You're being dense.
You keep moving the f***ing target. The target for me, is still initially what it was to begin with. X time living at home avoiding loans or X time living on campus with loans. That's the comparision here. That's what you jumped in chided cory about. But you keep brining everything short of being abducted by greys to support your 'borrowing money is good' rutine.
And debt is debt. If debt can be avoided, that is a good thing. So what if he lives at home to avoid getting loans? It's not going to hurt him not to start out with debt.
Which is IRRELEVANT to any point I've made. The 'smartness' of the debt isn't even on the table here. The choice is debt or no debt. And I will likely pay CASH for my next car because I don't want debt and I CAN. Interest is lost money. Plain and simple.
Debt is debt. Wether you consider it valuable debt or not is irrelevant. That's your particular view.
If someone borrowed $10,000 to play in the world series of poker and won, that would be 'good debt' by your definition. IMO, it's debt, like any other, it's owing money, it's obligation to repay with interest.
One could borrow money and play stocks, maybe he wins. That would make it 'good debt' by your criteria of making enough money to repay the debt and interest.
School can be a gamble.... You go get a computer science degree and in the time it takes you to do so you find out that all the entry level jobs have been set overseas... Now what do you do? What about all the people with the degrees that don't get them a good job out the door?
It's all a risk. Maybe you can pay back the money and come out ahead. Maybe the crap you bought at the store on your credit card becomes a collectable and worth 100 times what you paid for it. Who knows, there's always risk. But one thing is constant. Debt is Debt. You must repay that money.
It's one thing to use funds you have and when it doesn't pan out the way you thought, you can continue on from zero. It's quite another to end up below nothing. And that's why avoiding debt that can be avoided while achieving one's goals is good idea. There won't be a gun to cory's head about repaying a note.
There is no sure thing. And I certainly wouldn't want to be in position where I had to immediately find employment to pay back student loans. Hell I would have been screwed, it took me ~9 months to get a job after my masters. 2 weeks after that to actually have the first check. Well, I could have accepted the 29K a year low ball job offer that I was first offered early on, but thankfully, because I didn't OWE anyone money, I could continue working for peanuts at the school and wait for the better job that payed me considerably more money.
Had I followed your scheme, I would have had to take that 29K-yr poo job to pay the notes. I would have been stuck and that wage would have surpressed my earnings for years to come even upon finding another job.
There's a HUGE advantage of not being in debt. Huge. I watched people sell their souls to keep their jobs because they had to make their debt payments for their big house and what not. I never had to compromise myself. I could say the truth, I could be honest, I didn't have spin things or weasel because I didn't have to have a job the next day to pay some note.
I've also been downsized, I didn't have to worry because I didn't owe anyone money. Even now I have it arranged so I can lose my job and not have a problem for a good long time. I won't be compromised.
You take your risks. But debt is debt. It all has to be repayed (various legal weasling aside).
