith, anyway. A strict reliance on reason assumes the human mind is accurate and reasonable. That’s simply not the case, which you acknowledge. God reveals Himself to everyone, so there’s no excuse. And if you are aware that the nature of the human mind is that it is part of a fallen creation and incapable of knowing anything, trusting in God and renewal of the mind leads to knowledge that is reliable and true. The only way you can claim to be a skeptic and use reason is through faith.

All knowledge and reason comes from God.

I will discuss the rest later.

I guess it is sorta true that everything I do is based in faith. Even mathematical theorems are based in axioms and those axioms are based in a sort of faith. Yes, I do acknowledge that the human mind is fallible. And, therein lies the problem. All of our religious leaders, pastors, priests, all who contributed to the Bible and even Jesus's apostles were still human which means still imperfect and flawed.

This means my ability to read the Bible is compromised. All of our ability to read the Bible and to truthfully understand the word is compromised. My ability to understand God's message is compromised.

With that said, "you claim that God has revealed himself to everyone so there is no excuse." Well, if this includes me then I must've missed the boat then or maybe I was asleep at the wheel. I've never had any kind of conversation with God let alone any kind of in depth of conversation. Or, any kind of conversation in my entire life that I would know that I was having a conversation with God. I've never had any kind of dinner (Mac and Cheese) with God or even shared milk and cookies.

He's revealed nothing to me in a way that I am capable of understanding or grasping. If you mean that he's revealed himself through his word in the Bible then I'm sorry but parts of the Bible is chocked filled with metaphors and figurative language that is difficult for me to grasp and understand. It is filled with things that causes me to go "huh" "what" "I don't get this."

So, here's the thing. God created me. He formed thee in thy mother's womb. I'm his creation built with the genetics and disposition he desired and designed for me. Part of that is I'm extremely literal. I'm more concrete thinking according to one of the shrinks I saw. Anything that is implied, has double meanings and any kind of hint I'm not going to be able to pick up. Everything that needs to be conveyed to me has to be conveyed in such a way that I will understand. And, in a sort of way I'm like a computer. Everything that is expected of me has to be directly said with no hidden means and/or innuendos.

If God spoke to me and made any proclamation to me then I missed it.

In fact, I don't even grasp why it would be wrong to take the mark of the beast if God even said that we all must submit to governing authorities for there is no governing authority except for which God has established. Yet, God in the same breath says not to take the mark from the beast even though God made the beast a governing authority.

http://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible ... OM+13.html

Take the mark and we obey the command by God to submit to all governing authorities since all were ordained by him yet we disobey God since he told us all not to take this mark.

Refuse the mark and we disobey the command by God to submit to all governing authorities since all were ordained by him yet we obey God since he told us all not to take this mark.

Huh? What? How are we to obey exactly? How are we to submit to God exactly? God and I never had any kind of conversation on this at all. All the knowledge and reason comes from God. Where is the knowledge and reason on how must one obey him in this given scenario? I certainly never received it.

I read revelation. Revelation is extremely difficult to grasp and it's like who wrote it was on a bad acid trip. I couldn't make any heads or tails from reading revelation. How the authors of the left behind series derive what they derive from Revelation is beyond me.

UNLESS God has revealed Himself to us. So even being imperfect and flawed, it's their minds that have been healed at least enough to experience the reality of God and begin to understand what it means to do His will--among many, many other things.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/purdue-i ... 57798.html

Well, this seems to be a first. A boomer or older gen actually admitting they screwed up and are attempting to fix their own screw up instead shifting blame to the victims (younger gens).

Now, this is true personal responsibility.

Now, let's totally get rid of the student loans, forgive them in a jubilee like in the Bible and don't allow student loans to anyone ever again. AngelRho is right on the never allowing student loans again part.

then won't college just revert to the exclusive province of the high born or lotto winners or wealthy early retirees?

Yes and no. College loans represent money that the student hasn’t earned. Money not backed by creative ideas and products has no value, which means nothing bought with it is valuable. Degrees aren’t worth anything, so what’s the point of selling yourself into slavery to get one? And since professors base their livelihoods on taking this worthless money, they amount to little more than parasites and looters. What’s truly pathetic is I’ve known many amazing human beings who are college profs, had a positive influence on me, and they’re caught up in this because they love their work and this is the only way they have to do what they love. They don’t want to be freeloaders, but that’s just the nature of the system.

