My family and I were just talking recently about people's attitude toward carrying debt. It seems for some people that it doesn't matter how much something costs; it only matters how much credit you can obtain. Monthly payments are considered more than interest paid. I think that's just a bad place to be, mostly because of this proverb. Think about it: when you go to work, the money you're making is for someone else, not you. If you're carrying debt, you're someone else's servant until that debt is paid. That's a great piece of advice we should all consider.
My wife and I were driving our 02 Ford Explorer (with 127,000 miles) past a car lot the other day. We saw a brand new Ford Explorer with a price tag of $33,000! Even if you were able to obtain 0% interest on that for 60 months, your payment would still be $550/month! If you ask me, that's absurd. That's coming close to our house payment for the first house we bought in 1999.
What's even scarier is our national debt. Don't be fooled; no one really knows what $12 trillion looks like. It's kind of like saying the universe came into being 14 billion years ago. Nobody can even fathom a number that large. And the thing is, it doesn't seem to matter one bit to anyone is Washington that we're this far in over our heads. According to this proverb, the US is a servant to all our creditors. In some sort of roundabout way, we are owned by and playing the servant (or with this kind of debt, "slave" would be a more appropriate term) to foreign countries who hold our notes. When will they call our loans?
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