[caymanjim]

> One important difference between tech debt and financial debt, is that if the project you accrued a bunch of tech debt in gets killed for unrelated reasons before it's completed, your debt is forgiven. You never pay it off, and you never have to.

This happens with financial debt as well. It's the risk that drives interest rates. Financial debt is abandoned (or restructured) when people or companies file for bankruptcy, when homes are foreclosed on, etc. Sure, it might ding your personal credit history in some cases, but financial debt is constantly abandoned at little or no cost to the borrower.

[TheLastPass]

I thought interest rates were more driven by inflation. Mortgages are insured, for instance, removing much of the risk, but you pay for that insurance much of the time (THAT'S driven by risk), but $500,000 is worth more now than it will be in 30 years, so you're gonna have to pay to get it fronted to you.