This week’s questions:
Haley left a voicemail on Speakpipe:
I’m calling you from salt lake city Utah. Just graduated college but am leaving with $14,000 in student loan debt. I have about $5,000 that was left over sitting in my bank account and I’m ready to put that money back towards my loan.
Question – I am in the grace period until December. Can I put that money towards the principal now or do I need to wait until December when grace period ends? What should I do with that 5k?
Anonymous on Speakpipe:
My partner and I have an awesome 5 year old and we both work for non-profits and live in the SF bay area. Now that our son is finally old enough o be in public school we have $ for saving and want to prioritize. We know we need more for retirement, down payment on a home, would love to save for our son’s education and also have some college loans (low interest). Where do we start? What is best strategy for saving for a down payment? Index fund?
Jared on Speakpipe
My fiancé and I are getting married in 1 year. Saved over 6 months. Come up with a budget of $45,000 – own contributions and our families. Getting our proposal and estimates already surpassed our budget, other than cutting down our guest list how can we save? I am determined to not have any debt after this wedding.
“M” on Instagram
My husband and I have 2 rentals and 1 residence. We are in the process of currently selling our residence and plan on buying a new place. We would like your opinion on whether it’s a good idea to sell one of the rentals to get more money down for our new home purchase. We will likely get about $40k from our residence. We want to buy in the $350-$400k price range for our new home. We currently owe $70k on each rental and make about $300-$400/month from the rentals.
If we sell the rental we will get approximately $85k. In the alternative, we could sell one rental and pay down my student loans ($90k). Does it all sound like it may just be a wash and not make much of a difference regardless of what we do?
Ron on Instagram
Do you think leasing a car ever makes financial sense? My wife probably drives only 7,000 to 8,000 miles per year.