vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Thanks!   &gt; How do you believe it should be approached?   Businesses should be more cognizant of the fact that they have enormous amounts of technical debt, or what will be considered to be debt, that will suddenly need to be solved.  Infrastructure or applications that haven't seen a dime in 5+ years. Shadow IT that was stood up (e.g. hey we use this access database that everyone completely forgot about to meet this one specific need) and has somehow managed to survive. That's one of the most frequent issues that will grind consolidations to a halt. The business need to involve IT as early as possible in the M&amp;A process.  Cross-platform can usually be solved by some form of extraction, translaton, load processes. That's straightforward but it does take time.  If you're a company that cares enough to have a disaster recovery team you should also have an IT M&amp;A team that meets regularly to have a dry-run of an M&amp;A that covers the processes from end to end for 2-3 worst-case-scenarios. New scenarios should be identified. If you do enough M&amp;As you'll have compiled a fairly decent playbook of scenarios after the third or fourth. You'll have a well oiled machine that your investors can and should be proud of.   For perspective the best M&amp;A team I've seen was Microsoft's and even then shit regularly hits the fan for those guys when it comes to technical debt. That's something to keep in mind.
Yea, honestly taking in debt is pretty much never a good idea. Even borrowing from your own family can cause issues. It better be a very serious issue if you're trying to borrow and use money you don't have. Especially if we're talking about figured that are high relative to your income stream and/or that of the person you're borrowing from if it's not an official entity.
"100% debt free is an objective. Being there is good, but as long as you have a plan to get there, are sticking to it and it's moving you towards it at a reasonable rate (e.g. ""I will be debt free by the end of 2011.""), you should be in good shape. It's when you don't ever expect to be debt free that you have a problem. Going into debt is one question and a very situation dependent one. Getting back out is another and a very easy one: pay off all debts as a fast as you reasonably can, starting with the highest interest ones. OTOH this doesn't imply that you should forgo every optional expense (including things like savings and entertainment) to pay off debts, that would be unreasonable, but just that paying down debts should always be considered when thinking about what to do with money."
It doesn't really make sense to cure indebtedness with more debt.  This is why your friend is having trouble finding someone to loan him money.  If he can't borrow at a lower rate then he should probably focus on paying down some of his debt.
Yes. Using debt appropriately is a huge part of what's called optimal capital structure theory in the finance world. Debt is generally cheaper than equity financing due to the tax deductibility of interest and using it appropriately can really juice the profitability of a business as long as the rate of return on equity in the business exceeds the interest rate on the debt.
"Also, since I'm guessing OP isn't flush with cash, not having to come up with additional money to pay the student loans for some time will provide some short-term ""debt relief""... possibly reducing the possibility of racking up more CC debt."
"A simple response is that it's a good political/strategic move. Ford have effectively said, ""We know we still have debt, but we think the long term future is so good we can go back to paying dividends."" It builds investor confidence and attracts new money. It can also be seen as a way of Ford indicating that they believe the type of debt (regardless of the amount) is okay for them to carry."
Advantages of paying off debt: Potential advantage of remaining in debt:
"Some very general advice. Lifestyle borrowing is almost always a bad idea. You should limit your borrowing to where it is an investment decision or where it is necessary and avoid it when it is a lifestyle choice. For example, many people need to borrow to have a car/house/education or go without. Also, if you are unemployed for a long period of time and can't find work, charging up the credit cards seems very reasonable.  However, for things like entertainment, travel, and other nice-to-haves can easily become a road to crushing debt. If you don't have the cash for these types of things, my suggestion is to put off the purchase until you do. Note: I am not including credit cards that you pay off in full at the end of the month or credit used as a convenience as ""borrowing"""
In short, no, or not retroactively. There really are multiple companies involved, each of which bills you separately for the services they provided. This can be partly avoided by selecting either a high-end health plan with lower out-of-pocket maximum, (costs more up front, of course) or by selecting a genuine Health Management Organization (not a PPO) which gathers more of the services into a single business. Either of these would result in fewer cash payments needing to be sent.  But I don't know of any way to simplify things after the fact. Even if there was a consolidation service, you would have to forward the bills to them, which really wouldn't be any easier than just paying the bills. (I'm assuming you are in the US, where we have a health insurance system rather than a health system. Other countries may handle this differently.)
