My fiancé and I have been going back and forth lately about what would make most financial sense for our future. We are planning on getting married this July, currently living together in an apartment. We'd like to move into a house as soon as possible, and start a family (after a year or two). But we have about $83,000 in loans (that's our only debt). Here are the facts:
Total salaries: 123,000 Total monthly take home pay: 5,000 Total monthly expenses: 3,000 (including 900 going towards loans, and 875 going towards rent) Total student loans: 83,000 (lots of different interest rates, only a couple at 6-6.5%, lowest at 3%) Money in savings: About 8,000
Basically it comes down to we could either: 1. Pay off all the loans by May 2018 (at the latest) 2. Move into a house sometime before the end of summer, then pay off the loans.
We live in Wisconsin, so cost of living isn't insanely high. We'd look at getting house somewhere in the 150,000 - 200,000 range. We have enough money set aside for the wedding, so we're not worried about that.
We do have two cars, one 2011 Ford Focus, and one 2008 Honda Civic. Both are in good shape. We thought about selling one (since I work from home), but ultimately that might just cause more trouble than its worth (we'd get somewhere around 4,000 for either).
I don't get a company match until next year, so I'm not putting anything towards retirement. She's putting 5%, to get her company match.
We're leaning towards just cleaning out the loans at first. But since we can save up enough for a down payment so fast, I'm wondering if it makes sense to do that and start putting money into the house, instead of rent while we pay off loans? From what I've researched, if we had a house the mortgage/property taxes would even out to be about what we pay now in rent (somewhere a little less than $1,000/month). There's obviously a larger risk though with home maintenance.
What are your thoughts?
Submitted January 07, 2017 at 09:50AM by blurtz http://ift.tt/2i0BRLI
