This morning I was looking at my rental income from the past year and our savings account. I was considering focusing our efforts for the next year in paying off my wife's nursing school debt.
It started at about $45,000 three years ago and now we only have $19,000 left to pay off (both at around 4% but 12,000 of that can change at the whim of Wellsfargo).
The short on our financials:
Our only debt is two mortgages (one rental that brings in about $600 a month and is separate from the savings outlined below) and student loans. We both make a decent income but have children so only "save" about $1000-$2000 per month depending on the month. (I can't wait for public schooling! :) )
We have enough of an emergency fund, and truly, if we totally dialed back our expenditures we could live off of one salary in a pinch.
So the big question is, it seems like if I took some of the money from the rental account (About $5,000 extra, as it is above what I think I need to deal with any major issues on the house) and used our savings for the next twelve months to pay off our student loan debt we could be clear and free from what was once a very large payment every month.
So, do we focus our attention to this emergency and pay those off or do we build our savings account and/or investments?
An important factor here is that recently I decided not to apply for a most awesome job that I think I could have easily gotten (though my current job is also most awesome) because of a decrease in pay - the main culprit? These loans and responsibilities of children. This could help alleviate that burden in the future making those decisions more quality of life based instead of $$ based.
Thoughts?