Those who are born into wealth have the expectation that they will stand on their parent’s shoulders and achieve great things as a legacy to their forebears. An elite education is theirs not for anything they’ve done but for what their parents have achieved. Nobody goes to college because of what they want in life. You go to college for what your parents want for you. And if you want to see things go in a different direction for the future, you make those decisions for your children. You are never entitled to whatever you want just because you’re born rich. The decision to use money for any purpose belongs to those who earn that money. The super-rich have earned that luxury to determine a child’s educational options. Those who do not achieve on the same level don’t get to do that.

And I’m not saying that the super-rich are superior human beings to the poor. The idea is that achievers are rewarded for achievement and can use their reward any way they like. If you had the money and could bankroll your kids in any college anywhere in the world, why would you NOT do it? Likewise, if you don’t have that kind of money, why should you be made to feel guilty if you couldn’t send your kid to college? For the rich, college functions mainly as a means of cementing a legacy. If you lack that legacy, and there’s no shame in that, why do you need college for your kids? College is mainly for the parents, not for students.

Now…what about poor students who would benefit from the education? Let’s go back and look at the VALUE of education. Loans enslave the borrower, and it’s commonplace for students to have enough debt to buy a house with just to go in-state. The pressure to achieve requires buying a house, a new car, and perhaps start a family. This means accumulating massive debt in a short period of time. At the end of the day, for the average person, you barely have enough money to eat with and keep the lights on. You don’t get to enjoy the fruits of your labor because all of it goes back to the bank. With SO MUCH MONEY given out in educational loans, there’s a glut of degrees relative to value that the promise of education relative to career doesn’t amount to much. Up until about the 1980’s or 1990’s, that meant something. That’s no longer the case. So do poor people benefit from predatory lenders promising them wealth if they complete a degree program? Not really, because the degree doesn’t fix the problem of why their family is poor in the first place. Wealth and poverty are the products of the individual’s decisions regarding money and value. You get rich through the same means rich people get rich—through the exploitation of valuable ideas and physical labor. Because of that, and this is the part that’s really going to hurt, YOU DON’T NEED A COLLEGE EDUCATION TO BECOME RICH. It is often the case for poor students that college education does more harm than good.

By shifting the focus to achievement through hard work, you have greater earning potential than any college grad.

So…let’s say you come from a poor family and all you care about is just not being poor anymore. You know that a college education is essential because you want to be a nurse/lawyer/teacher and a degree is required for those jobs. You work hard in high school to keep high grades in, say, science or social studies, maybe you don’t graduate valedictorian but you’re way up in the top 10%, have high scores on standardized tests, etc. You play a musical instrument/run track, get a full band/athletic scholarship to community college, complete an associate degree in nursing, get a high-paying job in a hospital, save enough money for two years in a university and either bankroll that spread over 4 years off/on or talk your hospital into giving you a scholarship/loan on the condition you agree to remain employed by that hospital for, say, 5 years—which you would have done anyway. Or you work a minimum wage sacking groceries, volunteer running errands at the courthouse, attend town hall meetings, and earn side money researching court records for a local lawyer. You save up your money while doing paralegal studies on full band/athletic scholarship at the community college, bankroll a university degree in political science while volunteering and doing paralegal work, maybe earn side money as a process server (I used to do this, btw). When you’re done, by this point you know and have worked for several lawyers. So you approach some of the bigger law firms and ask for a loan/scholarship on the condition you work for that firm as an associate for 5 years.

Yes, you have to work yourself to near exhaustion every day. But you’d do that regardless, and in the end you have something nobody else has: a debt-free diploma, a career, and EXPERIENCE. You know how much teaching experience I had prior to student teaching? Zilch. You know how much networking I did before teaching? NONE. And I’m paying for it now. I should have been volunteering at the local high school, giving free clarinet lessons at the low-income public school, going to the state bandmaster clinics, visiting schools everywhere, networking. You know what ended up happening to me? “Earned” my master’s degree in composition with student loans, applied for jobs where nobody had even heard of me, took jobs in school districts so desperate they interviewed/hired me on the spot with less than a week before the school year began. I haven’t made a single payment on my $50k loans in a decade. When you live below the poverty line and you have 7 people living under the same roof, you’re forced to be crazy inventive!

