This article is playful look at the origin, etymology, and psychology, or the word ‘Interest’. It is intended to be a humorous dig at the word that has become central to our discussions, and as a historical reference to deepen our understanding. Of course, one of the underlying primary goals we work towards on a daily basis is minimising interest, and our debt reduction methods are central to this end.
If principal is the Original Sin of borrowing, then interest is the price of that sin — the lifelong penance, the invisible tax levied on human yearning. It is the shadow trailing every act of acquisition, a murmur in the backroom of all ambition. Where principal is the initial transgression — the reaching beyond one’s grasp — interest is the long, quiet reckoning that follows.
To pay interest is to enter into a contract not just with a lender, but with time itself. Interest is not a thing you buy. It is the temporal rent on capital you did not yet own. It is what we pay for being impatient — or perhaps merely realistic — in a world where the cost of living outpaces the speed of saving. It is the price of bringing tomorrow into today, the blood offering that allows you to sleep under your own roof before you’ve technically earned it.
The etymology of the word “interest” is telling. From the Latin interesse, meaning “to be between,” it originally denoted compensation for loss — a charge levied against the borrower to compensate the lender for the opportunity cost of not using the money elsewhere. And so, even in its origins, interest is about absence, about loss, about what might have been. It is a cost imposed by the very act of making a choice — to borrow here instead of invest there, to want now rather than wait.
Unlike principal, which is finite and knowable, interest is protean. It shapeshifts according to the winds of the Reserve Bank, the machinations of global finance, the pulse of national sentiment. One month it is benign; the next it devours. It is the great unpredictable element of borrowing — the wildcard in an otherwise calculated transaction. And this makes it not just mathematical, but psychological. Interest creates unease, even when it is low. It is a figure in motion, a shifting ground beneath the fixed edifice of your debt.
It also introduces an exquisite paradox: the more you owe, the more you pay. Not just in absolute dollars, but in compounded time. Interest is exponential where principal is linear. It is the multiplier of regret, the magnifier of miscalculation. If principal is the cold number that names your aspiration, interest is the flame that tests its endurance.
More poetically, interest is the monetisation of desire. It is the premium placed upon the human need to dwell, to nest, to possess. It is what banks charge for the vulnerability of hope. No one takes out a home loan purely for financial reasons — even the most astute investor is ultimately motivated by a vision of stability, growth, belonging, or status. Interest preys on that vision. It is what you pay for believing that the future will be kind enough to repay the dreams you financed in the present.
And yet we are trained to think of interest as neutral, or even generous. “Rates are low right now“, we are told, as if this were a benevolence and not a recalibrated form of gain. We forget that interest is not charity; it is compensation, it is risk adjustment, it is capitalism made elegant in numerical form. The lower the interest, the more baited the trap. The higher it climbs, the more honest it becomes.
Psychologically, interest also has the uncanny ability to dislocate us from our progress. You can pay faithfully, generously even, and find your principal unmoved. You chip and chip and see only splinters. The early years of a home loan are a Kafkaesque ritual — a theatre of effort where results are delayed by design. This is no accident. Amortisation schedules are structured not for fairness, but for revenue. Your first years are almost all interest, as though you must prove your worthiness before your debt deigns to shrink.
But if interest is the cost of desire, it is also the keeper of discipline. It teaches patience, consistency, and a certain spiritual humility. Unlike taxes, which are extracted under duress, interest is paid willingly — it is a self-imposed yoke, a chosen form of suffering. We agree to it because we believe in a payoff greater than its pain. We believe that in the long run, having the home — the space, the security, the symbol — is worth what it costs us in the meantime.
And perhaps this is why interest retains its moral ambivalence. It is not wholly a villain. It is also a teacher. It asks us to reckon with the consequences of our choices, to plan for more than the now. It introduces gravity into the lightness of signing a dotted line. It transforms the act of borrowing from mere transaction into existential arithmetic. It ensures that no acquisition is casual, no possession unearned.
Still, one must acknowledge the darker historical undertones. For centuries, the charging of interest — usury — was condemned in religious doctrine. In early Christian and Islamic thought, to profit from another’s need was to sin against divine justice. To make money from money, without labour or value creation, was to offend the natural order. And while modern economics has softened these prohibitions, the ghost of moral suspicion lingers. We may have legalised interest, but we have not entirely trusted it.
In home lending especially, interest performs a cruel sleight of hand. It hides in plain sight. It is everywhere, yet nowhere. It does not appear on the façade of the house, but it lives in every room. It is the unseen guest at your dinner table, the faint hiss behind the lullaby sung to your child. It follows your mailbox, your email, your online banking app. It shapes your career decisions, your spending habits, your family planning. It is not just a number — it is a presence.
And yet it ends.
That is perhaps the quiet redemption of it all. Like principal, interest is not forever. It can be conquered, outlasted, dissolved through discipline and time. It is a cost, yes, but not a curse. It is a challenge, not a fate. And when it is gone, what remains is not just ownership of a house, but a profound understanding of what it took to get there.
To pay off your interest is to reclaim your future from the grasp of your past. It is to declare that your desire, while costly, was not in vain. And it is to finally, after years of tribute, stand in the home you bought with borrowed hope and hard-won grace — and know that every corner, every echo, is truly your own.
