Hey everyone, mid-2016 I started taking my personal finances more seriously. In the past 6 months I've paid off around $5,000 in credit card debt, I have $2,000 left (should be paid off by May). Once that's out of the way I'm going to start attack my student loan debt which looks something like this:
Private - $65,000 (@30 years) Federal - $30,000 (@ 25 years) Parent Plus - $8,000 (@ 10 years)
I'm planning to attack them in that order and keeping them separated though I may consolidate the private loans as my reduced interest period is ending.
My question to you is would it make sense for me to build up a healthy emergency fund first?
Right now I have $6,500 in a savings account, and an extra $3,000 in my checking (it could be moved to the savings, but I'm moving it over slowly). If I lost my job tomorrow my monthly expenses could be cut down to $3,000 ($1,750 is rent) so my target savings for my emergency fund is $18,000. I should be able to put between $1,400 and $2,000 per month into the emergency fund so I think before the end of 2017 I would be able to support 6 months of expenses.
It will likely take me 5 years to fully pay off my student debt so I don't know if it really makes sense having a partial emergency fund available for that many years, especially since I will most likely be moving across the country in 3 or 4 years.
Thanks in advance for the input!
Submitted March 11, 2017 at 11:51AM by CodyOdi http://ift.tt/2nqlA0X
