How I used Debt to Reach Financial Independence

Here's my story of how I went from absolutely hating debt and considering debt as evil, to using debt as a tool towards financial independence. Growing up in a farming family, debt was considered evil because the interest rates were 30 or even 36% per year. So, if you went into debt, that typically meant you would lose your land.

After high school, I got admission into a great college, but my family didn't have the money. So, we had no other choice but to go to a bank and get a loan. The loan was priced at 16% per year, a very high-interest rate, but it afforded me the opportunity to go to an engineering college, get an engineering degree, and get a well-paying job right after college. I paid off my loan in two years.

Once I paid off that loan, I decided to come to the U.S. for graduate school and I took another loan, even bigger, but this time it was at about 12% interest. Not bad. I paid that off after I got a job in the U.S. A few years later, I had the itch again to go back to school for an MBA. I took another loan, even though by this time, I had enough assets to pay for this education from my own pocket. But I decided to take the loan at about 6% interest rate.

And not just for education, I also took a loan to buy a house and I only paid a 3.5% down payment. 96.5% was financed through a bank loan. In 2018, we bundled all our loans, including my really large business school student loan, into one home loan and refinanced it for 30 years at a really low-interest rate of 2.75%.

I have always used debt to invest into myself, growing my skills, or to invest into buying assets like real estate, like my home. I'm not afraid of debt anymore. I use debt as a tool to build wealth. I hope you can too. If you need help, follow me as I share more details and also new information that will help you have a good relationship with debt and use debt for financial independence.