Friday, August 5, 2011

The Other Cost of Debt

Dave Ramsey teaches about the dangers of debt and how debt makes you a slave. Owing a debt means you are not truly free. Sure, debt costs you money, and when you owe money, you spend a long time paying it back. It costs you--but money is not the only thing you pay.

You also lose years of yourself. You don’t get those years back. The time and energy spent paying off the car loan could have been applied toward building a new business or going to school. The same $3000 that paid the Visa bill could have been the nest egg for your retirement. You don’t get that money back. And you expended a portion of your life paying something back what was borrowed.

My husband and I are hot on the track of getting out of consumer debt. It will take us a minimum of two more years to do it. A minimum. And we've been under the yoke of debt slavery for the past eight years of our marriage. So we will eventually enjoy the fruit of our hard work and be debt free, except for our house. At the end of the ten years of debt, will come a great relief. But along relief will surely be some regret that we ever found ourselves working hard for ten years, living without, doing without, always fearing the next disaster. That's no way to live. I'm sorry that our first ten years of marriage had the constant threat of financial storms rumbling overhead.

But we're determined to live out from under the threat.

Imagine being a newly freed slave. Would you rather be old and free or young and free? Speaking as one who is fighting to be free, I recommend never to have been enslaved at all.


(c) 2011 Sheri Smith Bertolini














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