How should we prioritize retirement savings, paying down debt, and saving for a house?
It all depends on your priorities, but if it were me I'd work to get rid of that debt as your first priority based on a few factors: I might shift towards the house if you think you can save enough to avoid PMI, as the total savings would probably be more in aggregate if you plan on buying a house anyway with less than 20% down. Of course, all this is lower priority than funding your retirement at least up to the tax advantaged and/or employer matched maximums, but it sounds like you have that covered. "The advice to pay off near-7% debt is tough to argue against. That said, I'd project out a few years to understand the home purchase. Will you plan for the 20% down John recommends? The Crazy Truth about PMI can't be ignored. The way the math works, if you put 15% down, the PMI costs you so much, it's nearly like paying 20% interest on that missing 5%.  If your answer is that you intend to save for the full downpayment, 20%, and can still knock off the student loan, by all means, go for it. I have to question the validity of ""we will definitely be in a higher tax bracket when we retire."" By definition, pretax deposits save tax at the marginal rate. i.e. If you are in the 25% bracket, a $1000 deposit saves you $250 in tax that year. But, withdrawals come at your average rate, i.e. your tax bill divided by gross income. There's the deductions for itemized deductions or the standard. Then 2 exemptions if you are married. Then the 10% bracket, etc.  Today, a couple grossing $100K may be in the 25% bracket, but their average rate is 12%.  I read this Q&A again and would add one more observation - Student Loans and Your First Mortgage is an article I wrote in response to a friend's similar question. With the OP having plan to buy a house, paying off the loan may be more costly in the long run. It may keep him from qualifying for the size mortgage he needs, or from having enough money to put 20% down, as I noted earlier.  With finance, there are very few issues that are simply black and white. It's important to understand all aspects of one's finances to make any decision. Even if thee faster payoff is the right thing, it's not a slam-dunk, the other points should be considered." Pay the debt down. Any kind of debt equals risk. No debt equals no risk and a better chance to have that money earn you income down the road once it's invested. That and you will sleep so much better knowing you have ZERO debt. You 6 month emergency fund is probably good. Remember to keep it at 6 months living expenses (restaurants don't count as living expenses).
"Unquestionably I think the priority should be funding retirement through ROTH/IRA/401K over HSA extra.  Obviously you need to fund your HSA for reasonable and expected medical expenses.  Also there is some floor to your more traditional retirement funding. Beyond that what does one do with excess dollars?  Given the lack of flexibility and fees, it seems clear to do ROTH IRA and 401K. Beyond that what then?  You may want to decide to ""take some money home"" and pay taxes on it.  Do you have a desire to own rental property or start/purchase a business?  Upgrade your home? etc... If all those things are taken care of, only then would I put money into an HSA. YMMV but most people, maxing a ROTH IRA alone, will have plenty of money for retirement given a reasonable rate of return." Firstly, make sure annual income exceeds annual expenses. The difference is what you have available for saving.  Secondly, you should have tiers of savings. From most to least liquid (and least to most rewarding): The core of personal finance is managing the flow of money between these tiers to balance maximizing return on savings with budget constraints. For example, insurance effectively allows society to move money from savings to stocks and bonds. And a savings account lets the bank loan out a bit of your money to people buying assets like homes.  Note that the above set of accounts is just a template from which you should customize. You might want to add in an FSA or HSA, extra loan payments, or taxable brokerage accounts, depending on your cash flow, debt, and tax situation. Wow! First, congratulations! You are both making great money. You should be able to reach your goals.  Are we on the right track ? Are we doing any mistakes which we could have avoided ? Please advice if there is something that we should focus more into ! I would prioritize as follows: Get on the same page. My first red flag is that you are listing your assets separately. You and your wife own property together and are raising your daughter together. The first thing is to both be on the same page with your combined income and assets. This is critical. Set specific goals for the future. Dreaming and big-picture life planning will be the foundation for building a detailed plan for reaching your goals. You will see more progress with more sacrifice. If you both are not equally excited about the goals, you will not both be equally willing to sacrifice lifestyle now. You have the income now to be able to set yourselves up to do whatever you want in 10 years, if you can agree on what you want. Hire a financial planner you trust. Interview people, ask someone who is where you want to be in 10 years. You need someone with experience that can guide you through these questions and understands how to manage your income stream. Start saving for retirement in tax-advantaged accounts. This should be as much as 10%-15% of your income combined, so $30k-$45k per year. You need to start diversifying your investments. Real estate is great, but I would never recommend it as this large a percentage of net worth. Start saving for your child's education. Hard to say what you need here, since I don't know your goals. A financial planner should assist you with this. Get rid of your debt. Out of your $2.1M of