Open enrollment for healthcare ends Dec 10. Do some research on lowering your heath insurance costs, using the compare plans option function on OPMs website. It sounds like you have BCBS Basic plan. BCBS has a new plan available this year called FEP Blue focus that is much cheaper. You could also look at GEHA Basic which is less than BCBS basic but more than Blue Focus. (GEHA comes with routine dental so you might choose to skip dental insurance.) I really liked GEHA when I had it and my grandparents have used it for like 30 years no problem. It might be too late for you to do enough research on the benefits of a high deductible/HSA plan and do the number crunching to see if your comfortable with one. But if you do there is a thread on here with peoples experience with different federal HSA eligible plans like GEHA’s HDHP or MHBP’s HDHP. I liked MHBP too but I think this year GEHA’s HDHP is a better value.
Your loan interest rate is low enough that people will tell you to just pay the minimum and invest your extra income instead. Is your interest rate fixed or variable? If you want help on loan forgiveness you need to provide more info. For example, you say your loans are in deferment but your paying $200/month. Are these private student loans where you still make payments on interest during deferment or are you randomly making payments on government loans while in deferment? If they are private student loans, they are not eligible for public service loan forgiveness. If they are government loans and you are working full time for gov, you need to get going on setting them up for forgiveness ASAP. Every month you work full time and have your gov loans in deferment is a month you lose towards forgiveness. Payments you make in deferment or forbearance don’t count towards your 10 years (120 qualified payments while working full time (part time doesn’t count) at gov or nonprofit).
If you have gov SL and work full time, first use the studentaid.ed.gov repayment estimator to estimate your different payment options. Compare the monthly amount on the standard 10 year plan with your income based payment plan options (IBR, PAYE, or REPAYE). Ignore the graduated or extended options. If your standard plan is lower than the income based ones, then forget loan forgiveness and start paying your regular rate for them to be guaranteed gone in 10 years. If the standard plan is only slightly more than income based, consider doing standard plan to avoid the hassle and hoops of loan forgiveness. If income based saves you a bunch of money, proceed below. (Make sure you type in different income amounts projecting what you’ll earn 3, 5, 7 etc years from now to look at the real difference between standard and income based. Don’t rely on their slow curve of raises and note they project out 20 years not 10 b/c income based plans without public service go for 20 not 10 years.)
Next check what type of loans you have. Not all of gov loans are eligible for loan forgiveness. If you have loans not eligible for forgiveness you can consolidate them into one that is eligible. This takes months and those months don’t count towards your 10 years forgiveness. You also need to be careful about consolidation. If you previously worked full time for a nonprofit or gov entity and made payments on your loans (exact payments on amount owed, not payments during deferment or forbearance), those months towards your 10 years are lost after the consolidation - the consolidation starts the clock over. So if you have some loans that are eligible and some that aren’t and you made qualified payments towards the eligible ones already, then you want to make sure you only consolidate the ineligible loans.
If your loans are all eligible for forgiveness and you work full time, then you want to get out of deferment ASAP and get on an income based payment plan. PAYE if your eligible otherwise IBR or REPAYE. Only income based payment plans are eligible for forgiveness. Download the the letter they send each year saying your on an income based plan and keep it somewhere safe. FedLoan electronic mailbox only keeps things for a year. Every year fill out the employment certification form and download the letter they send certifying your employer/number of qualified payments each year as well.
If you do an income based plan for loan forgiveness, then you should do traditional not Roth IRA/401k contributions because it’s lowers your AGI and thus lowers your loan payments which are based on your AGI. Also, your investment guy might not be familiar with the TSP. TSP is the best 401k system in terms of fees; it’s incredibly low fee just like vanguard. And the c fund is the equivalent to a S&P 500 mutual fund. Most people give the advice of contributing to match 401k and then filling up iras before going back to 401k because of high 401k fees or poor investment options. That’s not true for the TSP. You should consider a full case study or spend some time reading a bunch of others to figure out where you can cut costs to have more to contribute to your TSP.
The investment order MDM hyperlinked is the suggested order and rationale on where to stick your investments (which vehicles like Ira, 401k, etc., not which broker companies or fund to select). Make sure your read the rationale below the order because it gives exceptions.