Paying off a student loan - any reason not to?

[anonymous_saver]

Good job on paying off that student loan, that's the choice I would have made.

Since you only have your house debt left, an emergency fund fully funded, and some savings for your daughter, I would focus more money towards your retirement.

Since you are putting up to your employers match currently, start maxing out each of your Roth IRA's. Yes, I did say BOTH. Do you guys both have one currently? If not, you should open one now for the other person. Keep in mind the money you used to pay towards your student loans can go towards this immediately! Also any money that you have above and beyond your fully funded EF should go towards maxing out your Roth's. If you have any extra money after this, then I would pay down the debt of your house, and at the same time each time you get a pay increase at your job(s), why not raise the 401(k) by 1%? It might not sound like much, but eventually it will make a huge difference. Just think, in 10 years, you could be putting away 16% towards your 401(k) and maxing out 2 Roth's!

You are doing great, by the way!

Oh yeah, what is your interest rate and mortgage amount?

[SavingsDad]

Since you are putting up to your employers match currently, start maxing out each of your Roth IRA's. Yes, I did say BOTH. Do you guys both have one currently? If not, you should open one now for the other person. Keep in mind the money you used to pay towards your student loans can go towards this immediately! Also any money that you have above and beyond your fully funded EF should go towards maxing out your Roth's. If you have any extra money after this, then I would pay down the debt of your house, and at the same time each time you get a pay increase at your job(s), why not raise the 401(k) by 1%? It might not sound like much, but eventually it will make a huge difference. Just think, in 10 years, you could be putting away 16% towards your 401(k) and maxing out 2 Roth's!

We both have a Roth IRA that we contribute $300/month each to. Yes, I agree that we need to max out our Roth IRAs each year. I think what we are going to do is make a one-time payment to each IRA to max it out once the calendar year is done. As for raising our 401k %, that's something we might consider doing. My wife would like to take the extra money and put it towards savings - though I feel we have enough in there. What we might end up doing is investing the extra money outside of a 401k so it's liquidable, if needed. I don't know if that means stocks or bonds or ? but I think we need to take a little risk with our money in order to make it grow.