So yeah, I have regrets that I have to live with. The last 20 years of my career have been completely pointless considering my educational background. That doesn’t mean I never accomplished anything. I volunteer with a group of church musicians who travel around the state, I perform in and even guest conduct a community band, I’m helping put together a Christian praise and worship band for a concert in July, I’ve played in some really good cover bands, I’ve done fundraising, performed at private events, taught piano lessons. I’ve even appeared on a reality show, made other TV appearances promoting volunteer work I’ve been involved in, directed a musical production with an award-winning community theater group. My life doesn’t suck by a long shot. But for all that I’ve accomplished and still living dirt poor, I mean…there’s no excuse for that. When I’m dead and gone nobody will remember or even miss me. My loans will probably be forgiven because I’ve gotten out of paying them through the IBR program, not because I accomplished anything to payed them off.

Going the route of loans if you come from a humble background just isn’t the way to go. I got a full tuition band scholarship to a 4-year college and a 3-year loan/scholarship that paid off a significant portion of what was left. For teaching so many years, $5k principal was forgiven, but came back in interest so…that accomplished nothing meaningful.

You’re poor when you go to college, and you’re poor when you leave, PLUS you have loans to repay. So not only are you poor when you leave college, you don’t even get to keep the money you earn from that fancy new job you got from “earning” your degree. That is seriously messed up!

I’m not going to lie and say I regret earning two degrees. I’m not going to lie and say having two degrees didn’t give me any advantage at all—it is difficult to get a teaching license without a teaching degree. Possible for SOME people, but difficult for most. I get better pay with a master’s degree. I’m just saying being saddled with debt and little to show for it wasn’t worth it. I should have found better ways of doing things so I wouldn’t have ended up in this mess. I’ve corrected a number of things in my life to keep it from being a total disaster and am able to live quite comfortably as a result. But I should have been where I am now 10-15 years ago or picked a better career path for me. Young people need to think about these things when looking at a college and career path and the prospect of using debt to get there.

All in all, all things considered, a better outcome is much more likely with hard work than with sitting on your butt all day.

There are times when working hard produces no results----but I feel, even with no apparent results right away, that results will, ultimately, be obtained via hard work.

I sort of sit on my butt all day, while I work--though I work hard when I have to. The result is that I'm just a clerk, rather than a supervisor. And I feel apathy which permeates my very being sometimes.

I think what I will do in a post in the near future is actually make a DEFENSE of student loans. I’ve come to see debt as a useful tool for achieving goals. However, for debt to accomplish anything, it has to be negotiated as a partnership between lender and borrower. The current state of student loans ignores conventional borrowing practices such as mitigating risk and return on investment. Loan money is treated as an entitlement with no accountability demanded of the borrower. Probably what needs to happen if parents want their kids to have a college education, they need to take full responsibility for the risks of taking out loans and repaying them. If the child cannot complete a degree or successfully start a career, it’s probably not fair to “sell” the child on the benefits of education. The parents could make a decision to pull the child out of college and cut their losses by paying what little debt was actually incurred rather than drawing out the inevitable and being stuck with a bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars and nothing to show for it. Or if the kid ends up like me, just pay it off and take it out of the kid’s inheritance.

Point being…there are ways to manage it like an investment with gains and losses and still not have heavy consequences to deal with. For the right kind of person, it could work out. It’s just this isn’t our present reality, and we could go a long way to fixing it.

It's better for your credit score (I find this to be sort of a paradox) to have debt, and to be paying it off on time on that debt.....than it is to have no debt at all.

You are absolutely right. And...just so we're clear, my credit score is in the 700's. I am NOT proud of that.

My argument, though, is whether a credit score actually represents anything valuable. High credit scores demonstrate that the borrower has a large number of bills and is able to pay them on time. What high credit scores don't tell you is the borrower's level of risk, only that there are high-profile fools willing to lend him money.