Take the consolidation loan and pay it off. Don't close the card. Opening a new account will have no bearing on your mortgage a year or two down the road. Keep paying on time -- that will make a big difference! JohnFX's suggestion to open a new card and do a transfer is  a great idea if you have good credit. Just read the fine print -- most cards charge a 3-5% transfer fee and some cards accrue interest if you don't pay within the promotional period.
All great answers. The only thing I didn't see mentioned was that student loans are not dischargable in a bankruptcy. So for example if you took money that could have gone to student loans and poured it into other debt, then for some reason declared bankruptcy later, your student load debt would remain while other debt would be discharged; essentially that money would have been better spent on the student loan. This isn't to advocate that you should pay down student loans with the intent of declaring bankruptcy, or that this makes it a better decision necessarily, just a factor that is sometimes forgotten.
"First off, your commitment to paying down debt and apparent strong relationship with your brother is admirable. However, I think you are overcomplicating your situation and potentially endangering your relationship by attempting to combine debts in this way. You could consider a simple example where you have interest bearing at 5% and your brother has interest bearing debt at 10%. If you both pay down his higher interest debt first, and then both pay down your debt after, then clearly you will have paid less interest combined. But, by waiting to pay off your debt until later, you have accrued more interest yourself. So who has saved money by doing this? Your brother. You will have paid (let's say, without getting into balances) $50 extra interest to save your brother $70 in interest. So why would you want to give your brother $50? Total interest savings between both of you in this simplified example are $20. So, in theory your brother could pay you $60 after the fact, effectively meaning you end up $10 ahead, and your brother ends up $10 ahead. Here, you end up in a position where you could still say, in theory 'we both came out ahead'. But what if your brother loses his job while you're both paying off your debt, and he can't help any more? Does he accrue some type of calculated interest until he pays you back? What if he's off work for 2 years and still owes you 30k? What if he just never makes his payments to you on time? At what point do you resent your brother for failing to uphold his end of the deal? Money and friends don't mix. Money and family mixes even worse. In rare circumstances where you absolutely must mix family and money, get everything in writing. Get it signed, make it legal. Outline all details of the transaction, including interest rates, and examples of how the balances calculate. In 5 years when things go haywire, following the letter of the law is what will keep you from becoming enemies.
"Yes, it can be a good idea to close unused credit cards. I am going to give some reasons why it can be a good idea to close unused accounts, and then I will talk about why it is NOT necessarily a bad idea. Why it can be a good idea to close unused accounts ""I'd like to close the cards."" That is reason enough. Simplifying your financial life is a good thing. Fewer accounts let you focus your energy on the accounts that you actually use. Unused accounts still need to be monitored for fraud. You mentioned that you have high credit card balances that you are carrying. This may indicate that you have trouble using credit responsibly, and having more credit available to you might be a temptation for you. If these unused cards have annual fees, keeping them open will cost money. Unused cards sometimes get closed by the bank due to inactivity. As a result, the advice often given is that, in addition to not closing them, you are supposed to charge something to it every month. This, of course, takes more of your time and energy to worry about, as well as giving you another monthly bill to pay. Why it is NOT necessarily a bad idea to close unused accounts Other answers will tell you that it may hurt your credit score for two reasons: it would increase your utilization and lower your average account age. Before we talk about the validity of these two points, we need to discuss the importance of the credit score. Depending on what your credit score currently is, these actions may have minimal impact on your life. If you are in the mid 700's or higher, your score is excellent, and closing these cards will likely not impact anything for you in a significant way. If you aren't that high in your score yet, do you have an immediate need for a high score? Are you planning on getting more credit cards, or take out any more loans? I would suggest that, since you have credit card debt, you shouldn't be taking out any new loans until you get that cleaned up. So your score in the mean time is not very important. Are you currently working on eliminating this credit card debt?
"Typically you can use credit card balance transfers to consolidate some, or all, of your other loan balances in one place.  The interest rate might be lower.  Some prefer to make one payment rather than multiple payments.  There is typically a fee that is imposed by the card that is originating or creating the loan.  This would be the credit card you are transferring the balances.  That fee is typically in the 3% to 5% range.   While tempting and attractive on the surface, this plan typically leads to a worse situation then you are now.   It's a ""tough pill to swallow"", but your problem is that you spend too much money.  Transferring money will not change this problem, it is your behavior that has to change in order to not accumulate more debt.  It has to change further if you want to get rid of the debt in a timely fashion.   You would be far better served to forget about this transfer and get your life into control.  Spend a lot less, earn more.  Pay off the cards you have now and cut them up.  Make a goal to be done in a year and figure out how to earn enough money to make that happen. BTW I am a reformed over-spender that now owes nothing.  Yep my house, cars, and rental property are all paid for.  You can get there too."
