I understand your points about debt, and I know that for you, and many others, debt is to be avoided if at all possible, and paid off asap if it cannot be avoided.

I'm not as financially conservative as you appear to be. We currently have two auto loans and three mortgages, despite the fact that if I wanted to, I could pay them all off tomorrow.

However, their rates range from 2% to 3.875%, and my average annual investment returns are about 4-fold higher at 12%. So, I would much rather keep the investment returns coming while paying the much lower interest rates.

Even if my returns drop to my assumed 7% long-term average, that's more than double the average interest I'm paying.

Of course, it's possible that the market will tank and lose half of its value. But as long as I earn enough to keep making the loan payments, I can wait out that crash, and expect that over the long term, we'll get back to the 7-12% average return.