if you're planning to go off the grid and "quit money", why do you care about debt? rack it up. you're never going to pay it back, and there's nothing they can do about it
If you were going to that, you'd have to be absolutely sure that you would never return to civilization because your credit will be completely shot. Also from a moral standpoint this type of thinking makes me sad. If you have debts, you should repay them.
That's a funny kind of moral absolutism. I think it depends on whether or not the mechanism for creating the debt was entirely just in the first place. I'm not sure the inflated price of college combined with federally guaranteed student loans from a faceless corporate creditor that experiences no risk really fits the bill. In the case of a loan through a family friend, I would feel more obliged to honor it.If you have debts, you should repay them.
I strongly agree with this sentiment. IMHO one of the biggest cons of recent years was convincing the public that honoring debts to debtors that did not honor their own was the moral thing to do. Of course, a personal debt to family or a friend has moral obligations, but you would be hard-pressed to find a large debt underwriting institution that views its contracts in moral terms. When the contract is viewed only through a legal perspective on the other side of the table, you do yourself a great disservice to assume the whole of the moral baggage.
Not to mention that by the time you decide to pay the debt, if it is already delinquent, the person or entity that financed you to begin with is often no longer holding the debt, but has sold it to someone else for pennies on the dollar. It's a strange, strange process and not one that should be confused with the emotional strings that occur when borrowing money from a friend or family member. Two very different things.
I could sit here and read this subset of the thread for days.
My local library has this. I am checking it out as soon as possible.
Yeah, that's fair. In this case I'm inclined to agree with you. But in most cases, regardless of whether or not you think the debt is just, you still agreed to pay it back in the first place. Since you made that initial commitment, I still think you have a moral obligation to repay.
I completely agree with you. The bank never had the money to loan me in the first place, what do I owe them? However, a significant amount of loans I have are through a family friend.
Does that mean you have borrowed money from a family friend to fund your college education? Doesn't that give you more of a moral obligation to repay the debt?
Exactly yes. I feel morally obligated to pay back the debt since it was from a family friend. Had it been from a bank, I'd feel no remorse not paying them back.
and also, perhaps you should clarify the "deal" with the family friend. If the friend wanted to encourage your music career by helping your education, you can let the friend know how the courses (including jazz history) has helped set the stage for your music career and if you did not finish the degree, the loan was not wasted. If the friend thought there was real value in a degree, perhaps for a future academic career as well as a music education, you might consider having a talk with the friend before going further.
That is definitely something to consider. I did have a similar talk with this friend at the beginning of this school year about whether continuing was worth it. In giving me the loan she does believe that continuing is worth it. I do plan on talking to her again about the situation soon.