Let's say you're a doctor with Ivy League training with Ivy League loans. You're repaying hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, you drive a sports car to work, your mortgage principal is $250,000 in a high-property tax neighborhood/development, you have a business loan to cover medical equipment/supplies, you rent space for your clinic, and you manage daily expenses plus the Country Club plus civic organizations with the platinum credit card. There are other things you pay for, of course, like med/mal insurance, and all kinds of taxes/fees, etc. that have nothing to do with your debt, but keep this in the back of your mind because it's going to be relevant later on.

Life is good, you accommodate a large number of patients, you're well staffed with good nurses or assistants. One day there's an explosion at the widget factory that employs half the town, and with it the number of your patients explodes. Of course they're paying patients because they all have health insurance, plus they are being compensated from the widget company's own insurance plan. And that means emergency treatment, diagnostics, ongoing treatment in the short term, and repeat followups afterwards. What could possibly go wrong? You put a down payment on a yacht, put the kids in a BETTER private school, and your wife is dripping with diamonds.

Well, something DOES go wrong...

The widget company files Chapter 7 after being hit with so many lawsuits they can't rebuild the plant or pay workers at their other factories, and widget competitors are nowhere near where you live. Without the economic benefit of the widget factory to the local economy, many of your patients relocate for a career change while a few find jobs working for other widget companies. And that means the only patients you have left are elderly or otherwise on Medicaid.

You don't have enough money to pay your staff, so you lay off all but two--a nurse and a receptionist. You're barely making rent payments, so you move your clinic to a smaller building on the other side of town since that's all you could find. Meanwhile, some thug breaks in and steals some of your medical equipment (which you're still making payments on), and insurance won't cover the replacement value. You're stuck with a bill for equipment you don't have, plus you have to take out money to replace it with equipment getting MORE expensive over time.

You can't afford your mortgage, so you put the house up for sale. Except with everyone leaving the area for better jobs somewhere else, nobody wants to buy your house. You're stuck with it, and the bank hits you with a foreclosure notice. You try to sell your sports car to get out from under those payments, but you ran up the miles on it by making it your work vehicle. You're lucky if you can get $2k for the $80k you spent just driving it off the lot. You sit down with your wife and explain to her that things are seriously bad and some changes have to be made. The kids will have to transfer to public school after this school year, and the diamonds have to go back. She files for divorce and sues you for child support to force you to pay tuition. She keeps the diamonds. You put the yacht for sale, but it was damaged in a recent hurricane. You barely make ends meet, so you decide MAYBE you can squeak by one month without med/mal insurance, which is too expensive and you've never had any problems with patients before. And then one day a patient develops an infection after a visit with you. You KNOW it can't possibly be your fault, but it doesn't matter because you're getting sued.

House sells at foreclosure auction for a whopping $80,000, repo man takes your car, the bank calls in your business loan, and the credit card is maxed out. Ex-wife sues you for being a deadbeat dad. You file Chapter 13 to MAYBE save your medical practice, but you can't bankrupt your student loans, and now you don't have the money to pay private educational loans. Those guys aren't going to be as nice as the federal government! You have to drop out of the country club and the civic clubs because you can't afford them, and you lose your networking and opportunities to schmooze with rich retirees.

But hey, this all started with having a great credit score, right? RIGHT???

Here's the thing: If you are good at what you do, your business or practice will become impossible to manage without expanding. You'll also have a ton of money coming in to support what you do. You take your CASH and buy new medical equipment after you sell what you have. Then you pay your rent in CASH, because you have to budget for that anyway. Then you move out of your apartment into a small 2-bedroom where you'll start your family, because you have $50k you can invest in a fixer-upper. Then you wait and see what happens. When the widget factory explodes and the local economy goes to crap, you have to decide if you're ok with medicare/medicaid patients or if you want to move to a more economically advantaged location. You flip the 2-bedroom and sell it for more than what you paid for, or if you upgraded to a $150,000 5-br 2-story, that you can't sell any time soon, convert it to Air BnB and advertise it for game hunters or tourists. Then you pay for whatever else you need down the road in CASH, upgrade equipment, or whatever you need, and keep rocking and rolling. The beauty of this is that there's no credit score required.

