Others have said it here better than I could, but I was the same way but for probably other reasons. My mother lost her home, not due to misfortune but because she couldn’t manage her finances. Quick splurge items and random ideas too priority over long term stability. Anyway, so I thought mortgages and loans were scary too.

Then I got educated on them. They’re not scary if you understand what you’re doing. Loans are not scary, they are tools to achieve your goals. A tool can be extremely useful to accomplish your goal, but you also shouldn’t reach for that tool every time either.

If your goal is to own your home, a mortgage is a great tool if you know what you’re doing. Learning about interest rates, how they’ll affect you, sitting down and looking at your long term finances and knowing what you can manage paying every month for the forseeable future is how you can calculate what works for you.

Where it gets scary is when people walk in, not knowing what they can afford and taking everything the bank will give them, not knowing how much they’ll be paying over time. That’s when things get predatory and scary. Knowledge is power as they say.

Now when I need a loan I go in, and I know what interest rate I want, what duration I want, and exactly how much I need, and the bank usually says yes. I’ve proven myself with my credit score to be a trustworthy person to lend to, and l can now usually get pretty decent terms.

Learn about finances, learn the math, and learn how you spend money. Once you get that knowledge it stops being so scary.