Sounds like the best option is to aggressively put money into my 401(k) as ioseftavi suggests.
By the way, thanks ioseftavi. Your comment "you can likely do far better than a return of 3.74% in your retirement account" prompted me to go look at mine. Turns out my company's options for 401's are pretty horrible in terms of returns (my return for the past 12 months was only 2.04%?!). Granted, I've been woefully ignorant to all things 401-related up till now. I just knew maxing out my contribution to reflect whatever my company would match was smart, but I'd never paid too close attention beyond that. Needless to say, that's all about to change...
I'll be moving the large majority of my 401(k) funds to an IRA where I can much better returns.
Glad I could help! Just to zero in on one part of your post:
Turns out my company's options for 401's are pretty horrible in terms of returns (my return for the past 12 months was only 2.04%?!)...
Don't use trailing 12 month returns as a judge of how 'good' your workplace 401(k) is! That's like deciding lining up 10 different types of cars at a dealership and picking "the best one" based on the highest speed each has attained on the last 2 test drives. "Highest speed" may not be relevant for what you want to judge, and "last 2 test drives" is too short of a time period.
Similarly with funds in your 401(k). For example, I've got a Vanguard target retirement fund, and I've done about ~3% or so. 3% is a snooze-fest of a return, but I'm just fine with that - the fund matches my desired asset allocation, with wide diversification, automatically rebalances, and has rock-bottom expenses. Those are the criteria (not TTM return) that I'd suggest you judge your 401(k) on!
Similarly, don't take a look at your trailing 12 month returns and use that to project what you can realize over the long-term from investing in your 401(k)! I use a much longer term return for my 401(k) when I'm weighing it against debt payoff, and I figure that 8%, give or take a bit, is my likely-long term return if the next 50 years are anything like the prior 50.
In your case, I'd likely assume similar - figure that you can make 8%, with tax benefits, in your 401(k), vs. 3.74% by paying off the credit card (which comes with no tax benefits). Will you make 8% in your 401(k)
this year,
next year, and
guaranteed on into the future? No (and some years, your TTM return will be negative, too!). But something in the ballpark of 8% is a reasonable guess over the long-haul.