In the past, I busted my @$$ to get to the point of being debt free. And when you are debt free, no one can pull you with the short hairs or put you in the position of either not playing the game and losing what you worked for since you cannot pay your debt -or- playing the game in order to get money to pay your debt.
In my class I teach at the university, I show students a spreadsheet program to see how debt is paid off (interest up front) and give them the tools to be financially well off when they start dealing with banks. I had a 15 year mortgage on one house I owned and within the first few years, I paid extra money towards the principle and ended up paying it off in 7 years.
The best position to be in when you are debt free is that it is easy to tell your boss to **** off if they want to push you into doing something illegal or unethical.
This is something our Federal Gov’t can do, live within their means instead of running up more and more debt.
Now if we could just get property taxes converted to sales tax, we could truely be free of the threat of the gubmnt taking our homes,