rental real estate and land, you have $1.4M of debt. It will be difficult to start a business with that much additional debt. It will also put stress on your retirement that you don't need. You are taking on lots of risk here. I would sell all but maybe one of the properties and let it cash flow. This will free up cash to start investing for retirement or future business too. Buy more rental in the future with cash only. You have plenty of income to do it this way, and you will be setting yourself up for a great future. At this point you can continue to pile funds into any/all your investments, with the goal of using the funds to start a business or to live on. If all your investments are tied up in real estate, you wont have anything to draw on if needed for a business opportunity. You need to weigh this out in your goal and planning. What should we do to prepare for a comfortable retirement and safety You cannot plan for or see all scenarios. However, good planning will give you more options and more choices. Investing driven by fear will set you up for failure.  Spend less than you make. Be patient. Be generous. Cheers! "First, I would recommend getting rid of this ridiculous debt, or remember this day and this answer, ""you will be living this way for many years to come and maybe worse, no/not enough retirement"".  Hold off on any retirement savings right now so that the money can be used to crush this debt. Without knowing all of your specifics (health insurance deductions, etc.) and without any retirement contribution, given $190,000 you should probably be taking home around $12,000 per month total.  Assuming a $2,000 mortgage payment (30 year term), that is $10,000 left per month.  If you were serious about paying this off, you could easily live off of $3,000 per month (probably less) and have $7,000 left to throw at the student loan debt.  This assumes that you haven't financed automobiles, especially expensive ones or have other significant debt payments. That's around 3 years until the entire $300,000 is paid! I have personally used and endorse the snowball method (pay off smallest to largest regardless of interest rate), though I did adjust it slightly to pay off some debts first that had a very high monthly payment so that I would then have this large payment to throw at the next debt. After the debt is gone, you now have the extra $7,000 per month (probably more if you get raises, bonuses etc.) to enjoy and start saving for retirement and kid's college.  You may have 20-25 years to save for retirement; at $4,000 per month that's $1 million in just savings, not including the growth (with moderate growth this could easily double or more).  You'll also have about 14 years to save for college for this one kid; at $1,500 per month that's $250,000 (not including investment growth). This is probably overkill for one kid, so adjust accordingly. Then there's at least $1,500 per month left to pay off the mortgage in less than half the time of the original term! So in this scenario, conservatively you might have: Obviously I don't know your financials or circumstances, so build a good budget and play with the numbers.  If you sacrifice for a short time you'll be way better off, trust me from experience. As a side note:  Assuming the loan debt is 50/50 you and your husband, you made a good investment and he made a poor one.  Unless he is a public defender or charity attorney, why is he making $60,000 when you are both attorneys and both have huge student loan debt?  If it were me, I would consider a job change.  At least until the debt was cleaned up.  If he can make $100,000 to $130,000 or more, then your debt may be gone in under 2 years!  Then he can go back to the charity gig." As @mbhunter says, make sure you pay off any debt you have first.  Then, it's a good idea to keep some or all of your savings as an emergency fund.  If you use every last dime to pay for a house, you'll have no cushion available when something breaks down.  The most common recommendation I've seen is to have 3-6 months worth of expenses as an emergency fund.  Once you have that, then you can start saving for your down payment.   As @Victor says, try to find the best interest rate you can for that money, but I wouldn't invest it in any kind of stock or bond product, because your need for it is too short term.  Safety is more important than growth given your time frame. When you're ready to invest, make sure you learn all you can.  You don't want to invest in something you don't understand, because that's how you get ripped off.  You can be reading and talking to people while you're saving for your house so that, when the time comes, you'll have a pretty good idea of what you want to do for investments. Debt will ruin any plans.  I guess that the interest on the credit cards is about $450 a month or about $5,500 per year and the school loans is about $6,000 a year.  Get a an Excel spread sheet going and start tracking your expensed.  Learn to make a amortization spread sheet for all debts, and any future debts that you are thinking about. If you want a family soon plan on one income for a period of time. If you buy a house plan on paying it off while you are working.  Then the house payment becomes spendable money during retirement.  A cheaper house can be upgraded in the right neighborhood with an excellent appreciation in value.  Money put into excellent collectibles and kept for 20 years or more is private and off the radar income no taxes when sold. STUDY STUDY LEARN LEARN Answers to this your question break down along a few lines regarding opportunity costs of tying up a significant chunk of your salary and assets in one piece of property, as opposed to other things you'd like to do with your life.  