"Is it not that bad? Depends how bad is bad. The problems causes by a government having large debt are similar to those caused by an individual having large debt. The big issue is: More and more of your income goes to paying interest on the debt, and is thus not available for spending on goods and services. If it gets bad enough, you find you cannot make payments, you start defaulting on loans, and then you have to make serious sacrifices, like selling your property to pay the debt. Nations have an advantage over individuals in that they can sometimes repudiate debt, i.e. simply declare that they are not going to pay. Lenders can then refuse to give them more money, but that doesn't get their original loans paid back. In theory other nations could send in troops to seize property to pay the loan, but this is a very extreme solution. Totally aside from any moral considerations, modern warfare is very expensive, it's likely the war would cost you more than you'd recover on the debt. How much debt is too much? It's hard to give a number, any more than one could give a ""maximum acceptable debt"" for an individual. American banks have a rule of thumb that they won't normally loan you money if your total debt payments would be more than 1/3 of your income. I've never come close to that, that seems awfully high to me. But, say, a young person just starting out so he's not making a lot of money, and he lives someplace with high housing prices, might find this painful but acceptable. Etc."
As others mentioned, the only clear reason to remain in debt is if you can find an investment that yields more than what you're paying to maintain the debt. This can happen if a debt was established during low-rate period and you're in a high-rate period (not what is happening now.) A speculative reason to keep debt is as an inflation bet. If you believe money will shortly lose value, you are better off postponing repayment until the drop occurs. However you're not likely to be able to make these bets successfully. Hope this helps
"There is a ten year statue of limitations on debt collection, bankruptcy, etc. The problem is, if you start paying, even say, $1, you ""acknowledge"" the debt and the clock starts again. Debt claims fall under the ""he said, she said,"" rubric. In debt restructuring situations, the debtor is taught to write all their creditors DENYING debts. Some percentage of those creditors won't have the paperwork to back up their claims. Others will, and can press their claims. Then a court decides.  But in any event, a debt more than tens years old is a ""stale,"" debt. A court is likely to rule in your favor. Unless you ""acknowledge"" the debt."
Paying off debts will reduce your monthly obligation to creditors (less risk) and also remove the possibility of foreclosure / repossession / lawsuit if you ever lost access to income (less risk).  Risk is an important part of the equation that can get overlooked.  It sounds like pulling that money out of the market will reduce your yearly tax bill as well.
Credit card banks generally apply payments (in order, to interest on penalties, penalties, interest on principal, principal) in a way that makes it very difficult to pay down principal for people deep in debt. They would also offer ""payment plans"" to entice you to pay Bank B vs. Bank A, which would trigger overlimit fees from Bank A. Another change is that minimum payments were generally 2% of statement balance, which often didn't cover the monthly finance charge. The new law changed that, resulting in a payment of 1% of balance + accrued interest. Under the old regime, consolidation made it less likely that various circumstances would trigger default, and gave the struggling debtor one throat to choke. With the new rules, there are definitely a smaller number of scenarios where consolidation actually makes sense."
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to save up and wait to make a payment on any of these loans.  Any dollar you pay today works better than saving it and waiting months to pay it, no matter which loan it will be applied to. Since your lender won't let you choose which loan your payment is being applied to, don't worry about it.  Just make as big a payment as you can each month, and try to get the whole thing out of your life as soon as possible. The result of this will be that the smaller balance loans will be paid off first, and the bigger balance loans later.  It is unfortunate that the higher interest rate loans will be paid later, but it sounds like you don't have a choice, so it is not worth worrying about. Instead of thinking of it as 5 loans of different amounts, think of it as one loan with a balance of $74,000, and make payments as quickly and as often as possible. For example, let's say that you have $1000 a month extra to throw at the loans.  You would be better off paying $1000 each month than waiting until you have $4000 in the bank and paying it all at once toward one loan.  How the lender divides up your payment is less significant than when the lender gets the payment.
