<prompt> Human: Hi everyone. I took out a massive student loan when going to law school. It was about 195,000 when I graduated in 2014 and is up to about 230,000 currently. I spent the first few years finding a job and getting laid off twice and only recently got a nice raise and have the money to start looking into my options.Im on a repayment plan through the federal lender called PAYE pay as you earn where my payments are fixed by my income and very affordable. The plan lasts 25 years and anything not paid off is forgiven but the current tax laws would mean I get taxed on everything forgiven. My payment is currently 310month and if I went to standard payments it would be about 2,700month. Interest is fairly high, 12 the loan is at 7.65, most of the rest is 6.65 and a small portion is 5.5. I looked into refinancing but most places wont even consider it with the high amount. The only remotely reasonable option was to refinance the 12 at 7.65 to about 5.5 but my payments would increase to over 900month and it still would take 20 years.I can afford to put about 1,200month towards some combo of loans, my Roth IRA, saving for large purchases and investing. I opened the IRA last summer and have about 900 in it but want to seriously increase my contributions since I know doing so earlier makes a world of difference. I have about 2,500 in an emergency fund that I want to increase to 6k in the short term and 12k over a longer period of time. Im keeping this in a high interest savings account 1.45. I would also like to pay for a house and wedding some time in the next 2-5 years and start a family not too long after that.So, Ive been struggling to figure out how to balance where my payments should go. One option is to keep making the minimum payments on the loan, let the amount get forgiven in 21 years and plan to pay a lot in taxes and hope I dont have to if laws change while focusing entirely on retirement account and savings. I could also refinance half the loan but only have a small amount to pay towards the IRAsavings. Or I could do some combo of spending a few years building my nest egg for savings and retirement and then come at the loans much more aggressively.None of my options seem great but Im hoping to pick the best one so Im not in real bad shape in 20 years. Any advice is very greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!  <response>: I love you saving for retirement, but you really need to approach this logically. You owe 230,000. In the few years that you have been out, you have already found and lost two jobs. So I would encourage you to get mad at that debt. If in two years, you are laid off again, will you be better off if you have more in retirement, or have paid off more of the debt? So I would stop putting into retirement while you kill the debt. If it makes you mad to not put in retirement, then make another pot of beans and rice so you can put more money towards the debt so you can clear it, and let yourself get back to contributing to retirement. Can you get a side-job that brings in more money? I wouldnt want to interfere at all with my main gig, but could you computer consult or write articles for money, or something else that is better than delivering pizzas? Would it be worth delivering pizzas to be able to clear the debt faster? Having that debt will always limit your choices going forward. The sooner you can clear it, the better you will be able to live on your own terms. 