IFB123: Investing vs Paying off Student Loan Debt

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Dave:                                    00:36                     All

right folks, we’ll welcome to Investing for Beginners podcast, this is episode

123 tonight. Andrew and I are going to answer some of our listener questions.

We’ve got some great ones recently, and we wanted to take a stab at answering

them for you on the air. So I’m going to go ahead and read the first question

and then Andrew and I will do our little thing. So our first question is, hi

Andrew. I currently make over six figures,  and my wife stays at home with our 20-month-old

twins. Wow. We have a few school loans left, roughly 15,000. I am still balling

the payments as well as to pay off quicker. My question is, should I continue

to dollar cost average and invest or take that amount and put it towards the

loans? I also put a little bit aside for my paychecks for my daughters. I also

have a 401k with my company. I get a fully vested 3% than 100% of my first 3%

and 50% of the following 3%. So I don’t want to lose out on the free money.

Does it make sense? I just turned 34 last week, as well. Thank you to you and

Dave for all the advice constantly. Andrew, what are your thoughts?

Andrew:                              01:46                     Hmm.

So this kind of hits home a little bit because like I can relate with it and I

think it’s something that more and more people who are a little, I’ll say like

coming up, but you know, starting their careers, starting to look into

investing. A lot of younger people have student loans. And so this is one of

those things where, you know, not only are you trying to figure out, you know,

how do I make a budget? And then it’s like, well, how does the stock market

work? How does investing work? And then now it’s like, well, should I invest or

should I pay off that? And there’s get millions of different answers. So let’s

tackle that back half first. And I want to see what you think about the 401k to

Dave. So basically, basically, I look at a 401k matches free money, and I think

that takes priority over anything.