I've read a lot on the 'paying debt vs investing' question, but since I'm a newbie I'm hoping for some advice on my particular situation.
After my husband and I spent our 20s racking up credit card and student loan debt, making only minimum payments, and promptly spending any extra cash in our checking account, I found the MMM blog at 29 and saw the folly of my ways. We spent the last 2 years paying down the credit card debt while I maximized contributions to an employer-matched 401k.
Now the credit card debt is gone and I'm wondering what to do next. We have 22K in a 401k and 96K in student loans (30K at 5%, 33K at 4%, and 33K at 6.8%). I recently opened a Roth IRA for my husband with $1000 - he has no employer retirement benefits. We have no other savings, investments, or debts. We do have a line of credit, albeit at 12%, that we could use for emergencies.
My income ($2868/mo) is fixed whereas my husband works for a small business and his hours fluctuate (max $2706/mo). We live fairly cheaply and have an extra $1000-2000 per month that previously went to paying off credit card debt. In my newly found MMM zeal, I trimmed the fat from my expenses, although our savings rate could become higher as I try to slowly convert my husband to a more mustachian lifestyle. Neither of us expect to increase our income very much into the future - we both LOVE our jobs, and consciously choose to keep them instead of trying to make more money and retire earlier. However, I want to be strategic in how we pay down debt or invest, and hopefully make up for the sins of our youth.
I'm tempted to use the extra money each month to maximize contributions to Roth IRAs for myself and my husband, and then apply whatever is left over to paying down the 6.8% loan. I've heard that money invested can grow over a longer time period and have a higher rate of return than money paid towards student loans. However, the 6.8% interest is guaranteed to accrue each year while our investments (80/20 mix of low-cost stock/bond index funds) have been sluggish in 2018. Alternatively, I've heard that we should instead try to sock away 3-6 months of savings before doing anything else, but it seems inefficient to me to have that money sit in a savings account at this stage of our lives. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!