Sometimes it never shows up. Mine never did. And I still have student loan debt.
When you're calculating values, consider that different students have very different levels of student debt despite receiving the same education. Rich kids with the bank of mommy and daddy don't need to borrow at all.
> If I borrow money to buy a car, but have no substantial savings, then I'm a debtor - but if I can easily afford the payment then there's no problem, is there?
No, because your net worth is not negative.
If I borrow money to buy a car, and I have no substantial savings, then for sure my net worth is negative because a car is a depreciating asset.
If you're truly living paycheck to paycheck, then you are actually in danger, because paychecks can easily stop, e.g., layoffs, and then you won't be able to "easily" afford your car payment.
This is not even mentioning other unexpected expenses that can arise and suddenly make your easy car payments not so easy.
And that's completely correct, given that there is an absurd amount of garbage colleges/degrees out there, that there's a massive oversupply of people with degrees, and that companies nowadays require degrees even for underpaid paper pusher jobs because it allows them to legally discriminate against otherwise protected classes. It's fundamentally impossible to assign any positive value to a college degree unless the person is actually employed.
What. No, look, for example: assessed from a "net worth" perspective, almost every single college student is in the "debtor" column, because the net present value of a college education isn't something that shows up in the calculation.
If I borrow money to buy a car, but have no substantial savings, then I'm a debtor - but if I can easily afford the payment then there's no problem, is there?
You're making one of the exact same semantic errors as the OP was talking about.