The 30 year standard mortgage was invented in the 30's as part of FDR's new deal to make housing affordable to more people, while relieving the strain on the market of foreclosed homes from ~10 year interest only balloon mortgages (sound familiar?). The 30 year term tends to follow the career of the average American of that era, allowing them to pay the house off and live out the remainder of their lives there at a lower cost.  Houses are depreciating assets because they wear out over time. Their greatest investment value is a place to live. The appreciation on a home comes from the real estate it sits on and the community the property is located in. Value is determined by desirability of the house and community in their current state, and the supply of property in the area. This value can only be extracted when you sell the home. This partially answers your last question noting that you shouldn't buy a really expensive building for investment value. We've learned in recent years that there are no long term guarantees of property value either, because land and communities can decrease in value due to unemployment, over supply, crime, pollution, etc. Only buy as much home as you will need in the next decade or so, in a place that you will like living over that time period, and don't consider it much of an investment. I will tell you to get a fifteen year fixed rate mortgage since it's readily available at lower rates and has a significantly lower total purchase price than the standard 30 years. The monthly payment difference isn't that great, and anyone who looks at the monthly payment as opposed to the total costs, your priorities and the opportunity costs shouldn't be trusted for financial advice. I don't like debt. There are psychological benefits to being free from the bondage and drain of a long term mortgage on your finances.  The biggest argument for paying off your home quickly is freedom to pursue other desires with all of your salary and the assets you have available to you. Some financial advisers will tell you to keep your mortgage costs under 25% of your income, so that you can actually live off the money you make. I would also recommend paying at least enough into your 401k to get the company match and fully funding your Roth IRA. I'd also have an emergency fund to cover at least 6 months of expenses, including this mortgage in case you lose your job. A 15 or 20 year mortgage will give you breathing room to take care of these other priorities, and you can overpay on almost any mortgage to decrease the principal and finish in a shorter time period (make sure to get a mortgage that allows prepayment) . More financially savvy people may tell you to take the 30 year mortgage and invest the difference. Especially with mortgage rates around 4%, this is a very cheap way to increase your purchasing power and total assets. Most people lack the investment prowess and self discipline to make this plan pay off. There are even fewer guarantees regarding markets and investments than property. This also is a way of diversifying your total assets to protect against loss of value in your home. This approach has backfired for thousands of people who are underwater on their homes. This problem is often compounded by job loss forcing you to move, or increasing your commute, making your home less desirable for you. Some people will tell you to maintain the mortgage for the tax credit. This fails a basic math test since you only get about a quarter of the money (depending on your tax rate) that you are paying in interest back from the government. The rest of the money goes to bank at no gain to you. This approach is basically a taxpayer subsidized decrease of your 4% interest payment to a 3% interest payment (assuming you have ~ $5000 in other deductions), and only pays off if you can successfully invest the money at a rate somewhat greater than 3%. "Getting a mortgage for the interest write-off is like buying packs of baseball cards for the gum. That said, I'd refer you to The correct order of investing as much of that question really overlaps with this. This question boils down to priorities, the best use of the funds. There are those who suggest that a mortgage brings risk. Of course it does, just not for the borrower, the risk is borne by the lender. Risk comes from lack of liquidity. Say your girlfriend buys the house with cash, and leaves little reserve. She loses her job, and it's great that she has no mortgage. But she does have every other cost life brings, including a tax bill that can turn into a house getting foreclosed on. The details that you didn't disclose are those needed to look at the rest of the ""priorities"" list. A fully funded 401(k) with appropriate balance, and no other debt? And a 1 year emergency fund? I wouldn't argue against buying the house with cash. No real savings and passing on the 401(k) matched deposit? I'd think carefully about the longterm impact of the cash purchase." "In my opinion, you should pay off the student loans as soon as possible, before you start saving for the house downpayment. $26k is a big number, but you have a great salary.  (Nice!)  Up until now, you have been a poor college student, accustomed to a relatively low standard of living.  Your $800 per month plan would have you pay off the loan in 3 years, but I would challenge you to pay off this entire student loan in 1 year or less.  A monthly loan payment of $2226 will pay off your loan in 12 months. After that is done, if you take the same amount you had been paying toward your student loans and save it for your condo, in less than two years you'll have a 10% down payment saved ($50k).  The whole thing will take less than three years. There are three reasons why I recommend paying off the loan first before saving for the condo: one is practical and two are philosophical. Practical: You will save money on interest.  Paying off the loan in 1 year vs. 3 years will save you $1343.  You won't find a short-term safe investment that will beat 5% in interest. Philosophical: The loan is something current and concrete that you can focus on.  