Hi folks, my first time posting here. Please forgive and correct any ignorance or misconceptions, I'm new to the whole money thing.
So, I'm 23 and I am 8 days away from finishing my undergraduate degree and now I'm starting to think seriously about money (wish I had done it sooner). I ran into the MMM blog about a year back and decided to take a serious look again recently because the lifestyle that MMM promotes is one that resonates with me/ confirms my biases ;). My parents are the definition of consumerist suckas ($1200 a month car payment, expensive home, constantly buying new stuff) who are basically slaves to their debt. Because I've seen first hand the effect that not being in control of your money can have, I am really motivated to pay off all of my student loans as quickly as I can, but after doing a little reading here there seems to be a few people saying that student loans are "good debt"(?).
I have what appears to be a small amount of loan debt ($19,500 - 3.8%-4.2%, subsidized), but it feels very intimidating. I am starting graduate school in 3 weeks, where I will be getting a stipend of ~$18,000 a year after taxes. I'll be getting my Master's at the same school that I got my undergrad so I don't have to worry about the cost of moving or an increase in CoL by going to a different city. I already live a somewhat Mustachian lifestyle (I think?) where I live very happily on ~$10,000 a year.
My plan until today was to pay off that 19.5K balance ASAP because as I said before I am a bit afraid of debt, but after reading and trying to be a bit more rational it seems like that money *might* be better elsewhere. Since the payments (and interest) can be deferred for the next 2.5-3 years while I'm in school I could pay them back interest free OR I could put that ~7k a year in a Roth or something and just make the minimum payment on my loans. What would the best course of action be? As much as I want to be debt free I also want to avoid making my financial decisions based on emotion.
On a related note, what are some good books to read for financial beginners? In case it already isn't painfully obvious, I need to up my financial literacy, but am starting from basically zero.
Thanks in advance!