The Golden Mean.

Donald J. Trump describes his experience of drowning in debt in the early 1990s. “The real estate market crashed. I owed billions and billions of dollars--$9.2 billion, to be exact. That’s nine billion, two hundred million dollars….In the midst of the crash, I passed a beggar on the street and realized he was worth $9.2 billion more than I was.” (How to Get Rich, p. 8 (2004); emphasis supplied.) Without debt, one appeared rich. With debt, the other appeared hopeless; the debtor was probably even envious of the beggar. I watched a "60 Minutes" episode not long ago wherein they did a piece on a financial advisor who specialized in advising Christians to shun debt as if it was an evil. Debt is not an intrinsic evil; it's more of a tool. Through the power of the "leverage effect", debt can help people be much better stewards. Conversely, used to an extreme, debt can crush like nothing else. Like so many things, debt should employed with moderation and balance.