Borrowing is a burden, NOT a tool

I thought it curious that right after posting the entry I did yesterday about the importance of not going into debt to finance education, I ran into this: an article from MSNBC listing 10 tips for getting financial aid.

"Excellent!" I thought to myself. I'm always looking for ways to finance education so this article got my interest.

Most of the tips are really good and certainly recommend, save for one: borrowing.

Those of you who read this blog regularly will no doubt know how I feel about borrowing money for school (especially after yesterday's post!) so it was a little disappointing to see it mentioned in the MSNBC article.

While borrowing can seem like wisdom and a necessary tool, it is neither and will only set you up for a life of living paycheck to paycheck. Not only have I seen this pattern repeated over and over, but I lived it too.

Don't do it. Spare yourself the grief. Yes an education is important. But not so much so that you are strapped to a burden as prohibitive as debt.