Hey Mustachians,
I'm looking for some advice on what to put extra money towards. The goals I am balancing are saving for retirement, paying off school loans, and saving money for 1) grad school, and later 2) a house. Here's my financial situation:
-I'm 26 years old and I make a little over $43k per year, gross pay.
-I have roughly $12.6k left in school debt, split between three loans: A consolidated loan with roughly $670 left to pay at 4.75%, a Stafford loan with approximately $5600 at 6.55%, and a Stafford loan with roughly $6400 at 6.8%. I've been paying my minimum monthly payments to ensure that I was building up an emergency fund and investing in my retirement.
-I am contributing 6% of my salary to my 401k to get my employer's 1:1 match of up to 6%. I've been doing that since I started my job 2.5 years ago.
-I am currently putting $200 a month into my Roth IRA, but my goal is to increase the payments in order to max out at $5,500 by the end of the year (I'll be going abroad for work for some time later this year and will both make more money and spend less while I am abroad). Last year I opened the IRA and was able to max it out at $5k. All in all, I have about $20k saved for retirement so far.
-I have $13k saved for emergencies. This is roughly 6 months of expenses. I could probably go lower, but I have more piece knowing I've got this much stashed away.
I plan to go back to grad school in the next 2-3 years (I may start taking a class or two next year, hopefully paid for by employer, but not necessarily). Ideally, I'd like to do all of grad school while working (if I can get tuition reimbursement, great! But if not, at least I still am making money and not living off of debt). But depending on where I go and what I study, I may not be able to do that.
So I'm wondering what I should do with any extra money I have left over at the end of every month. Should I put extra money towards the school loan with 6.8% interest? Should I save money for grad school (unfortunately it'll probably be too short of a time to safely invest in the stock market)? Or should I increase my 401k contribution (assuming that I already max out my IRA)?
Thanks for your input!