Everyone who knows me knows that I can’t stand owing money. I pay down my credit cards every month, and I complete Venmo requests the second I get them.
The only debt I have left is my student loan, which has been on minimum payment autopilot since I graduated from college in 2013. For many years, I left those payments on the back burner, funneling any extra savings I had toward my investments.
Recently, though, my financial strategy changed after my fiancé and I began planning for a wedding in summer 2027. I sold a fair amount of stock and dialed back my retirement contributions in order to build our wedding fund.
For the first time in my life, I’m sitting on a pile of cash. And I have to say, I’m very tempted to use a chunk of it to wipe out my loan.
Hear me out. My student debt carries an interest rate of 6.55% and is scheduled to be paid off in late 2027. If I paid my loan off now, I could take my monthly loan payment, plus a few extra dollars, tack it on to my regular contributions to the wedding fund, and still hit our funding goal on time. Plus, I’d be debt-free.
