I'm quite aware of the general view on credit card debt, personal lines of credit, personal loans, etc. They're "hair on fire" level emergency that needs to be dealt with immediately if not sooner. Currently, everything is paid off in full, every month, zero debt.
The consensus also seems to also be that mortgages are "good debt" and you shouldn't pay them off early.
I find myself in the interesting and mildly annoying situation of buying a house with a bunch of cash on hand, a personal loan, a line of credit, and paying for most of the landscaping improvements with a credit card.
This, mostly, because of some entertaining (in the "black comedy" way) delays. Had we paid for the house in cash, there wouldn't have been any of the delays. Because we wanted a mortgage, the delays added up so we can't get one. *sigh* Quitting one's job, moving a few hundred miles to be closer to family in an environment we like living in, and taking 3 months off prior to starting a different job is apparently not what banks consider a reasonable risk anymore. Even though our net worth significantly exceeds the house cost (just a lot is in 401k and IRAs I don't feel like touching if I don't have to).
I've got a 0% for 15 months card lined up that will be taking a lot of the lawn, garden, and appliance expenses, the personal loan is $24k at 9% (ew), the line of credit is about 6% (total on it unknown as I don't have the foundation bill yet), and other credit cards are at various standard CC rates (read as, "I don't know because they get paid in full regularly").
So, after moving, there's going to be somewhere between $40k and $60k of various-interest-rate debt that's very much not a mortgage, but is serving the same purpose.
My gut feeling is that this should be treated as a hair on fire level emergency and we eat rice and beans with no travel or TV or nicer furniture or anything until this is resolved in ~2 years (we're donating a lot of our larger furniture because it's old and college-student-quality and we don't have the trailer space to move it). But I know I wouldn't have the same reaction were I to have a mortgage in the full house amount at ~4% interest ("Oh, I should probably pay this off inside 10 years because we don't generally like debt").
And, TBH, I'm really not excited about the concept of going from our current state of "Money isn't something we really need to keep tight tabs on because we've got our spending habits nailed down to far less than our income" to "tracking every penny until this debt goes away." That, at least for me, looks like no hobby R&D equipment (which generally turns profitable after a year or so), working from a bedroom instead of a separate structure, and only tiny quantities of crappy beer (PBR?) instead of drinking nice local stuff.
So... thoughts? Is mortgage-like debt that's not actually a mortgage reasonable to treat as a mortgage, or should it be treated like the unsecured debt it actually is, and aggressively attacked until eliminated, at the cost of not doing many other things until it's resolved?