Meet John.

John’s main concerns, in his own words:  My wife and I just welcomed our second (and last!) child. We have a comfortable lifestyle – both have stable jobs, we purchased a new home back in 2015, and save a respectable amount each month. However, the ‘unknown’ for us is if we are saving enough for our own future and our children’s.  We have just under $18K in savings across our combines savings accounts, which we contribute a little of $1K to each month. $11K of that is an untouched Emergency Fund where most of our monthly savings contributions go. Now on to the debt… We currently owe $304K on a 30yr mortgage. We purchased a new home in 2015, valued somewhere in the neighborhood of $360K. I have a car under 5yrs old which we are aggressively paying off so that we eliminate that debt by the end of 2017. My wife also has a car that is currently leased and has student loan debt which we are going to tackle more aggressively once my car is paid off at the end of the year. Once my car and student loan debt are paid off, we intend to aggressively contribute to paying down more principle on our mortgage since we want this home to be our last.  So I guess my questions are: Do we tackle our debt (outside of mortgage) more aggressively first since we have a decent head start on an Emergency Fund? Or, do we move those extra debt payments into retirement contributions to our 401Ks or Roth IRA? In the next few years, we would love to be debt free outside of our mortgage, and be able to cut my wife’s hours back to only two shifts a week instead of three (she is a nurse), or have her stay home completely.