Situaional Advice

[cardtrick]

Still too much in savings accounts. Do you have equity in the house? If so, get a HELOC. Don't draw on it. Just keep it for emergencies. Then, you can use most of the $50K or so you have to pay off those student loans. Then, keep making the regular payments on the house and bank the rest of the money till you get back up to the $x in emergency funds you would be comfortable with.

Think of all the interest you will be saving.

[outsicktoday]

I know, I would love to dip even more into the savings to pay things off, however I like the idea of having at least 5-6 months of living expenses in the bank. Jobs are secure for the most part, but honestly I don't trust this economy that much.

I was too conservative and basically just invested almost 25K this year in student loans in one lump sum and another 26K in 1,000 payments (by the end of the year). Giving 50K to student loans this year alone is a lot I think, and yeah I could give more and end up saving true.

I end up paying for a couple years and even if I saved nothing I would have 50K in the bank, I could always either pay more than the 2000 a month and end the loan after 2 years or make another lump payment then. So at worst I have 3 years with no extra and no lump sum or 2 years with extra and or a lump. Good enough I think.

After the loans are gone all I will owe is a mortgage with about 24 years left at 5% rate. I can either refi to lower the payment or start sending extra to pay that off.

Great advice and great help from all. Appreciated!

[outsicktoday]

Yes I budget and account for every dollar spent on an excel spreadsheet. It's tracked every month, with daily entries. Mt record is more up to date than the bank's.

Another small trick is to round up everything by at least a dollar. So 50 transactions a month might save 30-40 a month. Over time it builds up and I have a little extra to send to the savings.

[outsicktoday]

Still too much in savings accounts. Do you have equity in the house? If so, get a HELOC. Don't draw on it. Just keep it for emergencies. Then, you can use most of the $50K or so you have to pay off those student loans. Then, keep making the regular payments on the house and bank the rest of the money till you get back up to the $x in emergency funds you would be comfortable with.

Think of all the interest you will be saving.

I guess it's a gamble of sorts. The HELOC would have a higher interest rate is my guess than 5.7% So I would be spending the money and banking on no emergency happening. If something came up, then it would cost me more.

To me the extreme of hoarding too much like I was doing is one extreme, and the other would be to give away too much and go to low on the other. Somewhere in the middle is usually the best place to be, although I'm probably still mostly to the right of the middle on this one, but at least not as far as I was. The goal of having 100,000 in the bank was a nice goal, but it would have cost me a lot in interest to keep. I still have an interest cost, but I have a good amount of savings to build off of.

Going to keep about 50K or so and pay off chunks. Maybe save 5,000 at a time and send it in in those intervals. It will be gone in a couple years and I can then start to obsess about whether to pay off the home mortgage or invest or save.