Don't go to grad school if you can't get them to pay for it. Not worth it. Get an assistantship or a fellowship.

In your shoes I'd pay in cash. What will your income be when you start school? Will you keep working? Take the vacation when you finish school.

OP here, yes

Would the loans accrue interest prior to graduation?

My husband and I are 33 and 28 and make 200k a year. We just bought a 500k house and drained our savings down to 20k to deal with that. I am starting grad school and I wonder if we should take out a loan this year to the tune of 24k w 5% interest rate for school and commit to building our emergency fund again OR just pay for school in cash and not have much money saved for an emergency. FWIW we usually can save about 3k and month and have no credit card debt. My husband has about 30k in student loans from his grad school. Also we would like to go on a big vacation this year but not sure if that's irresponsible or we should just commit to it since we want to have kids soon and want to see South Africa before that. Any advice?