<prompt> Human: Hi everyone, and thanks in advance for your help. I graduated from law school in 2015 and have been working as a judicial clerk for the last year judicial clerkships 1 year fellowships with a judge that law graduates from top schools complete to boost their resume. In the fall, Ill start working at a law firm. I have 135K in student loans and 6K in credit card debt. No savings of any sort. Ill receive a 50K bonus when I start at the firm and my salary will be 180K. Where should I start? I plan on paying off the CC debt with my bonus, but after that Im not sure what I should do, with either the rest of my bonus or my each paycheck going forward. I do need to buy a car current car has no air conditioning, no back windshield, no side mirror on one side. Should I pay cash in full for a car out of my bonus? Should I just take a down payment out of it and finance the rest? Going forward, should I focus first on paying off my loans? On building up an emergency fund? What about retirement contributions? The firm does not match. TL; DR: High debt, high income, 50K signing bonus. What should my priorities be?  <response>: First off: Congrats on being successful!Secondly: You have the right idea of paying off your CC debt immediately. Then save 3-6 months of living expenses which will vary from person-person, but for you since you have a lot of debt and probably have high monthly payments, Id say 15k-20k would be ideal.Im an advocate for buying used cars with cash, but with your income you can probably afford to make monthly payments but make sure the interest on the payments is low, although paying it all up front would free you to pay off your student loans - which should be 1 priority.So after student loans and emergency fund youll have about 25k left. Honestly you can get a great used car for around 10-15k. So youre left with about 10k. I would immediately throw that to your student loans.From here on out stick to a lean budget so you can throw everything you have at your loans, if you do it right you can be debt-free in 2 years. 