<prompt> Human: I am very lucky. My job pays me reasonably well, for NYC. The 401k match is 20. My wife and I have 35k in debt, 28 from her school loans, the rest is credit debt. Nothings too terrible.I am paid weekly, and take home about 850 after taxes and the 15 I put into retirement. Which is a bit over 200 a week. In a year my 401k has doubled from my previous three years of saving! So Im very excited to keep putting in what I can while I have a job that matches this well. We have about 2k in savings, and I always try to keep 4 -5k in my checking, because I dont like paying for things that arent coffee or Internet. That being said, I feel like were just barely making ends meet. Which brings me to my question: Is it more important to save what I can, while I can? Or should I be dumping everything possible into our debt? Im trying to strike a reasonable balance, but it never feels good enough, and Im very nervous at the thought of dropping everything we have on our debt.  <response>: Unless the school loans have a really high interest rate I would just follow the repayment schedule. Credit cards are totally different beast, you want to pay those off asap.The 401k is a dollar for dollar match? You arent going to get a better return for your investment than that. I would be shoveling money in there too. 