Daily Practice ·
Separate your good debts from the bad ones in a single afternoon
A twenty-minute practice to look at all your debts with clarity, distinguish which ones work in your favor and which ones only drag you down, and consciously decide which one to address first.
By Pedro J. Pérez
Almost all of us live with debt, but very few of us know what kind of debt we have on our hands. We mix them all in the same mental bag, and that makes it impossible to decide with judgment: everything feels equally heavy, equally urgent, equally inevitable.
However, not all of them play the same role. There are debts that buy something that produces, that gets paid with what it generates, and that also leaves something in your pocket. And there are others that only finance what has already been consumed, what gets spent, what gives nothing back. Confusing them is what turns a tool into a burden.
Today you're going to do something simple but revealing: put them in writing, one by one, and look them in the face. It's not about judging yourself or making drastic decisions, but about seeing clearly what you have in front of you.
The practice Duration: 20 minutes
Bring all your debts into the light
Find a quiet place and take a sheet of paper or open a note on your phone. During the first five minutes, write down every debt you currently have active: cards, loans, installments, credits, whatever it is. Don't leave any out because of shame or because it seems small to you. Note who you owe, how much is left to pay, and, if you know it, how much you pay each month.
Ask what each one bought
Spend a few minutes answering, for each debt, a single question: what did this finance? Don't think about the debt in the abstract, think about where the money went. Did it buy something that is still producing today, that is used to generate income, that appreciates, or that gets paid with what it generates? Or did it finance something that has already been consumed, that got spent, that gives nothing back? Write the answer next to each line.
Mark them with two different colors
Now classify. With one color or label, mark the debts that bought something that works in your favor: those are the ones that get paid with what they produce and can also leave something in your pocket. With another color, mark the ones that only financed consumption or things that generate nothing and that you pay month after month. The goal is not to judge, it's to separate. When you finish, you'll have two clearly distinguishable groups.
Look at where your leverage is
Review the first group, the one with the debts that work. Ask yourself, for each one, whether you truly understand how it works, whether you control what it produces, and whether you know what would happen if things don't turn out as you expect. If the answer is yes, there you have a tool that can multiply what you do well. If the answer is no, that debt looks more like a loaded weapon than an ally. Write one honest sentence next to each one.
Choose just one thing for today
Don't try to solve everything at once. At the end of the twenty minutes, choose a single concrete and realistic action for the next few hours: stop adding new consumption to one of the bad debts, learn more about one of the good ones before touching it, or simply write down which one you're going to address first and why. One single thing, done today, is worth more than a perfect plan that never starts.
To reflect on today
If you had to explain to someone you trust which of your debts works in your favor and which one only drags you down, could you say it without hesitating?
To finish
Separating what sustains you from what sinks you is the first step to stop treating all your debts as if they were the same. It's not about avoiding all debt, but about knowing which one you use and for what. When you see the difference clearly, you stop carrying things blindly and start deciding with intention.