Kevin O’Leary: Here’s Why You Need To Be Debt Free by Age 45
Written by
Nicole Spector
Edited by
Chris Cluff
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Carrying the burden of debt is the way of life for many. According to Experian, as of the third quarter of 2023, the average American held $104,215 in debt.
You’re probably very familiar with the negative side effects of debt and how hard paying it down can be, but do you know that by age 45, you should be debt free? This is according to multimillionaire investor and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary.
At 45, You Should Be Making Money Off Investments
Why, in the opinion of O’Leary, is it so necessary to hold no debt by the time you reach this relatively young age? It comes down to building up that all-important nest egg for retirement. And making that nest egg grow, grow, grow.
You don’t want to be scraping by in a cycle of debt in your last 20 or so years of working. You want to be getting rich, instead.
“When you’re 45 years old, the game is more than half over,” O’Leary once told CNBC. “And you’d better be out of debt, because you’re going to use the rest of the innings in that game to accrue capital, so you can invest it.”
Aiming to be debt free by 45 is an ambitious goal, but O’Leary implies you should get even more aggressive and aim to be debt free not just by 45 but, ideally, by 42.
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