Trying to keep up with the Joneses, for instance, is a no-win game, and it turns out that many of those we envied for their supposed wealth built it on a shaky foundation of debt.
The nation's economy is now "built on a foundation of debt," he said, and he expects the broad market indexes to be lower in 10 years than they are today.
As all too many debtors are learning, it's very hard to build dreams on foundations of debt.
And in finance, once a profession characterised by testosterone-fuelled braggadocio, a generation of brilliant nerds built the models that provided a pseudo-scientific foundation for the tower of debt whose collapse has buried us all.
Maybe all that progress you made last week was built on a false foundation of quick-hit technical debt, and you need to stop everything and go back and refactor it, and you need to do it now because the longer you wait, the worse things will get.
Wilson says that it's not unusual for people on her MA course to have already racked up £50,000-worth of debt during a foundation course and three-year BA, which in turn affects their work: "The pressure disallows them to take as many risks as they would have previously".
Think of the chance that was squandered, the opportunity to create a society where power truly shifted from the centre to the places where people live, a society where education was not about tests and targets but about true learning, an economy that was not built on a bubble of debt, but on foundations solid, fair and green.
"We want to have maximum athletic success on a solid economic foundation," Watzke said, "without creating a single euro of debt".
Please let us remember that, up to 2007, debt was the foundation of Western prosperity.
This type of debt is unsecured, and thus shouldn't be used as the foundation of an investment portfolio.
Preferred bidders, fans' group Foundation of Hearts, are offering £2.5m towards debts of around £30m.
