Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

How smart is it to really be 100% debt free?
Keep in mind that you NEED to have a cash reserve.  Blindly applying all stray cash to debt reduction is a bad idea.  Your lenders do not care about your balance.  All they care about is your NEXT payment.  It is therefore imperative that you have a cash reserve that can carry these payments for several months.  Having zero cash reserves puts you at high risk for such simple things as the payroll clerk at work missing the monthly deposit (Rare, but it happens.) I've also been in situations where a major client had a cash flow issue and delayed payment, and our company had to borrow to meet payroll that month.  Fortunately, we were in good standing with the bank and had low debt, but it could have been catastrophic for any employees living paycheque to paycheque.