Debt is a four letter word

I had a casual conversation with a colleague the other day and happened to mention that I had to remember to make an extra payment on my mortgage. I got a really weird look. 

I said, yeah I do that when I have a few extra bucks so I can pay it down faster. Each extra dollar goes to paying off principal not interest. I got the look of "Why?" Then I said, did you know if you had a $200K mortgage and you could double your payments each period and drop 20K on it at the end of each year you could have it paid off in 5 years, vs. 30.

The rebuttal was, why not use your money now to buy the nice things while you're young and can enjoy them, like BMWs , Prada shoes, nice dinners.  I realized at that time I needed to switch topics because obviously we were never going to have an appreciation of each other's point of view.

Unfortunately we are a culture that believes that debt is acceptable and normal. If debt is used to as sensible leverage to make money then yeah , okay (e.g. and RSP loan or buy a house for rental income etc). But to use it to buy things we can't afford to begin with is a big part of how we got to were we are today.