<<As a fresh new Fool, I need some advice. I'm going to finish college this December, but my wife is already done and has a $21K loan which we are paying on. By the time I graduate, my loan will be around 28-30K and I'm wondering how am I ever going to start investing while I'm staring at 50K in loans!... We are investing 6% of our pay to our 401k programs were we work at, but should we attempt to put any money into investing other than our 401k's?>>

Hi, Minteerfool!

This is only my personal opinion, but I'd say the best approach would be to attack those loans with everything you've got while continuing to put away into your 401k before attempting to invest in the market.

Unless you can be absolutely sure of realizing better than an 8.5% return in market investments (and there's no guarantees you can), you'd be better served by decreasing the loans. At least the 6% you're contributing to the retirement accounts will be working for you on the other end.

You've already got an end in sight, and with you and your wife entering the job market, there's always the possibilities that increased salaries will enable you to end those loans even more quickly.

I'd also caution you to be exceptionally vigilant in avoiding other debts along the way, ie. credit cards. You don't want to find yourselves having to back off from the loans because of consumer debt.

Good luck!

Tony
...but I still am...

Off2Aruba