Wait, you need credit to buy a house? Not if you're paying in cash, you don't! And if you need a house fast and the price is just out of reach, what you do is talk with the bank and have them connect you with an underwriter. Just explain that you never purchase on credit. They'll see you have a thriving medical practice, underwrite your loan, and since you pull in $300,000 a year ALL PROFIT and you'll pay off your 15 year mortgage in less than 5 years, they'll give you anything you want. And the beauty of having your loan underwritten is that they are going to scrutinize every possible risk before approving it. They'll know your future situation long before you do, and if there's going to be a problem, that might be a good indication you don't need to relocate to THAT area.

When I get time, I'll make good on making a defense for loans, but I do stand behind the idea that it's better to avoid debt every chance you get.

Oh, and in the previous scenario: I want to point out that expectations are high--the doctor EXPECTS to have a successful practice. You don't weigh risks expecting things to go wrong. You weigh risks expecting things to go the way you want them to. And while that seems like the perfect reason to get loans for a business, a home, and a car, it's actually the perfect reason to do the exact opposite. You EXPECT things to go your way because you are WORKING to make things go your way. You aren't going to settle for anything less. That's why you'll start with humility and grow over time in such a way that you minimize risk. When things go wrong, which they often will, you use that as a learning experience, a teachable moment, and adjust course. You cannot reasonably expect to borrow your way out of a crisis since borrowing with the expectation of paying money back means assuming a high risk that you won't always be able to repay your debts. That's why both lending and borrowing are extremely risky and foolish for all involved. You don't lend money without the expectation that the money will be repaid plus interest. You don't borrow money thinking you can't repay it, or without the intention of paying it back plus interest. If you don't account for the risk that you could make a mistake or things might happen beyond your control, two things can happen depend on which side of the desk you're on.

If you're the borrower, you end up in a situation in which you cannot repay your debts, leading to a lack of confidence down the road and the inability to secure funds to start over. Even paying in cash is a problem because people will hesitate to do business with someone who can’t manage money responsibility, including how he handles debts. If he can't pay his bills, why should I trust him to deliver the product I ordered?

If you're the lender, that's money you can't get back. And when you can't get a return on an investment or debt, you are unable to continue lending and profiting from lending as effectively, and that cuts into your margin in the long term. It only works out for both when you account for risk and have open and honest discussions about that. A good debt plan will have an exit strategy. I recently bought a house. I pay a mortgage on that house. I had a number of reasons for doing that. First, houses in that neighborhood are affordable and frequently change hands. They're nice, but they are older, historical houses that sell easily. So if I need to get out of Dodge, I'm confident I could get out of my mortgage at any time. Second, the terms of my loan are highly affordable. 30 year, fixed rate. Translation: I have no intention of living long enough to paying it off!! ! It beats the heck out of paying rent. And if I needed to move and couldn't unload the house right away, I could afford 2 30 year fixed rate mortgages in the short term. Why? Because I know I'll get a substantial pay raise at my next job. The bank and I agree that this arrangement is risky, but we've covered what could happen in the event of a financial disaster and what our options are. We've prepared for every reasonable contingency. Everyone wins here.

I don't get the impression MOST borrowers and lenders establish that kind of relationship. Loan officers are too worried about their commission to adequately assess risk. Borrowers feel entitled to only the best of everything--which is fine if you have EARNED the best. It seems to me seldom the case that people do, and that's the main trouble with modern day debt management. The only way to REALLY manage it is to not have it at all.

In fact...

The ideal position for anyone to have is to manage WEALTH instead of debt. Even with this mortgage, our focus is always on managing assets rather than liabilities. With few liabilities and making assets work for us, debts are no concern of ours. At the first opportunity, we would take any excess money we make and pay off the debt as quickly as possible. That way, even if we had to move, we have $80k of house that is OURS, not the banks, and all that equity could transfer to a new place. So making as much money as possible and eliminating debt every chance we can is the way to go. If we had our way, we would have a ZERO (0) credit score.

Last edited by AngelRho on 04 Apr 2022, 4:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A 700's credit score is really okay----especially when one gets past 740 or so. I wouldn't be ashamed at a 700's credit score at all.

Mine is in the 800's-----primarily because of the amount of debt I'm paying off. It's really only my student loan at this point----but, in the past, I had a few credit card, and accrued large balances before finally paying them off.

Anyway.....my yearly income will never be in six figures---so I'm pretty much at the mercy of the US credit system.