Reply to How should I pay off $300k in student loans?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would pay the minimum for at least the next year and be extremely frugal with the rest of your money - max out retirement, IRAs, save for a down payment if you're not homeowners yet, build up your emergency fund.  If a student loan forgiveness bill gets passed reevaluate - if $50k is forgiven for each of you, pay the rest off aggressively.  If it's $10k/each, you might stick with PAYE.  But spend this year making sure that you use the discretionary income you're not directing at your loans to improve your bottom line, and get a feel for what your life looks like directing all of your discretionary income at a financial goal instead of having cushion.[/quote]

Op here -  thanks. We already max out our 401k, and back door ira, we are homeowners and pay mortgage, we have 529s for both kids which we fund each month, and otherwise we put some in a brokerage account. Any thing else I should be doing that I’m not?[/quote]

In that case I'd send every discretionary dollar to the brokerage for the time being.  When loan forgiveness gets figured out, you might be able to knock out your loans all at once with what you have invested - or you might look at your balance sheet and decide that you'd rather invest and pay the minimum and build your net worth, even if it means another 15-18 years of $1600/month payments.

Your professions matter here too - if one of you is BigLaw and might be getting $40k-$100k bonuses in the next few years, you can just knock out your loans with the bonuses.  If one is a doctor you can count on a high and increasing income and it might make sense to knock out the loans first, knowing you can quickly rebuild.  But if you're both feds or something, nearing the top of your earning ability, you should probably get comfortable on your income minus 1600 and make plans with those figures.

I paid off $175k in ~6 years, with 2 years of unemployment, by always paying double/triple the minimum when I had a job, snowballing the little ones out of the way, not putting the loans into deferment when I was unemployed, and using all bonuses and tax refunds.  It sucked, but when the loans were gone I had this giant chunk of money I was accustomed to not spending, and it all went to savings/investment.[/quote]

Op here - you are right on the money. One of us is biglaw, has been for 4 yrs but only made no use the first year which is long gone. I appreciate your tips and insight![/quote]

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