How Much Debt do You Have?

[Flubber]

Debt for investing can make sense. For instance -- interest rates on my mortgage are at 4.5%. A person with a bit of risk tolerance could easily net more than that on a year over year basis

In my personal case I am already investing 20% of my paycheck so thats about as far as I want to go (and according to my financial planner is more than I need for retirement based on my stated assumptions)-- So if I have extra money , frankly the choices are really consumption or debt reduction-- so I do a little of both

[DanS]

Originally posted by Dis
how exactly can you do that?

Makes no sense to me. I hate being in debt. Perhaps because I'm always a worrier.

Some worry about debt. Some don't. If you worry about debt, then by no means does it make sense for you to worry yourself to death by taking on lots of debt.

If you max your debt out to 80% of your home's value, each month you will be paying an amount that indicates whether you are in too much of a house, as determined by your income and the current state of the housing market.

If you plan to invest the proceeds for the very long haul, it has other beneficial effects. For one, it leverages your safest asset and enables you to take on risk that you can retire simply by the passage of the decades. This is a somewhat advanced topic on which I'd like to hear some views, but perhaps this isn't the thread for it.