There's a discrepancy that the top comments here say that "some people can produce a ton of value by not caring about code quality" and "I didn't care about code quality and got bit later on". And people discuss that incurring technical debt with bad code can sometimes be worth it and sometimes not be worth it.
The logical implication of technical debt having an interest rate (i.e. It costs more to fix something later than now) is that like money, features have time value. This is what makes it worth it to incur technical debt.
Thinking about the implied interest rate of technical debt makes it easier to rank what should be prioritized for a fix. High interest debt should be paid off first. But you might also focus on refactors that reduce the interest rate, such as by modularizing your code so it's easier to replace down the line.
The logical implication of technical debt having an interest rate (i.e. It costs more to fix something later than now) is that like money, features have time value. This is what makes it worth it to incur technical debt.
Thinking about the implied interest rate of technical debt makes it easier to rank what should be prioritized for a fix. High interest debt should be paid off first. But you might also focus on refactors that reduce the interest rate, such as by modularizing your code so it's easier to replace down the line.