When Should You Repay Your Student Loan? How about . . . Never!
T o Owe Is to Own Do you remember this line: “So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, / Retain that dear perfection which he owes / Without that title.”? “Owes” used to mean “owns.”? I’ve been reading David Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5000 Years . It begins with the American proverb: “If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank.” I can remember my father telling me this. I thought he made it up. Avoiding Debt I’ve always had an aversion to debt. I think it has something to do with when I was five and my mother, as she was leaving to go to work, telling me, “If there is a knock at the door, just sit on the floor and be quiet. Don’t answer the door; they might be bailiffs.” Of course, like everyone else, I’ve understood that it is impossible to get on in the world without a car loan, a mortgage, a credit card and a line of credit. Nonetheless, I’ve always been fairly o