Life is short, memories are permanent, and no one on their deathbed wishes they had a larger savings account — so why is borrowing money to live fully treated as financial irresponsibility rather than a valid personal choice?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentI took out a small personal loan for my daughter's quinceañera because we had nothing and that party meant everything to her and to our family and I would do it again without blinking. Some things aren't about money. Some things are about who you are.
my grandmother lived through actual poverty and she would smack this post into next tuesday. some of us come from backgrounds where debt meant losing your home. respectfully the privilege of treating debt as a lifestyle choice is not universal
My dad worked his whole life saving for retirement travel. Diagnosed with Parkinson's at 64, never took those trips. I took out a loan for Japan last year. I regret nothing and I dare anyone to tell me to my face that was irresponsible.
I went into debt for my sister's wedding gift trip to Bali. Three years later I'm still paying it off and every single month when that payment comes out I think about the look on her face when we arrived at the villa. Zero regrets. ZERO.
The real joyless move is pretending that financial anxiety isn't itself a destroyer of joy. Some of us have watched parents spiral into debt stress and it is NOT a vibe. The debt comes WITH you on the vacation, it just waits in your phone.
the whole 'no one wishes they'd saved more on their deathbed' thing — do we actually have data on this? did someone survey dying people? or is this just a thing we repeat because it sounds wise
the deathbed argument is so intellectually lazy it physically pains me. People also don't wish they'd spent their 40s stressed about debt collectors. The deathbed is not a useful analytical framework for financial decisions made at 28.
I'm genuinely undecided on this. I have friends who went into debt for experiences and seem genuinely happier and more interesting. I have friends who did it and are now miserable and stressed. The outcome seems to depend less on the debt itself and more on their overall financial resilience and personality. Maybe the advice should be 'know thyself' more than any blanket rule.
As someone who studied behavioral economics, I'd push back on the framing here. The 'memories are permanent' claim is empirically complicated — research on hedonic adaptation shows we adjust to positive experiences faster than we predict. The anticipation of a trip often generates more measurable happiness than the memory of it. Which doesn't automatically vindicate the debt, but it does complicate the argument.
both sides of this debate are acting like everyone has the same relationship to risk, the same family situations, the same income volatility. a gig worker with no safety net and a salaried person with employer healthcare are not making equivalent decisions by going into identical debt. context exists.
The phrase 'live fully' doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Living fully might also mean being present and relaxed rather than checking your bank balance every night on a beach in Thailand.
Celebrations specifically I get. You get ONE wedding, ONE graduation, these are genuinely unrepeatable. Travel is a little different because theoretically you can go next year when you have the money. The urgency argument is stronger for milestone events.
i mean there's a spectrum right? putting a concert ticket on a credit card you pay off next month vs taking out a personal loan for a eurotrip you cant afford are wildly different things and lumping them together to make your argument work is a bit dishonest
I judge it. I judge it loudly. I will continue to judge it. Not because I'm joyless but because I've had to help three different friends sort out serious debt problems that started with 'we deserved this vacation.' You deserve a vacation you can afford.
Justified? Sure. Smart? Rarely. Valid personal choice? Absolutely. But asking other people not to have opinions about it is where you lost me — forming opinions about things is literally what humans do.
the judgmentalism cuts both ways. people who save obsessively and never spend also get judged constantly — called boring, told they're wasting their youth, lectured about 'you can't take it with you.' maybe we could just let people manage their own finances?
ok but like... interest rates? has anyone in this thread done math? a $5000 trip on a high-interest card that you pay minimum on becomes like $8000. that's not a memory, that's a choice you're still actively making for years
Actually fun fact: you do NOT form stronger or more lasting memories just because something was expensive or required sacrifice to afford. Memory consolidation depends on emotional salience, novelty, and social bonding — none of which require a credit card. A camping trip can hit harder neurologically than a resort. Just saying.
i saved for two years for a trip to peru and when I finally got there I cried at Machu Picchu not because of the view but because I knew I'd earned it myself. I think the earning is actually part of the memory for me personally. wouldnt trade that feeling for anything, including going sooner on credit.
okay but the post literally says people who judge it are JOYLESS which is just... name calling dressed up as a philosophical position? you can disagree with someone's financial choices without being joyless, that's called having a perspective
here's what people miss tho — experiences DO have measurable ROI if you think about it right. networking at a conference, broadening your worldview, the professional value of speaking multiple languages you only got fluent in by GOING there. debt for pure consumption and debt for personal development arent the same
I've been to 47 countries. Financed none of it with debt. Saved aggressively, traveled slowly, worked remotely before it was trendy. The idea that you NEED to go into debt to experience the world is a choice, not a necessity. It's just a slower, less Instagrammable approach.
The real question nobody's asking: what's your interest rate and what's your emergency fund situation. Answer those two things honestly and THEN decide. Not before.
what about the people you owe money to though. debt isn't abstract. someone lent you that. if you have a cavalier attitude about repayment because 'memories' that affects real people and real institutions that then affect lending rates for everyone else. financial decisions have externalities
sir this is a debate forum not a therapy session for people who made impulsive purchases and need validation
Is it wrong to choose not to have children just because you don't want to?
110 comments
Would you still eat meat if you had to kill the animal yourself?
109 comments
Are dating apps genuinely harder for men or for women?
108 comments
Is judging someone by their height as shallow as judging by their weight?
108 comments