In the 1980s I was a prototypical macaroni-eating, rusty car-driving student.
My one serious piece of living room furniture was the middle piece of a hideously orange sectional.
If I had owned the full three-piece couch, it would have been a semi-circle, but my lone middle piece was pie-shaped. It looked like a big old stinky piece of cheese. I used old textbooks for legs. When we had time, we sat on it, watching our third-hand TV, which had a fluorescent green blob in the middle of it the size of a grapefruit. The blob stared back at us ominously like a friendly poltergeist.
I sat watching the fall of the iron curtain in 1989 on that cheesy couch and goofy screen, holding hands with my bride (What was she thinking when she married me?) But our living room accessories were paid for.
Fast-forward two decades. The worldwide financial crisis which manifested itself in 2008-09 did not so much crash as creep upon us. Both its cause and its effects still linger today. The creeping sound of the last 20 years - which so few could hear - was the unfriendly and ghostly combination of debt and its closet lover, a zombie-like sense of entitlement.
As the world tries to come to grips with the legacy of excessive spending and debt, the collective response is a haunting drone that somebody should really do something about that someday, but not me, not us, and certainly not today.
As an advisor, I work with people who have a very different approach to debt. They absolutely despise it.
One young man with substantial savings recently told me he gets very antsy and can't sleep if he owes $500 on his credit card. He doesn't demand a particular lifestyle, although he could afford to. He makes interest his servant, rather than be burdened by it. He lends money to the banks. In a weird sort of role reversal, I once advised the bank who to lend money to.
Now I advise people which banks to lend to or invest in.
Depression era religious leader, J. Rueben Clarke had lived through worse days than this when he said: "Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation...You cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it... and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you."
I am proud of my time at the bank and of Canadian banks in general. To be sure, debt is a useful tool if managed carefully. But like a pet grizzly bear, if our relationship with it is too cozy, it will make a meal of us.
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Mark Ryan is an investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc. Member CIPF.
