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How much is too much debt? Most all of it if is yours!

Debt is not necessarily a bad thing. If you have enough of it, best well over $100,000 then paradoxically it is easier to get more credit than if you owe $10,000. At least until teh 2008 financial crunch came along and perhaps doubled the thresholds. How so? Well, usually individuals without profitable, bankable assets run debt in the lower thousands: this debt is more often than not used solely for consuming products and services, or for trying to reduce, rarely actually pay off other debt. The larger amounts tend to be accumulated by businesses and companies that use debt for their operations, cash flow and increases in productivity. Banks used to be much more willingly to extend credit terms and amounts to those who already have so much debt with the bank, that it makes more sense, to the bank, to allow for more debt than insist on repayment and servicing of (high-rate) interest and perhaps have to write-off parts of the credit extended. Of course the real big guys, get bailed out with billions from the Government. Makes you think the so-called leaders of the free world have introduced a semi-socialist system, doesn't it?

Interest rates just nominally above prime rate are readily granted to large debtors while consumer credit rakes in the profits to pay for such, seeming generosity. To give a concrete, personal example: last year I bought a dishwasher and new laundry dryer. I was able to get these appliances with my store credit card, without paying a cent upfront. Buy now, no interest for one year! What a deal most people think! And it is, unless you cannot pay off the loan in full before due date. I am keeping my eye on the calendar, knowing that if I pay-off the purchase just one day too late, a whopping 28.8% interest rate applies and over $350 of interest will be added to the original purchase price. If only a fraction of consumers fail to meet the final payment date, or even simply forget the exact date, the credit company will have raked in an enormous profit: money that be lended to other consumers or made available at lower rates to big debtors.

So for ordinary debtors, consumers like you and me, it is rarely a question of how much debt is too much. What matters much more is to know at what rate is that debt growing and when does it have to be paid off before hefty financial sanctions hit me?

Of course we all consume products and services in our daily private lives. In fact consuming is the impulse

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