Debt is real

Most people both own and owe: We have assets and we have debts.

An important distinction between the cash value of the two: Assets are speculative. Debts are real.

We can believe we know what our assets are worth, but their actual cash value is what someone will pay for them at the time we try to sell them, and we can only speculate about what that amount will be. Those speculations are often overly optimistic. Those speculations usually fail to account for how swiftly a particular kind of asset—say, a McMansion in the exurbs—can be devalued.

We can know the actual cash value of what we owe. That doesn't change (though inflation can chip away at it over time).

All of this is to say that you want to be very careful when you hand over something real (an agreement to take on debt) in exchange for something speculative (a house, a car, a stock).