Winning the Debt Game

Our earliest days as independent fledgling adults, working our first job, living in our own place, are hard to forget. I still recall my first apartments in surprising detail. As I now watch my daughter live through her own such experiences, these memories are flooding back.

Mine are mostly happy, as I lived and worked through the first part of my lifetime happiness smile curve. There were a few rare exceptions. Buying my first car was one of them.

Back then, car dealers were probably even worse on customer service than today, but the experience I’ll never forget was applying for my first car loan. “You don’t exist”, said my salesman after looking up my credit history. This was true. While I worked from the earliest age I could, I had done nothing yet with credit. I was a babe in the woods. I don’t recall the details of that car loan, but I’m sure he took me for a buggy ride. I remember the feelings of joy and relief when I made the last payment.

Like so many others influenced by American debt culture of the 1980s and 1990s, I had my own period of swimming in excess debt. That was when I discovered Jonathan’s Getting Going column in the Wall Street Journal, reading a free copy at work. Yesterday, I began reliving some of his finest advice when I discovered the new release of The BEST of Jonathan Clements, edited by Christine Benz, William Bernstein, Allan Roth, and Jason Zweig. This book gets my vote for best personal finance book of 2025.

Jonathan has had two huge influences on my life. His focus on the role of money, and other factors, in creating lifelong happiness probably prepared me better than I knew for a sudden retirement. But the biggest financial benefit to me was perhaps his advice around spending and debt. I can’t tell you when I last paid credit card interest, the most corrosive type of debt we had in those first days of our marriage.

By our early 40s my wife and I could save and pay cash for cars, a thrilling experience for me. We helped our kids graduate from college without debt and paid off our mortgage in our early 50s. Jonathan taught me the only way to win the debt game was by mostly not playing.

This morning, I was reminded how much my debt game has changed when I glanced at our free FICO score at our bank. We haven’t had an installment loan in a decade, and FICO scores are all about keeping you hooked, playing the debt game. Our score is still darned good, but it will never be perfect. And I’m fine with that.

I thank you, Jonathan, for 30+ years of great writing and terrific financial wisdom. I will be forever grateful to you. If Elaine ever needs tech support, she has lifetime credit for my services.