Not the original poster, but debt can allow you to shift transactions to periods that are most advantageous to you. Here's an example. Let's say that you as a

Not the original poster, but debt can allow you to shift transactions to periods that are most advantageous to you. Here's an example. Let's say that you as a high wealth individual have some stock. The stock has a value of $10M but you can only realize that value through the sale of the stock. If you sell the stock right now you have to sell it for the price the market will buy it at and you have to pay taxes on the profit, either income taxes if you've not had the stock for long or capital gains taxes if you've held it for the requisite period. It is in your interest to optimize your sale so that you pay the least amount in taxes and get the best price per share. You'd love to be able to hold your stock until you can do that, but you need money now. In comes debt. Someone will probably happily issue you some debt that you can use today as money. You can collateralize that debt with your $10M in paper value and get a nice interest rate. So you take out $1M in debt and enjoy life and at the end you have to pay back, to keep the math easy, $1.1M. This debt cost you $100k but if by taking on that debt you can sell when the stock price is higher or convert income tax (37%) into capital gains (20%) then the $100k could easily buy you much more than $100k. In our example if the stock price were the same but all you did was hold the asset long enough to convert it from short term to long term then instead of paying $10M * 37% = $3.7M in taxes, you'd pay $10M * 20% = $2M in taxes. That's a savings of $1.7M on your tax bill. This is how people with assets can use debt as a tool.