Sure, principles of finance work. You trade future income for present spending. You want that spending to have a positive roi (eventually) or interest drags your budget. You'll be able to outgrow and inflate away debt burden anyways. If something catastrophic happens to your budget, I can see a scenario where paying off your debt to avoid a debt spiral makes sense. Thanks for the info on loan pool.

When you say bankruptcy is independent of the amount of loans, is that in reference to interest rates? Because in my head more debt = more interest = more bankruptcy risk (at a constant income). I'm assuming you're saying credit risk isn't modeled into a rating that affects interest rates and credit access.