Debt: just say no!

Prov 22:7 The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

Guess which businesses have plush furnitures and fancy interiors for their offices? Or the tallest building around the area? Or sends you those snail mail "love letters" almost every day (some call them junk mail but I digress)? And check out this entry on meeting with a mortgage broker. [now that I think about it, about a quarter of my spam email is mortgage related.]

People call gambling industry an enslaving one but casino's aren't the only debt dependent (inducing?) industries, ruining people's lives. At my church I'm involved in a ministry to help people in financial stress (for those who need something more hands on than Ramsey's "Financial Peace" which our church hosts, too) and have advised several couples on how to deal with their finances and they almost always boil down to: too much debt -- usually credit cards, but even just mortgage alone will do this esp. if you borrow to the limit and your property tax and hazard insurance grows more than your income.

Do the best you can to avoid enslavement: be in debt only with love, first to Christ, then to others -- cf Rom 13:8.

[wrote this originally as a comment at CL Observatory but wanted to expand it into a blog entry. Minor edit @ 7:55AM]