Personally, I'm terrified of debt. My parents filed for bankruptcy when I was a teen. I didn't let myself get a credit card until well after college. While I have a credit card, I've never held a credit card balance. I use it purely for the modest rewards.

I did have 10's of thousands of dollars in college loans at one point that I just didn't pay until I had a lump sum to pay them (I hate bill admin).

When I was living hand to mouth as a grocery store clerk in my late teens/early 20s, I was unbanked due to overdraft fees and would use check cashing. A handful of times I would get payday loans to make rent.

Never had a car loan. Never bought a house.

In a strange way, my debt-fobia makes me feel like I've been left out of the modern economy a bit.

I used to think of it as the devil. Something to avoid, sign of bad financial habits.

After reading the Fiat Standard, I understood that gaining access to and using debt in a smart way is pretty much a must to succeed, money wise, in today's world.

I'm also running a real life experiment by going into debt to buy bitcoin.

I did the go into debt to buy bitcoin and tbh I regret it. It has been mostly profitable but the mental cost isn't worth it.

My pre bitcoin self loved debt. I never used it to buy stuff, but I believed in the OPM(other people's money) theory in business. I would never use my own equity if I could borrow money for an investment, mainly real estate. It worked out for me. I managed my leverage. It would be fair to criticize me as a rent seeker who took advantage of the Cantillon Effect. I didn't realize that's what I was doing at the time.

My experience with debt is that I've generally avoided it my whole life. I've paid my credit card off right away for many years and even my college loans, I ended up paying off when I crashed my car in my early 20's (the insurance settlement was exactly how much I needed to pay it off). I also lived on cheap pasta (down to $0.37 a meal) for a few months to do it. That said, there was this mortgage thing that I had to start dealing with as soon as I got married.

I had to think a lot about the morality of money while working on "Thank God for Bitcoin." I went into it thinking that it's just a normal part of life and that mortgages and credit cards were an everyday fact of life.

The more I studied money from a moral perspective, the more I realized that debt, especially debt that was created from nothing like mortgages and credit card debt, is an unmitigated evil. Each time we take out a mortgage or use a credit card, we're expanding the money supply because that's not money coming from someone's savings. Hence all such debt is stealing from everyone else holding that currency, in my case the US dollar. Those are some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world, the people living in hyperinflation like in Venezuela, Lebanon, North Korea. Those are the people I'm stealing from.

I think Biblical writers had it right. Debtor is servant to the lender. That's how I view debt now, even the debt that's from someone's savings.

I use a credit card to pay for everything, and it gets auto-paid in full from my bank account every month.

That way I pay zero interest on the card, get to spend money now and pay it in a month (free month of life and/or a free buffer in case I need it at some point)

On top of that I get cheaper flights for the points I get for using the card, plus discounts at restaurants, and other perks.

Also purchases come with an insurance built in for paying with credit card...

Basically I get most of the benefits with almost no cons.

It's like going to Las Vegas and enjoying the cheap drinks and food while not gambling :)

Debt is a tool of the wealthy.

The wealthy can use debt to invest in capital and improve society, and they can use debt to extract resources from the poor.

Uncollateralized, high-interest debt is Usury, pure wickedness and a snare for the poor. The wealthy do not indulge in it and never carry an interest bearing balance from one month to the other on their credit cards.

Only go into debt to buy assets, not liabilities

That summarizes my experience so far

My mortgage is 2.65% over 30 years. Free money. I'll NEVER pay it down early.

I took all the equity out of my house at 0.25%+Prime to buy bitcoin.

My car payment is 2.5% over next 6 years.

It's a big game. Debt isnt bad or good. It's how you use it to play the game.

I have NO debts from many years ago, after I withdraw all my money from all banks, including all pension funds and... bough BTC.

Yes, in 2015 I took also a small loan from a bank to ... buy more BTC, but I paid it back quickly.

Now I live happily DEBT FREE, only with my BTC. Bitcoin world is a debt free. Fiat world is a debt slavery.

nothing better than 18 months 0% APR offers. use it up pay it off never use again.

I know I’m probably hurting myself by not making use of debt as a tool, but I just don’t like how debt feels. A weight on me. I pay it off and buy stuff in cash if I can help it.

In terms of debt to buy bitcoin... I would only ever consider it in the event of being prepared for a scenario where violence is used against you to hand over physical assets e.g. if you have a house you own with a family in it, you're probably not in a good position to tell creditors to fuck off.

