I have what I think is a really great short term financial plan, but after that I'm confused where to go. I don't know if I should invest more heavily or pay of my student loans. So thanks to some churning and my general income, I'll have approximately 12k in income between today and 2/15. This could normally run only $7800 for a general 3 month period, so this is a pretty significant increase. My non investing expenses are usually under $500 a month and my take home is $2640.
So because of all this extra income I'm going to pay off my highest interest student loan which is $3500 @ 4.5%. This will leave me with $15600 in student loans at 3.5%. These are all federal. This is the extent of my debt. Also at this time, I will have 20k in my vanguard target date 2055 retirement fund. I will also have roughly 1k in my fidelity brokerage account invested in total stock market funds. There will also be 1k in my checking account and 35k in my high yield online savings, which is equal to a year of my take home income.
So starting in Feburary, should I focus more heavily on my brokerage account investing (I max out my roth IRA and I don't have a workplace retirement plan)? Or should I turn my attention to crushing my student loans? I'm 27 and I've already knocked them down from 55k when I graduated grad school at 24 to the 15.6k figure. They're relatively low interest but it would also be satisfying to pay them off. I'm planning on increasing payments in April to $200 a month, which should have them paid off right before my 35th birthday in October 2026. The investing would be a retirement/house saving fund but I'm not planning to buy at least until my 30s. So is investing or paying down the debt a better idea?
Submitted November 07, 2018 at 12:35PM by dogcatthrowaway123 https://ift.tt/2QrWyxg
