I was in the Public Loan Forgiveness Program until about 8 months ago. I switched my loans over to SOFI. I went from 6.8% to a 3.75% variable rate. I still had about 60 payments left. For me though my loan was small and the amount forgiven would be close to breaking even. In your case, you have significantly more loans than me. I guess the first question is how confident do you feel you will be working in the public sector or non profit for the next 8.5 years? It sounds like that is where your heart lies so baring catastrophe it sounds like the answer is yes to staying in the public interest arena. Most government jobs are very secure. Is there a reason you feel insecure with your employment? How hard would it be if let go to find another public sector position?
Curious what is professional privilege tax?
Just a couple budget items.
Why do you keep credit cards that have annual fees? Cancel them and get ones with no fees. There are plenty of no fee cards that have rewards.
Why is the job not paying/reimbursing your professional fees. I work in the public sector and my fees are reimbursed.
The next question is if you are a federal government employee you should have access to a Thrift Spending Plan (TSP). These are the general equivalent to 401k, 403b, 457. Here is there website
https://www.tsp.gov/index.html. I briefly looked at and if you are eligible these look like a great place to put your pretax savings.
My understanding of your assets are as follows.
IRAs - $18480 and 15988.32, Total $34,468.32
EF $17027.43
Mutual Funds $20,359
Digit $4,500
Checking $5000
Total Assets $81,354.75
From your expenses you spend about $2,500/month. It is recommended that an EF be between 3-6 months. For your a range of $7,500 to $15,000. Your EF is on the high end of the range. It is what you feel comfortable with. What kind of account do you have it in? You should consider at minimum looking for a high yield savings account or money market account so you are making a little bit of interest.
Checking you really only need to keep your currently monthly expenses in the checking account. $2,500
What are your IRAs invested in?
It looks like Digit is some sort of savings account. After the first 100 days it charges $2.99 a month. I would definitely close that account now.
First check out this link
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/investment-order/. This is a breakdown of the order in which you should invest your money.
You have said you are fairly risk averse and a bit of a newbie with investing.
Many of the people here use Vanguard for investments. They have ETFs. These are already premixed stocks and bonds based on types of stocks and your risk level. Another one that I use is Targeted Funds. These ones are based on when you are expected to retire. The funds are managed so that as you age and get closer to retirement the funds are less risky.
Unfortunately I am not that great with investments either. You are young and have plenty of time to ride out some highs and lows of the stock market.
First check out the TSP. If you can you want to max out your IRS contributions.
Depending on where your IRAs are at and the types of funds they are in you may or may not want to move them.
If you do one of the less riskier ETFs I would take all of your mutual funds and add them in, because they are partially mutual funds and bonds as well.
Then with your $2500 savings after maxing out any tax advantage accounts stick in the ETFs as well.
At this time I would only speed up payments to your student loan if you do not think you will be around long enough for forgiveness. Also, if your current plan is not enough to pay off the monthly interest and your loan is increasing I would add at least enough to cover the interest and have the balance decreasing.