Now, that doesn't mean it is likely you even have to get there, especially if you don't have a trivial to find physical location (though most people live wherever their drivers license says). Debt is not as scary as people make it out... debtors will capitulate and be like "so you owe use $10... Would you please give us $3 and call it even?"

I was trying to build a debt tool that is cryptographically unrehypothecatable... I think it will get built by someone at some point, but would not be easy.

For the past 30 odd years, asset prices have gone up while debt has gone down. The magic of inflation. The time is coming when this trend will reverse. Asset prices will going down while the nominal value of the debt remains constant and will cause negative equity in some assets. This is why I don't have any debt. I'm happy to forgo the sats. Staying humble and slowly stacking sats allows me to sleep at night and not care about fiat price of bitcoin.

Debt in high value assets (like real estate) are fine to hold over time, so long as payments are always made... For more daily type of purchases I use a CC, but always fully pay it off at the end of each month. I have also always paid cash for used cars, and never had a car payment. Debt is a tool, but can quickly become a hindrance. Slow and steady wins the race.

My debt journey started very early in life. Growing up poor my mother didn’t know anything about finance. My sister got a job at a bank and helped me get my first bank account and she warned me about the pitfalls of credit card debt Told me to never to carry a balance. Which I still follow to this day.

So when it was time to go to college my mom encouraged me to take out loans to pay for school because “knowledge is something they can’t take away” she told me.

So I enrolled into a really expensive private school and after 4 years I racked up $50k in student loans. I went into a STEM field and I was confident I would earn enough to pay the loans off but hopefully I would be able to find a job to pay them off for me. Which I did by working for the government.

After college I got my first of 3 car loans. I always paid those off quickly as possible. But interest rate on those was always below 5%.

After 4 years of working with the government I paid off all of my student debt using their debt repayment program.

Then I just used credit cards to pay for everything and racked up hella reward points. Points I would use for travel gifts for money I was spending. Trying my best to achieve a perfect credit score. I credit card churned all in the chase if free money while never paying a single cent in interest.

I would often use the 0% APR offers because they were “free money”. For example when bitcoin crashed to $3k I bought BTC using a 0% Apr credit card then used the 0% term of 18 months to pay it off. But the nagging payment after the fact would always annoy me and I would end up paying it off way before the grace period.

Using the VA loan (which allows 0% down) to purchase a few homes at great interest rates.

For the homes I used loans to pay for solar systems.

The last major loan I took is the one I am struggling the most with. I took a business loan to buy some miners at the peak of the market. $75/TH was the price for miners. Now the BTC price has crash and I’m just barely getting by making loan payment and paying for power for the miners. I am crunching the numbers to see if I would have been better off just buying BTC instead of the miners but so far it’s too early to tell.

But the silver lining is the interest on the loan counts as a business expense! Because of that and how the business isn’t profitable my federal tax liability is very very small. Not saying I regret doing this deal yet but probably was not the smartest use of debt for me to date.

But I think that is my last hurrah with debt. Now I am trying to live more if a debt free/bank free life. I’m just so tired of this broken ass system. It blew my mind that interest loan payments can be a business expense and lower your tax burden.

I have always been responsible with debt and clearly it had a strong role of allowing me to move up the economic ladder but bitcoin has really showed me the evil rot this system brings and if I want to see change it starts with me.

Got my first store card just after high school. Went into debt using it for apartment stuff with roommates who eventually fucked off with the stuff.

At the same time I ended up with a (thankfully) relatively low limit credit card. That was used helping friends out etc.

I didn’t need these. I had a shitty job but all expenses were covered.

Young and dumb, got caught up in the system.

It took me years to get out from under it with shit credit ratings etc.

Spent time in some shitty situations, with all of my belongings fitting in a rolled up futon (roll it up, duct tape it, go) sleeping on floors.

Crawled my way into apartment rentals where I figured I’d be fine and happy/alone.

Met my future wife, she wanted more. So I did more for her. We eventually both made decent money and no real expenses, living together and moving where the work was. Saved up and put down a deposit and got a mortgage.

Stayed away from all debt minus the mortgage.

Helped out sister and brother at various times, planned for a single child and make sure we could do better for him than was done for us, had a son who’s eventually diagnosed with ASD and finances are again blown away, still staying away from debt.

