Some of your CTUP editors had on our summer reading list the Walter Isaacson Biography of Benjamin Franklin. One can’t read it and not come away believing that Franklin was one of the greatest of our Founding Fathers and that few wiser men have ever lived.

We couldn’t help noticing that at a very young age, Franklin wrote a short list that he called his “Plan for Future Conduct” to be successful in life. The first on the list could hardly be more timely today:

“1. it is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe.”

In other words, pay off your loans and debts.