“A Lannister always pays his debts.” – Game of Thrones
Okay, one of the aristocratic families on Game of Thrones™ is the Stark family, so it’s only logical that Tony Stark™ get the Iron Throne©, being Ironman® and all.
In Hamlet©, in the scene before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern assemble the Infinity Gauntlet and destroy King’s Landing, Shakespeare wrote: “neither a borrower, nor a lender be.” Several of his plays referenced debt, including The Merchant of Venice. I may not have perfect recollection, but I don’t recall Shakespeare mentioning debt in a positive light, except when he was trying to borrow money for a $83,000 pickup with heated seats.
Debt, at its core, is borrowing from the future to fund today. We do that with life all of the time – I’ll have the extra brownies, so I’ll exercise tomorrow. I’ll stay up late to binge-watch Avenger of Thrones®: Trans-Robot Skywalker™ and then grab some extra sleep tomorrow. But when we talk about debt, we mainly mean money and thankfully not my soul. That’s been repossessed like six times already.
Debt is very personal. I remember $20 in a concert I owe to a guy from when I was in college, and I wish I knew where he was so I could repay him – the reciprocal concert I bought tickets for was cancelled. I also remember $20 that a guy owes me from 2015. I ended a friendship because a guy said he returned the $75 I lent him under my front door mat, but I didn’t have a front door mat. That wasn’t about the debt, more about the lies. But you get the picture. Debt is personal.
In addition to being personal, the way that people react to debt is also emotional. I’m pretty sure no person ever decided that having $78,231 in student loans was something to brag about – if anything, people who have borrowed a lot of money are often plagued with feelings of embarrassment, as if they’d been caught making out with Chelsea Clinton. Sure, it’s legal, but, ewww.
I’m sure her husband married her for love.
Recently, records found from 1600 or so show that Shakespeare’s father, John (!) Shakespeare, had tons for problems with debt. I think these were his credit card receipts. The problems that John had happened while William was still young and living at home, so it’s likely Pop Shakespeare had to borrow money for Bill’s prom tuxedo. The good news was that the standard for a corsage in 1582 was a turnip on a string of twine stapled with wooden pegs to the date’s forehead, so, that didn’t set John back too far.
Thanks (in part) to Shakespeare, the most basic advice about borrowing money is this:
- Don’t borrow money unless you absolutely have to. Debt may be a necessary evil, but like Canada and their sensuous, flirty doughnuts, it’s still evil.
- Most people who lend you money aren’t like my dad, Pop Wilder. Pop had been at a small-town farm bank and had worked with the same families for decades. He had an interest in seeing them thrive. Nowadays? Those banks are mainly owned by FirstBank Of Chase Fargo® with an Internet server hosted in Beijing. Most people who lend money see you like Oprah© sees a cheeseburger with extra bacon: as an opportunity.
- Paying back money you borrowed hurts. Adding interest on top makes it worse. Adding “Knuckles” the enforcer as a mechanism to make you pay? That makes it even more painful.
- Loans haunt you like a ghost and poison your hope for a peaceful future. Maybe loans are even worse than a ghost, because I’m sure loans are real. Robert Heinlein said, “Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.” Debt hangs over you like the smell of the armpit of a thirteen-year-old who hasn’t discovered deodorant.
- You come to resent the people who you have obligated yourself to. If you really want to hate someone, borrow money from them. It’s like a screechy ex-wife on steroids, but it haunts your dreams. Like a screechy ex-wife.
The dog cost a lot more money, and just shot anyone who came up the road.
That last point deserves a bit more discussion. I had a friend come to me wanting to borrow some money. There was, I kid you not, a PowerPoint® presentation that they put together explaining the need for the money and the certain benefit to me if I loaned them money.
Yes. It was a family member.
The presentation was impressive. They had put some thought into it. I especially liked where they Photoshopped® me sitting on a throne in a Roman palace. I loaned them the money.
If you want to really understand the character of someone close to you, loan them money. If you do this, be prepared for them to hate you for doing every single thing they asked. Why? Because it obligates them into the future for, potentially, years. Present them loves you, but future them will hate you.
Word choice can make a blog post much gooder.
Let me be clear: the closer you are to them, the more likely they are to completely break their word to you.
Why? Because borrowing money is emotional, first there’s an elation, you got the loan. Then every payment is a little bit of dread deep into their soul. They may really think they will be good at paying you. They certainly have the best of intentions.
But then . . . the rationalization hamster on the hamster wheel in their head starts running on the wheel. “John Wilder loves me. He won’t call the collateral if I miss this payment.”
The wheel moves faster. “John Wilder is doing fine. He doesn’t need this money.”
The wheel moves faster yet. “John Wilder? He sucks. What a leach. Why does everything good happen to him?”
There is one big benefit to loaning that money. If you make them sign a contract? They’ll never ask for a cent again. If they do? Just point to the contract that they never fulfilled.
And that’s the key. By not honoring that contract, they know that they have a debt. They’ve broken their words to you. But that’s not the worst part. They broke their promise to themselves. To quote Heinlein again: “Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily.” People who don’t pay debts have fallen away from duty. That’s a cancer to the soul. That’s why I don’t like debt. It’s addictive, and as a borrower it’s an easy way to make yourself a victim. As a lender, it’s an easy way to make yourself a predator.
Oh, if only the great minds from the past lived today.
I was going to write about good reasons to go into debt, but could only come up with “to buy a reasonably priced house or build/expand a profitable business.” Twelve words. Not much for a post.
Then I had what I thought was a genius idea: put out a list of bad reasons to get into debt. But I then realized that, so far, I’ve written over 464,000 words on this blog. If I put out a list of bad reasons to get into debt I could easily double that word count on just the list of bad reasons to get into debt.
So, avoid debt. Also? Avoid lending.
What does it say when an entire society is addicted to debt? I’m sure that it’s okay. I’m certain that it’s different this time.
But remember what The Bard says:
This is fine.
One of the lessons I learned in banking is that money makes people goofy. I saw absolutely rock solid people lose their minds when a relative died and money was involved. Lending to family? That just compounds it by like 100.
But if you do it right . . . you only have to do it once.