Even if you can pull this off (I think it is possible with creativity) it is likely not worth it.  The number of ways this can come crashing down is high and the benefits are marginal at best.  The opportunity cost of carrying this out is likely higher than the saved interest from just carrying the $500 balance.  Do this with too much money and you can find yourself in real trouble if one card gets cancelled (late fees, penalties, and no way to make repayment).    Basically this is theoretically possible but not worth it.  Just work an extra hour each month and pay the interest. Or, if you don't have a job, just pay the interest and spend the time you save to look for a job.
Putting debt out long means to borrow a sum of money paid back over a longer period of time than you could reasonably pay it back. It should be important to note that this advice only applies for fixed rate loans (meaning your rate can't change for the life of the loan without you explicitly changing it).  The logic is that if you can borrow money when interest rates are really low, there is a good chance you can find an investment that has a return higher than the interest rate on the loan. It also means that when/if interest rates go up in the future, a simple savings account may even have a greater return than your loans interest. The advice suggests to borrow over a long period so you are paying less interest per payment, and gives you time to find a proper investment without having to pay too much interest during that time.
I say again, more than a trillion dollars in student loan debt represents tremendous leverage if people in debt would form a consumer group and threaten to withhold payments until Congress retroactively gives them a much lower interest rate and brings back the ability to get out from under huge debt via bankruptcy, just like corporations do.
It might be a good idea, because later in life if a large expense shows up or an income source disappears, you will only have the mortgage payment, rather than a mortgage AND a student loan payment.
I would say generally, the answer is No. There might be some short term relief to people in certain situations, but generally speaking you sign a contract to borrow money and you are responsible to pay. This is why home loans offer better terms then auto loans, and auto loans better than credit cards or things like furniture. The better terms offer less risk to the lender because there are assets that can be repossessed. Homes retain values better than autos, autos better than furniture, and credit cards are not secured at all. People are not as helpless as your question suggests. Sure a person might lose their high paying job, but could they still make a mortgage payment if they worked really hard at it? This might mean taking several part time jobs. Now if a person buys a home that has a very large mortgage payment this might not be possible. However, wise people don't buy every bit of house they can afford. People should also be wise about the kinds of mortgages they use to buy a home. Many people lost their homes due to missing a payment on their interest only loan. Penalty rates and fees jacked up their payment, that was way beyond their means. If they had a fixed rate loan the chance to catch up would have not been impossible. Perhaps an injury might prevent a person from working. This is why long term disability insurance is a must for most people. You can buy quite a bit of coverage for not very much money. Typical US households have quite a bit of debt. Car payments, phone payments, and either a mortgage or rent, and of course credit cards. If income is drastically reduced making all of those payments becomes next to impossible. Which one gets paid first. Just this last week, I attempted to help a client in just this situation. They foolishly chose to pay the credit card first, and were going to pay the house payment last (if there was anything left over). There wasn't, and they are risking eviction (renters). People finding themselves in crisis, generally do a poor job of paying the most important things first. Basic food first, housing and utilities second, etc... Let the credit card slip if need be no matter how often one is threatened by creditors.
Maybe if we see some sort of cultural change, an aversion to taking out debt with a negative ROI, but all of the information I'm giving here has been public for a long time and people haven't changed, so I doubt that we'll see any kind of a reversal or social movement against taking out lots of debt. You'd have to have the equivalent of a [Great Awakening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_awakening) with respect to debt...and given that attempts to excite interest in the matter have generally not gone anywhere thus far, I suspect that this is human nature and doubt that things will change. You can always change *your* personal debt decisions, but society as a whole? As for the temporary monopoly...well, I think that it's pretty much inevitable that the rest of the world catches up to a great degree. Asia will catch up, even Africa will eventually get there. I think that that would be a pretty difficult thing to stop, and I think that most of the world would object to someone attempting to stop it."
Competing against other groups and against computers.   In this course we have some point in the future where we face a crisis. I would think I need to keep my debt levels low incase I need to get a long-term loan to cover my expenses over the 3rd year. In that case I might just hold off until before that date to maximize the debt load.  I also don't know what effect on our stock price our balance sheet has. I feel like when I analyze companies and see their balance sheets have a lot of debt I shy away depending on their share price.
"The sad part about this, IMHO, is that almost all of this new debt is ""bad debt"".  Meaning it hasn't really gone into productive endeavors. Just stock buy-backs and such.  So it has had minimal positive effects but is likely to be a drag on future growth for decades."