This article is a playful and dark look at the etymology and roots of the word Principal – the “The Original Sin of Borrowing”. It is intended as a historical deep-dive into the formation of the word and how or why it’s applied in our everyday vernacular. Remember: our focus and ongoing goal is to pay off your home loan as fast as possible, so you should read the article with the historical context in mind.
There is something disturbingly elemental about the word principal. It presents itself as neutral, even dull—financial jargon, spreadsheet fodder, the static figure at the top of your home loan statement that never seems to shrink fast enough. But within its syllables lies a deeper linguistic and psychological resonance, one that echoes with the weight of original transgression. Derived from the Latin principium, meaning “beginning,” the principal is not merely the first number, but the primal one—the root from which all financial obligation germinates. Principal is the “Original Sin” of borrowing, the very inception of your debt narrative.
When you take out a loan, you are not just assuming a sum — you are entering a covenant with your future self. The principal is that sum, cold and unyielding, the numerical expression of your yearning made concrete. It is the raw, unadorned cost of desire: the price of a home, a future, a foothold in the social order. Yet it does not forgive. It does not forget. It sits, patient and immovable, awaiting your redemption through the slow attrition of decades. It is Prometheus chained to the rock, except this time you are the liver.
In theological terms, Original Sin is not about the particular fruit that was eaten, but the knowledge that came with it — the knowledge of lack, of debt, of the need to cover oneself and be forgiven. Similarly, the principal represents the knowledge of insufficiency. It is what you didn’t have but needed. It is what the bank gave in mercy — or in calculated risk — and what now must be repaid in steady acts of penitence. Each repayment is a prayer. Each statement, a confessional. You are not just buying a house — you are atoning for having wanted it.
And yet, we rarely speak of the principal in such terms. It is cloaked in euphemism and finance-speak. “Reducing your principal” sounds like a practical goal, as if it were a thing one could trim like fat off a roast. But the principal resists such casual metaphors. It is less like meat and more like myth. It is the Minotaur at the centre of your financial labyrinth, demanding its monthly sacrifice.
Complicating the matter further is the psychological sleight of hand performed by interest. Interest is what we talk about most often — it’s fluid, negotiable, sexy even. You can shop around for it, brag about locking it in. It fluctuates with markets and moods. But the principal is fixed, inert, eternal. And so it gets ignored. Or rather, it becomes part of the psychic wallpaper of homeownership: omnipresent, unnoticed, and quietly oppressive.
To live under the weight of a principal is to live with a number that rarely loves you back. You can throw tens of thousands at it, and it will shrug. In the early years of a loan, nearly all your efforts are eaten by interest, leaving the principal barely scratched. It is a cruel arithmetic: you give, and it does not budge. Not because you are failing, but because the system is designed that way. The principal is a mountain, and the path up is circuitous, always winding, never steep enough to conquer quickly.
There is a reason we speak of “servicing” a loan. The word evokes ritual, subservience, even liturgy. To serve the principal is to enter into a long, quiet bondage. You do not destroy it with one grand gesture; you wear it down through repetition. A life of repayment is not unlike a monk’s life of prayer — endless, structured, and aimed at absolution.
And yet, if we are to be honest, the principal is also a mirror. It reflects not just what we borrowed, but what we believed about ourselves when we did so. It is our ambition, made numerical. It is the size of our hunger. It is the cost of our aspirations. To judge someone for having a large principal is to judge them for dreaming beyond their means—which is to say, for being human in a society where capital is often the only path to dignity.
So let us not pretend the principal is neutral. It may be silent, but it is not mute. It speaks in the language of obligation, of limits and longing. It is the contract we sign not just with banks, but with our own desire. And as with any original sin, we may spend the rest of our lives trying to redeem ourselves from its consequences.
Yet—perhaps—the great quiet grace of it all is that the principal can be redeemed. Not erased, not forgotten, but slowly, methodically, lovingly diminished. It is not a sentence, but a pilgrimage. You carry it with you. You chip away at it. And one day, if all goes well, you wake up and it is gone.
Not unlike Eden, you may look back at it — at the long years, the anxious balances, the sacrifice and strain — and think: I would do it all again.