Your condo is a dream at this point, and there is lots of time to change your mind.  If the $2k+ per month amount is at all a sacrifice for you, then in a few months, you might be tempted to say to yourself, ""This month I really want a vacation, so I'll just skip this month of saving.""  For the loan, however, if you establish a concrete goal of 12 months to pay off the loan, it will hopefully help motivate you to allocate this money and stick to your plan. Philosophical: Getting used to borrowing money, making payments to a bank, and paying interest is not a great way to live.  It is better, in my opinion, to eliminate your debt as fast as possible and start getting accustomed to saving cash for what you want.  Clean up your debt, and resolve not to borrow any more money except for a reasonably-sized mortgage on your home." One big factor that no one has mentioned yet is whether you believe in a deflationary or inflationary future. Right now, we are leaning towards a deflationary environment so it makes sense to pay off more of the debt. (If you make just one extra payment a year, you will have paid off your house 7 years early). However, should this change (depending on government and central bank policy) you may be better off putting down the very minimum.  In a year or three from now, you should have a clearer picture. In the meanwhile, here is a recent Business Week article discussing both sides of the argument. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_28/b4186004424615.htm The fact that you want to look for a home within the next 2 years (and the lack of 401(k) match) leads me to suggest saving for the house as top priority. A VA loan for that purchase. The VA loan has a very low up front fee, but a new home is always going to come with expenses that can add up. Better to have as much liquidity as you can. If you have a lot of cash after the move in and furnishings, it won't be tough to choose a high savings rate to jump start the retirement plan. Thank you for your service. You say A #1 priority, that implies multiple #1 priorities. Long term or medium term my goal is to pay off the mortgage. But short term paying off the mortgage isn't a concern. Some people are comfortable with a mortgage during retirement, others aren't. When I was younger the mortgage concern was not being overextended. I didn't want to be in a situation that dictated my financial decisions because I needed to make a big house payment. Being overextended is no longer a concern for me. Now I am looking in more detail about how my retirement will actually play out. How to handle my actual retirement income sources. For me, not having a mortgage simplifies my planning. I would definitely pay down the debt first.  If it is going to take 15 years to do so, you probably need to allocate more money to paying down debt. Cut expenses by going out to eat less, and keeping spending to the bare necessities.  You might even consider getting a second job, just for paying down the debt.  If that isn't enough, consider selling off some assets.  You should be able to come up with a plan to be debt free (excluding maybe a regular mortgage) within 3-5 years. Once the only debt you have is a home mortgage, then its time to look at putting money towards retirement again. Note, you should not take money out of a 401k or IRA to pay off debt.  The costs for doing so are nearly always too great. "One thing that's often overlooked is that cash reserves are also a long-term investment.  Anything can be a long-term investment if it's expected to appreciate or pay interest/dividends.  So it's not either/or.  Stocks are but one way to do long-term investments. Having said that, taking on less debt for a consumer good is never a bad idea.  Your primary residence is a consumer good, regardless of those who would say that ""your home is your biggest investment.""  So, there's my vote for a larger down-payment. Beyond that, a couple of outside-the-box comments:" "I'll assume you live in the US for the start of my answer - Do you maximize your retirement savings at work, at least getting your employer's match in full, if they do this. Do you have any other debt that's at a higher rate?  Is your emergency account funded to your satisfaction? If you lost your job and tenant on the same day, how long before you were in trouble?  The ""pay early"" question seems to hit an emotional nerve with most people. While I start with the above and then segue to ""would you be happy with a long term 5% return?"" there's one major point not to miss - money paid to either mortgage isn't liquid. The idea of owing out no money at all is great, but paying anything less than ""paid in full"" leaves you still owing that monthly payment. You can send $400K against your $500K mortgage, and still owe $3K per month until paid. And if you lose your job, you may not so easily refinance the remaining $100K to a lower payment so easily.  If your goal is to continue with real estate, you don't prepay, you save cash for the next deal. Don't know if that was your intent at some point.  Disclosure - my situation - Maxing out retirement accounts was my priority, then saving for college. Over the years, I had multiple refinances, each of which was a no-cost deal. The first refi saved with a lower rate. The second, was in early 2000s when back interest was so low I took a chunk of cash, paid principal down and went to a 20yr from the original 30. The kid starts college, and we target retirement in 6 years. I am paying the mortgage (now 2 years into a 10yr) to be done the month before the kid flies out. If I were younger, I'd be at the start of a new 30 yr at the recent 4.5% bottom. I think that a cost of near 3% after tax, and inflation soon to near/exceed 3% makes borrowing free, and I can invest conservatively in stocks that will have a dividend yield above this. Jane and I discussed the plan, and agree to retire mortgage free."