JinCo,
I noticed you are a Savings 3rd Grader, so you have not been around an extremely long time. If you stick around, you will begin to learn the saving philosophy of many of the others on the board. For example, you probably noticed that maat55 is a BIG Dave Ramsey fan as noted by a few of his posts to your thread. A majority of his advice will follow much of Dave's advice. With that said, you may want to read one of Dave's books, so at least you understand where he and others might be coming from that prescribe to this philosophy. Still others here believe that you should invest as much as possible as you will most likely get better returns than the interest you pay. I fall somewhere in the middle. Yes, it is nice to be debt free, and when you get there, it is even better to stay there. However, a balance can be struck. Just reading your posts and knowing only what I have read, I am just wondering how much more psychological weight the debt has over you than the actual debt itself hurts you? My wife and I are close to your age and I have been in simialr shoes. When we had more debt than we wanted, sometimes it looked daunting when it was all added up. I felt like I was on a roller coaster. Some days I wanted to invest more, other days I wanted to pay off the debt. It was up and down all the time. My guess is that you might feel the same way. Hopefully these numbers make you feel a little better. If I use 240K as your income (210 + 30 bonus), you are saving 13% of your income to your 401k by maxing it out. That is great considering you have 170K already invested. You stated that your employers match also (4% for wife and 7% for you), so that adds another 11%. Please tell me that is correct, because that is some big time money! That equates to another 26K. I hope like heck that is correct because it is fantastic. So, if it is right, you are saving 55+K a year in your 401k's with matches which is over 23%. I would not stop putting this money away. You will never get the time back to add to it. In 10 years your 401k's will have over $1,000,000 just assuming a 7% return. This year sucks, but hey, you have time on your side. In that same 10 year period, you will pay off the HELOC, and all of the student loand if you put 20K extra in each year. Rough math had it paid off in about 9 years or so. I say to stay the course. Continue to invest for your retirement and also pay some to the debt to make yourself feel better. You are in good shape.
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