Ever thought about how much interest you'll pay on all of your debt? It's incredible:
Bottom Line: Aside from certain financial advisers that prefer a higher risk financial profile in which you leverage certain debt to further your investments - most of us get the benefit of not being in debt. What most of us probably don't get is just how incredibly large our lifetime cost of our debt really is...
AARP recently researched the topic and found that in today's dollars the average American pays...$600,000 over the course of their lifetime in interest. $600,000! Consider that the most recent median household income was $53,719 per year. That means that the average American is spending more than 11 years worth of their pre-tax income to simply service their debt! By the time you account for taxes it's nearly 15 years! Something tells me that if someone said you'd be working for 15 years just to pay for the debt for the stuff you've bought - you'd think about accumulating debt differently.
So hopefully this is the constructive nudge you might need. Or the added encouragement not to get into debt. I could really blow your mind by sharing the opportunity cost of that money if it were invested instead. But that might just be depressing. Paying a down a mortgage is one thing (you have a good chance of your home appreciating by more than the interest you pay towards it anyway). Paying debt on depreciating assets is quite a different ballgame altogether.