Pay off Student Loan or Use as Down Payment?

[Anonymous]

I currently have approximately 45K in student loan debt at around 4.5%. We live in a TH with 25% equity (100K). In addition to a healthy emergency fund, fully-funded retirement accounts and minimally-funded college savings account, we have put together about 40K in additional savings. I know I am very lucky and appreciate what I have. But I am having a dilemma.

On the one hand, I REALLY want to move to a nicer SFH within the next year or two. In order to do that, we will need all of the equity in our current home, plus all of the 40K savings (and then some). On the other hand, it makes me quesy to think about using our nestegg to essentially buy a bigger mortgage. We will be depleting our savings AND increasing our debt in order to have a nicer home. Is the better thing to do to take our nestegg and pay off the student loans, even though it puts our dream of a new home at least 5 years farther down the road?

[Anonymous]

I've having trouble with a similar issue myself, and I'm not sure of the answer. But I suspect that most people would say pay off the student loan debt first, because the interest rates are probably so high. That's what we're leaning toward.