Comments on: Why Care About Debt Freedom?

By: Mrs. Accountability

Mrs. Accountability — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:00:59 +0000

Wow, Mrs. Micah, your family reads your blog, and comments! How cool. I long for the day we’ll have debt freedom again. Very good, thought provoking post. Thank you.
Mrs. Accountability´s last blog ..Join AAA at 33% Savings

By: Weekly Round Up- Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize- Thanksgiving Edition | Financial Highway

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:08:33 +0000

[...] There is a lot of talk on becoming debt free around the personal finance blogsphere, seems like everyone wants to be debt free for some reason, do you want to be debt free? Mrs Micah tells us why you should care about being debt free. [...]

By: cybele

cybele — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:41:29 +0000

Maybe the sister in question never even considered the question of in-debtedness in the same way. Perhaps she made some decisions, also, based on her (first) marriage and her agreement with her husband that she’d put him through graduate school and then he’d do the same for her, although as I recall, they split up about half-way through that deal (his grad school) and then maybe she found that her work was pretty satisfying and becoming more so as each of her jobs within a big company allowed her to develop new skills. And maybe even though she never thought about debt in any structured way she saved money from an early point by just not getting it…paying into an IRA and a tax-deferred savings plan that took it out her paycheck before she’d ever seen it. And since she was too lazy to do more than that, it just sat there, perhaps and is now worth a fair amount, so that although she’d never spent any time doing financial planning, between her savings and her investments in real estate, which probably were more driven by necessity than not, and her increased salary, which increased mildly as she took on bigger jobs (not as much as it would have had she been a man, as she knew from all those salary reviews) and relatively modest living habits (too lazy to go shopping, which she seems to have found uninteresting, except sporadically) meant that in the end she actually ended up with a comfortable life. And except for a mortgage, no debt. So…active planning pays off, and sometimes passive planning does, too, perhaps. Active is more predictable, though.

By: Mr. Not the Jet Set

Mr. Not the Jet Set — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:16:05 +0000

Go, Paul, go!
Mr. Not the Jet Set´s last blog ..Two Cent Tuesdays- A New Series

By: Paul @ FiscalGeek

Paul @ FiscalGeek — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:04:35 +0000

Right on! For me I feel trapped because of my debt, yeah I know who’s ultimately responsible. But frankly I’ve been doing a job for 14 years that I’m good at but have absolutely no passion surrounding it. I make a great wage, so until we get to a point where our payments are our own, here I am. But that sweet sweet day is not too far away.
Paul @ FiscalGeek´s last blog ..Principal vs. Prepaying, Our Debt Snowball and How Wachovia Stole $8.03

By: T'Pol

T'Pol — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:32:20 +0000

Very good post. Proud to say that I am totally debt free. No mortgage, no consumer debt of anykind. I walked out of my job last March and now I am pursuing a new career in consulting/training. I was fed up with corporate politics and I just took a big step. If I had any debt, I would not be able to do this. Living on savings for a while is one thing, paying debt thru savings is another.

By: MrsMicah's Mom

MrsMicah's Mom — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:54:11 +0000

Here’s a concrete example of debt freedom. In the early 1970s, the inflation rate was so high that the received wisdom was to buy what you wanted now, even if you went into debt, because whatever it was, it would cost more by the time you saved up enough to buy it. I didn’t accept this advice; my older sister did. Later we both were dissatisfied with our jobs and wanted to go to graduate school. Having no debts, I was able to quit my job and go to graduate school. My sister, having debts, couldn’t. Having debt freedom would have allowed her to go to graduate school.

Now, as it happened, instead of repining, she sought different opportunities in the company she worked for, became a manager, rose to quite a high executive position, and retired early, having enjoyed her job much more than she thought she ever would in the early 1970s.

In sum, though debt freedom allows one to realize dreams more easily, wise responses to the constraints imposed by debt may still result in a life as good or even better than a debt-free life.

By: Weekly Mashup: Goodbye Summer! | My Life ROI, Getting the Best Return On Life

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:20:37 +0000

[...] Why Care About Debt Freedom @ Mrs. Micah. Mrs. Micah goes over different kinds of trade-offs people make, one of them being the accumulation of debt for . [...]

By: her every cent counts

her every cent counts — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:37:09 +0000

Being debt free is definitely worth while, though there are good forms of debt to have. Even those “good” forms limit freedom. As far as other freedom… I think you gain freedom in the stability of commitment. If you had your whole life to do whatever because you did not have to work, or could work whenever you want, then you might lose track of the time you do have to enjoy. So in gaining freedom you lose some. It’s all in how you look at it.
her every cent counts´s last blog ..With an HSA Account, When Do You See the Doctor?

By: Mr. Not the Jet Set

Mr. Not the Jet Set — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:10:38 +0000

“If you have plans and goals and people you love, you’ll never be entirely free to do what you want–and that’s ok, because you want your plans, goals, and people too.”

Yeah, I mean – Welcome to life! Again, that’s a trade-off of what you value more. Some folks would make the opposite decision and choose the freedom over the potential mate.

What is different about debt-freedom is that transcends so many other barriers – young, old, single, married, widowed, divorced…. I always like when Dave Ramsey talks about becoming debt-free – “You know what you can do when you don’t have any payments? (half laughing) Whatever you want!”

So liberating. For us, debt-freedom meant that we could pull up stakes, move cross-country, and move down to a single income. Simply not possible if we were carrying around all those payments.

great post.
Mr. Not the Jet Set ´s last blog ..Two Cent Tuesdays- A New Series