Accumulating sats, and using fiat (my son’s medical requirements do not allow for anything else, and he comes before my love for BTC)

Stay away from debt as long as possible. It has a price on you/takes a toll other than a dollar amount.

Fortunately I come from a financially literate family. My dad, uncle, uncle 2nd degree, grandparents etc. are at the stock market since the 90s. We (=they, I was a child most of the time) were always trying to have some but low leverage/margin on the real estate. The debt, marktes and inflation certainly helped my familys fortune.

It also took me until my 20s to find out that this isn't common knowledge for everybody how money works. I never had the feeling that this was a secret - and I still think the reason why the majority of common people don't know it isn't gatekeeping by the upper class - most people just don't want to hear about it. They associate so much negative emotions with money that they just choose to ignore it.

Truly truly the borrower is slave to the lender.
There's a judicial system to back it up too.

However... being in debt can trigger the most creative parts of you and your imagination to create wealth to pay back your debts. It's a silver lining though, not a prescription for success.

I have 0 debt and like it that way. Debt is a tool for bankers and those willing to tolerate them.

I carried some credit card debt in my 20s as a way to build credit. Paid it off in my early 30s, and debt free since then.

Home is a family asset and I am unable to drive do to poor depth perception so owning a car never made sense.

when i was youger it was not so easy (no money left before the end of the month),

With the time i ve managed to get any debt and get money until the end of the month,

I try to spend only what i have. If i want to buy something and i do not have the money, i wait until i can buy it.

Now, my debt is the money that i ve to pay for the flat i own. And what a debt!!!

In an inflationary currency, debt is pretty much the only way to get ahead. The rich know this and leverage debt to finance asset investments and avoid paying taxes on those assets.

Debt allows the rich to become richer. While the poor, who generally poorly manage their debt (by using it to buy liabilities) end up losing access to cheap debt and can't use it to the same extent, owing to lack of collateral.

Personally, I carry a sizeable student loan which I've been making minimum payments on for a decade. I took out a modest LoC and bought btc with it a few years ago, which I'm also making the minimum payments on.

Despite my stack being worth far more than my total debt load, I refuse to sell btc to pay off fiat debt. Why would I trade hardest digital money known to man for worthless entries in a fiat database? I'd rather take the 7 years to shake a bankruptcy and come out the other end with my entire stack (+ student loan), as I have full confidence in that time my savings are far more secure in bitcoin than in a bank's computer.

I think everyman ought to endeavor to be debt free. We are indebted to God and we ought to be a slave to no man. It is a good thing to get rid of debt. However, its hard to do that in one fell swoop so it may at times be wise attacking your debt in a methodical manner. The monetary system we are in now force you to be in debt with a mortgage for 30 years or less. This debt is forced and must be coped with. Credit card debt in my estimation seems foolish though.

I hate debt. Don't use it myself, but I know the people who go into debt and have no way to pay anything back.

Once I realized the system we live in was created to keep the unsustainable nature of debt alive I felt betrayed.

debt can be utilized to stack more sats during bear years if you are %95 sure that you will have a job for the next few years. You just need to look at the amount of interest you will pay during those few years and make sure it will not be exceeding your basic expenses and possible one-time emergency needs. Just gotto keep the math as simple and as realistic as possible. Live simple. Dont FOMO into "things" just because everyone else has "things". Spend less than you earn and save everything else in bitcion.

I believe that Debt is a trap from the governments

I earn a modest income, but I maintain a credit card for emergencies, holding a reasonable amount of cash in South Africa, you're asking to get gutted, so I choose to be gutted by 1000 cuts via the bank instead.

I do withdraw cash directly from my credit card though so I try to keep that transaction footprint on credit cards small, and only when no option is available like an online purchase. Then I get all these credit card points which I never use so I just give them to family and get the cash or bitcoin for it.

I ensure I clearly my balance within 55 days to avoid paying any interest and would never spend more than I could replace within a month/2 months if something crazy happened like a major repair.

I don't have any loans of any kind, I think debt is part of the game, and can be useful, there have been times I've used my credit card to purchase bitcoin because I knew I could repay it pretty easily and not need to sell the BTC so that one worked out.

It's a slippery slope, though, the bank is constantly pestering me to increase my limits and giving me better rates so I can end up hanging myself.

Хочешь заставить банки хранить биткоин??? все просто можно вернуть но есть только биткоин... Пусть банкиры начнут принимать биткоин в виде долга. пока есть наличка мы в безопасности...