It's Brian Preston, the money guy, restoring order to your financial chaos, retirement, investing, taxes.

You've got financial questions, he's got financial answers. It's Brian Preston, the money guy.

All right, here, this next question, Brian, is from Ben T. And this is an interesting one.

He used how I think he meant what? So I'm going to change that. What's an acceptable amount of debt

to take on? Dave Ramsey always says 0%, but that seems extreme. I've been trying to keep it below

50% of my total asset worth. Is that a safe margin? I don't know exactly how Ben asked that question,

but I thought perhaps it'd be valuable if we talk about when you do take on debt, what are some

things to keep in mind? So first of all, just as yes or no question, is 0% debt always the answer?

You can never have debt. Yes or no? No, no. So if you are going to have debt, what kind of debts

are acceptable? And then can you give us some parameters around that? Like mortgage and credit cards

and automobiles and student laws. When does debt make sense? When does debt not make sense?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, we give some really good guidelines. Let me get some basic life stuff

out here because these are the big life decisions where debt comes into play cars.

That's the first thing you graduate college. You need a car, trade school, whatever you're graduating

from. You need to buy some reliable transportation. We don't let you buy luxury brands unless you can

do same as cash. So if you're just looking at basic reliable transportation, I am okay with

you financing, but you go better be following 238. I mean, that you better put down 20%. You don't

finance it for longer than three years. And then that debt service can't be greater than 8%

of your gross income as a household. So that's the first thing. Remember, you're mark 8%.

That's the first thing. Now let's talk about housing. We don't like housing. And look, this is hard

because and this is why it's going to come into play because we're in a strange market right now.

We're even rinse are going up. So in the past, I've always talked about I don't want you to have your

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