Debt is fact of life for most of us today, and how well we manage debt reflects not just our financial skills but also our emotional styles. All of us react to debt in different ways. Depending on your attitude and personal feelings about money, it is quite possible to get into far too much debt and not even know it or at least not find it uncomfortable. When does some debt become too much debt? Your emotional response is not an accurate measure of when you're in dangerous financial waters.

Most of the time, the decision that you have "too much debt" is made emotionally. That is, you have too much debt when you feel you have too much debt.

So why do some people panic over small debts but others sleep like babies even when they owe tens of thousands?

The answer is that people have an emotional sense of how much debt is acceptable. The danger is that this personal gauge is highly unreliable. You may have gotten it from your family situation, past experiences, or what you saw on TV or in the movies. Your debt style also involves your own maturity level and self control.

We also have an emotional response to what is unacceptable, which is sometimes called "hitting rock bottom." For some people, hitting rock bottom is having a car repossessed. For others, the repo man was a familiar character from childhood.

Hitting rock bottom may be the day you cannot make minimum payments, the day you lie to a spouse about an overdue bill, or the threat of impending homelessness. In short, it's the emotional response the event evokes not the event itself that makes it rock bottom. One man's rock bottom is another man's standard of living.

So when is debt too much debt? On a purely emotional level, many people hit "rock bottom" when the first calls from bill collectors start to come.

Getting hounded by a professional bill collector is tough. Some people cope, but others find it embarrassing, humiliating, and shameful. For some people, it may take an intervention of friends or family members to drive home the point that the debt is getting out of control. Others may wait till they are evicted or sued.

So how much is too much debt?

First, it's not a question you should answer emotionally. Most entrepreneurs have nerves of steel when it comes to debt and financial risk taking, but most of them do not carry a lot of personal debt. So the amount of debt you can tolerate emotionally is not the governing factor; in fact, it should not even be taken into account.

Debt is not an emotional issue, it's a financial issue. The best way to solve a financial problem is to use financial tools.

Your financial report card is something called your "net worth." You can do a reasonably good snapshot of your own net worth without hiring an accountant or doing a bunch of fancy stuff. Just write down all of the money you owe. If you have credit cards, list all the balances. If you have loans, list all of them. If you have a mortgage, add that. Add all of these debts together; this is what an accountant would call your personal liabilities.

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