well just to respond to the OP question...regardless of what side of the fence or aisle you're on, these are uncertain times. i have made it a point to make sure that i am debt free...no mortgage, no vehicle or equip payments, completely free of financial obligations. my advice is if you can, pay it off.
hunker down, & look at the horizon w/o obligation. i sleep much better that way esp in these uncertain times. only imho. best regards
a gloomy outlook but a lot of sense here if one can do it while raising a family, running a business, sending kids to college, hard to stay out of debt. My father had terrible credit because he didn't owe anyone anything. He asked for 90 days as cash once in the early sixties to buy a Chevy for my Mother and the new Finance guy came back stuttering saying there was a problem. Not bad credit, no credit. Later on he would have one credit card so he could avoid this issue. Old school, remembered the Depression, remembered banks coming for the farm, remembered soup lines.
Big Bubba, our economy is doing fine, unemployment is relatively low, and we seem to have nowhere to go but down....yeah, hope for the best but plan for the worst. Lot of changes coming and it sure remains to be seen how that affects us all. Uncertain times, yes. I'm a retired financial planner and have seen how getting laid off can impact on a family's life from all angles. Including being able to keep kids in private school and college. And what a 30 percent correction in the stock market will do to dreams and plans.
IMHO, any debt, other than a home mortgage, over 2 percent ought to be looked at and prioritized to reduce/eliminate asap. Today's market yields aren't high enough to retain value to the consumer; when mutual funds were averaging 11 percent return, sure spend 4 percent then.
Nor are those yields high enough to, in my opinion, get rid of a zero percent loan, whose payment, particularly if on auto deduction/auto pay, continues to be a backbone for your high credit rating.
