I think it is important to give yourself some leeway as well. While I paid more to my student loans during certain periods, there were some times when my financial focus needed to be elsewhere, so I just paid the minimum, like when I was in grad school or dealing with unexpected expenses. With your income and family situation now, I can understand that it might be hard to really focus in on the debt. Understand that even if you are paying the minimum, you’re still making progress–with a family on a tighter income, the emergency fund becomes even more important, so that may be where your priority lies. You can always work on that fund, place it in a high-yield savings account, and use the interest as extra, “Bonus” principal payments on your loans.

My wife and I have about $65K combined. Yeah, that’s going to take a long time…nice to see a student loan success story though!

I just had to take out my first student loan. It scares the shit out of me. Fortunately, I did city college the first two years. I’m looking to be in something like 10k in debt by this time next year. Eeeek.

Not to mention, I’m planning on a Ph.D after this. That equates to: super expensive schools! My least expensive option would be something like UCLA which is still 13k a year.

The rate is locked in, so I’m set there. We consolidated a few years ago. The .5% reduction is for a certain amount of on time payments.

That’s a very nice interest rate–be sure to lock it in if you get it ever lower! My rate used to be more like that but I was late in consolidating and the rates went up. One of my dumber moves….

Sasha

I kept hearing the same thing–that I should just ignore the debt and try to invest in stocks which would earn more. But I’m not much for higher-risk investments, and I decided I’d rather get rid of what seemed like a slow leak of my personal funds than take a chance on something that can fluctuate either way.

Also, the loans just annoyed me in principal. I want to remember college fondly…

Thanks. I’d love to get that e-mail:

Dear Sasha,

Thanks for doing business with us. We promise never to bother you again. Ever.

Really, forget we ever existed.

Love,

Sallie Mae

I don’t really know what my next goal is, but I’m up for suggestions. I have a few mortgages between my primary residence and rental property, and I could go towards trying to pay them down sooner, but with assuming I’l resell my primary residence in a few years anyway, it may not be worth it.

Really, I’d like to grow my cash net worth. I keep seeing Flexo’s rise monthly on this blog, but my finances were all channeled to the debt so I’ve not seen my worth rise much at all in the last 2 years. Also, I still have too many expenses.

Oh, and I’m just the associate blogger here… =)

Now I’m working towards eliminating the mortgage payments, while trying to balance retirement savings with that. I should probably find a good financial advisor like you did to help me figure out a good balance of the two.

So how does it feel? Like a huge weight off you? What’s your next goal now that you’ve got cash flow freed up?

One thing I notice most mortgage brokers leave out on the tax savings is the fact that you get a standard deduction. For married filing jointly like me that is over 10k this year. So, I don’t really save anything on the first 10k of mortgage interest each year, I would have had that tax savings anyway.