[geofft]

> What good does a nice car do if you worry about bills and if you try to avoid to look at the balance in your banking app?

You have a nice car you can drive around?

I mean, the purpose of money is to do things with it. The balance in your banking app is only relevant because you desire to put it to some purpose. If you stop desiring to put it to some purpose, you're equally equipped whether or not you have a positive balance, and if you already have put it to some purpose like a nice car, you've accomplished the actual goal you wanted and should stop getting distracted by the means. (You should, of course, continue to pay attention to the means if you have other, unfulfilled goals. And perhaps you should think about whether having a nice car is more of a priority than those goals. But the goals are not money in and of itself.)

If you've got debts from student loans or mortgages that are set up such that you can pay those debts slowly and in a way you can afford to pay, and in the meantime you've got money to spend, you are actually fine. A balance sheet that only looks at how much is in the bank and how much you're in debt and not at how much you can afford to hold that debt is not telling the full story.

(This is, incidentally, the same reason the national debt isn't a big concern: nobody is going to demand that we pay that debt right now. So going further into debt gives the ability to do more things with that money, i.e., it gives us the effect of having more money, even though on paper we now have less money.)