Do not think of debt in terms of dollars and cents.
Think of debt as imprisonment. Your "sentence" is you being forced to work for the length of that sentence. If you finance something for 6 or 7 years, that does not just mean you owe X number of dollars. What it REALLY means is you have now put yourself in a situation where no matter what, you must keep working for 6 or 7 years. You could say you would have to work anyways, which is true for 99% of us. However, if you did not have that obligation of a payment, you would have a lot more freedom to work less, or do things you want to do.
Am I saying do not ever finance anything? No. I believe that is darn near impossible if you want to have nice stuff. My advice is to finance one thing at a time, buy used if you can find the right machine for the right price. I would never consider financing a tractor longer then 5 years, 4 is optimal.
The longer the term the more scary it becomes. No one knows if they will have a job tomorrow, companies go broke and downsize all the time.
To me, the reason debt is scary is because you have promised to pay back X amount of dollars, with no promise of how many dollars you will have tomorrow.