<prompt> Human: Still have 28k in debt. Working to pay that off first. Currently on track to be debt free by early 2017. Am living cheaply and putting all extra money towards debt.  <response>: EDIT: I meant to put this into this post, but I fail at reddit and failed. This is long, but the info is good.Okay, so you want to kill off your debt. Lets go ahead and assume that you prioritise killing this debt above all else and contribute 70 of your income after taxes and rent to making this happen. Lets make a few other assumptions while were at it: You live in NYC, a city with a high cost-of-living that is in a state with a high state income tax. You live in a two-bedroom apartment in Bay Ridge with one room-mate, where the average rent for this set-up is 2264 You qualify for the standard two federal and state exemptions. You will be filing single in your 1040 next year when you do your tax return. You care about your future self and save 5 of your income into a 401K. The employer matches dollar-for-dollar up to 4000. This is what your balance sheet will look like I work on a bi-weekly basis : Expense Amount Running Total 2w --- --- --- Take-Home Pay with 5 401K 1277.18 1277.18 Rent 566 711.18 Debt Slaughtering at Net-Rent0.7 448.29 203.63 Remaining 203.63 This will continue for 35 payments, or 14 months. 100week does not go a long way in a city where drinks can cost 17each, so youll going to struggle for a little while. The good thing is that a year goes by pretty quickly. The good news is that Subway sandwiches are just as cheap here as ever. :Regardless, I hope you see that you make enough money to make this a reasonable goal.Now, after youre debt-free, lets say that you load up three months of emergency funds. Without changing the loan payment, this will take eight months. Expense Amount Running Total 2w --- --- --- Take-Home Pay with 5 401K 1277.18 1277.18 Rent 566 711.18 Emergency Fund Loading 448.29 Remaining 203.63 By this point, youll be used to living lean, so another eight months wont be that big of a deal.Now that youre debts are gone and you have a little bit of fuck-you money in the bank, you up your contribution into your 401K by 10. By this point, you have been contributing about 226month into it. Since your employer has been matching 1:1 for the first 4k, so your 2712 investment is actually 5424. Assuming further that youre 401K portfolio is a vanilla three-headed fund 50 SP500 index, 25 bonds, 25 international index that provides a 7 return, your 401K balance by this point should be about 17,000! NICE. Expense Amount Running Total 2w --- --- --- Take-Home Pay with 10 401K 1163.72 1163.72 Rent 566 711.18 Remaining 711.18 Thats roughly 1400month of disposable income and, over the next few years, thousands upon thousands of dollars in retirement gains. You can do whatever you want with this money. But dont do this. Thats just dumb.I would recommend stashing some of it into a portfolio that is only slightly more aggressive than your 401K and enjoying the rest, honestly. Youre making good money and will probably continue to make good money. You should enjoy it, but only after you have a safety net.Now, keep in mind that none of this accounts for the following very likely scenarios: Salary increases your salary will increase year-over-year unless you are royally bad, which making this kind of a jump doesnt indicate to me that you are, Year-end bonuses if youre making this kind of salary, you are very likely working with a company that pays out year-end bonuses, probably nice ones, Restricted stock unit refreshes and partial vesting if youre working at a tech company that does this sort of thing, Money you make on the side, Money you find on the floor, rbeermoney, and Selling used panties for profit Dont actually do thisFinally, if you need inspiration, when my salary jumped considerably two years ago, I was 150,000 deep in student loan debt. My salary has increased about 10 since then and my total compensation about 28. I am now roughly 80k away from being debt-free, which, barring extreme circumstances, should happen in roughly two years. 