Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
If you go strictly by the Dave Ramsey playbook, you would have only $1000 in savings, stop paying on your retirement and knock off the debt by every means possible, and then go back to saving.

I am having the same conundrum because we are finally making an official transfer of our house to our son who is buying it. I also have debt and so I have been grappling with the same question. I will absolutely kill me to use one penny of the house money to pay off debt because I need that little bit of money for our retirement, but when I look at the interest rates going out to the debt vs the interest rates that would come in with invested money, to me it makes no sense to continue paying off the debt over time when I can just eliminate it. But I tell you, it breaks my heart to have to do it.

Aren’t we strange in our attitudes about money? Because I feel strangulated at the idea of debt and would rather have an asset balance sheet of $0 with 0 debt than debt plus some assets. I celebrate the folks on Mr Money mustache who get to $0 asset status with no consumer debt in their financial journey, I consider that the first critical milestone in financial health. The next one is assets of $100,000.

But of course this does not address the interest rate you are paying catherine and if it is low enough, it might well be a good financial move to keep the debt and continue to pay it down. It isn’t always smart to pay off debt, though I guess you did say your interest rate is high enough that you should pay it off.