The unfortunate-sounding term “peniaphobia” signifies an irrational fear of poverty. Is there another term for the irrational fear of borrowing money or of being in debt?
What’s irrational about it?
It’s irrational because usually the person who suffers from the phobia has no reason to worry… it’s an unwarranted fear.
To the OP, sounds like you might be stuck with peniaphobia… wouldn’t that encompass being in debt as well?
I’m not sure. I’d think that a peniaphobiac would be afraid of just having very little money, without necessarily being in debt. On the other hand, someone with debt phobia would habitually avoid borrowing money regardless of the situation, even if they were in great need, or even if the debt in question wouldn’t necessarily result in poverty.
Given the ludicrously specific natures of some widely held phobias (kyphophobia, hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, etc), I would have sworn that there’d be a term for this sort of thing as well. But perhaps not.
Whatever the condition is called, one of the most famous people to have suffered from it was Hetty Green, the richest woman in the US in the 19th century:
http://coco.essortment.com/whowashettygr_ricf.htm
She divorced her husband because she had to pay one of his debts. She refused to seek medical teatment for her son’s injured leg because she was afraid of incurring medical debt and, as a result, the son’s leg was later amputated.
I can see the original posters problem. For instance as an older person who’s first car cost $9,000 total new, I bought a car for $27,000 and and first glance I saw the debt load and was like “OH MY GOD!!!”
Of course I make a good living and that is not that big of a problem, but to see that amount on paper without seeing my salary as an offset is shocking at first.
Yeah but… there’s debt, and there’s debt. AKA secured vs. unsecured.
The former, usually a mortgage, or something in a pawn shop, can be recalled by the lender with minimal damage (apart from a bad credit rating and subject to depreciation of the secured asset) to the debtor. The latter, usually dependent solely on the continued income of the debtor, can really fuck you up if something happens that causes a hiatus in that income (unless you have credit insurance).
I am scared of the latter form of debt, having been there and done that and only gotten out of my situation via appreciation of the value of the asset secured by the former.
I call it being “tight fisted”. My wife would agree.
I had an uncle that, till the end of his life, was still buying day old bake goods. Born and raised during the Great depression, he wouldn’t part with a red cent for anything.
We called him a Cheap Bastard!
His probate lawyer called him a multi millionaire.
I wish I never had called him names.
:smack:
I think the term is “wisdom” but am not sure, never having met anybody afflicted with it.
(bolding mine)
Does anyone actually use that word? I mean, “fear of the number six-six-six” is a full seven (six if kosioi is pronounced ko-si-oi, rather than ko-si-o-i) syllables shorter, and far more easily understood.
O.K., Wiki didn’t have an entry for this one.
There was a Wiki entry for Cyphostemma, defining the Greek root, kyphos, as “hump”. This first lead me to believe a kyphophobiac to be someone who would think Quasimodo was icky.
Dictionary.com defines it as “a fear of stooping, becoming stooped” 
I wish I has found an encyclopedia article, because I really don’t understand what “a fear of stooping, becoming stooped” means?
“Fear of stooping”, would that be like a strong aversion to going through any doorway that way lower than your own height standing upright? I can kinda understand that . . .
But “being stooped”??? Don’t really get this at all. Maybe, having stooped to get through the low doorway one finds one’s self unable to ever again stand upright?
I think “being stooped” refers to having that spine problem that leads to one being permanently stooped over in posture. I’ve seen old women like that.
It’s not a common or clear usage at all. I’m not sure whether it is the same thing as having a hunched back, which would definitely be the more common way of referring to it.
Fear of debt is called ‘experience’.
I’m not sure of the details either, and its inclusion above was really a result of poor editing. I doubt that particular phobia is actually “widespread” as my earlier post suggested. I was trying to think of some highly specific phobias to illustrate my point, but then I decided to limit it to somewhat common ones, which brought triskadekaphobia and numberoftheBeastophobia to mind. But then it seemed like overkill to include two number phobias, so I went back to re-edit my post again, and somehow kyphophobia wasn’t deleted that time. I wonder if there’s a phobia about confusing phobias.
But really, how is it that different numbers, days of the week, etc. have their own particular phobias, and yet there’s no specific term for phobia of debt? That just seems like a huge oversight somehow. Maybe phobia names are created by independently wealthy people as a pastime of some sort, and fear of debt just never occurred to them.
Or possibly “scottish”?