I read somewhere recently that the banking industry has managed to lose more money in the past couple of years than the entire industry has made since banking began. What that all means is anyone's guess, but one thing it clearly means (for a while anyway) is that you don't want to be paying off your debt.
That statement may seem counterintuitive given the uncertainties we face which would suggest keeping a more conservative balance sheet. But what is debt? Debt is money I owe someone that I can't pay off all at once. If I owe you a zillion dollars and have twenty bucks in the bank, that's debt. If I owe you a zillion dollars and have a zillion in the bank, then that's not debt. From a balance sheet standpoint, the two cancel each other out.
The point is that if someone has been kind enough to loan you money because times were good and they had it to loan and they were pretty confident that you would and could pay it back, hang on to it, because once you've paid it back it will be a while before anyone makes you that offer again. Make the minimum payments and sock away the cash to pay it off, but in the meantime enjoy the addition to your working capital that you might very well wish you still had if you precipitously paid it back in the name of fiscal conservatism.
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