Thanks, guys, for the great responses!
My loan is deductible, and it's an adjustment to income that you can take regardless of whether you itemize deductions (we don't, not having a mortgage and all.) It gets phased out depending on your income, though, so I might not get much of a credit this year, if any. So that puts the loan at its true rate I guess (3.875%, I looked it up).
Roth IRA may be a good idea. Also, we each have a small (~$3000) rollover IRA from previous jobs. Any thoughts on whether to just leave them alone or to try to combine them? Doesn't seem ideal to have 4 different retirement accounts active...
We're not great at "crunching the numbers," as you say. The many available calculators rely on you being able to estimate so many variables we couldn't begin to guess, that we end up throwing up our hands.
For the Mrs. - we have had many, many talks about financial goals and issues over the years. She wants to save for the future, and is on board with having goals in general. However, she's a very instant-gratification, spontaneous kind of person, so her immediate desires easily overwhelm a less tangible idea like "we can retire in 10 years if you don't go to the spa/buy this coffee/take that trip." What you said about feeling deprived or controlled rings true as well. For her, it's all internal - she values creature comforts, things that make her feel beautiful, indulgences. She doesn't go crazy, by modern American standards, but is certainly the driver for our spending (I'm still wearing clothes I had in college!)
So having the conversation isn't a problem, but reaching an agreement tends to be. She is more comfortable with very modest goals like "We need to get $10,000 in ING."
I like James' suggestion about picking a level to live on - we kind of started that by saying one of my paychecks each month will go straight to savings. That's where my initial question came in - do I pay off that student loan, try to buy a house, or start pumping investment vehicles? Sounds like there's not one right answer to that question. (At least from reading other posts it looks like my previous assumption that we needed to build up a sizeable "emergency fund" isn't necessary).
It's funny, I don't feel like we live in luxury. We rent a pretty nice apartment in a sketchier part of town, so it's reasonable for the city. We drive a 10 year old car that we own, take 1 vacation a year, eat out a couple times a month. We shop at Target and Costco, and only buy a couple of things for Christmas and birthdays. We don't throw big parties or go out drinking. But somehow it's always one thing or another (new tires here, medical bill there, etc.) Definitely want to get off this wheel!