<prompt> Human: I am a teacher and in my state, after you have taught for five years in a low-income school, you are eligible for loan forgiveness. I am currently in my second year in such a school. After year five, I will be eligible for up to 5000 in loan forgiveness.I currently have two direct loans which will be eligible for forgiveness at 7,443.06 6.55 and 2,566.90 5.75 and a stafford loan which Im not sure if it is eligible or not -- it was sold to a private lender while I was still in school with 4536.77 6.55.I am making minimum monthly payments on all of them 98.80, 32.70, and 60.90 per month respectively.Is there a calculator somewhere that I can use to find out if Im going to save any money by waiting, or if I should just pay it all off now? I have 15,000 saved from working, but I also have other needs home repairs, car on its last leg, etc. and Im not sure what would be the best decision.  <response>: It is usually recommended that you dont spend down emergency fund savings to pay off mid-interest debt like your student loans. If your current savings were all above the emergency fund, then it would be reasonable to pay off a chunk of the debt now. However, even at the slowest possible payoff, the interest costs never exceed the value of the debt forgiveness.Optimal course would seem to be to pay off just enough so that there is exactly 5000 left over after 3 years to let the debt forgiveness fully cancel the remaining debt. According to unbury.me that could be achieved by paying 4000 against the highest interest rate right now, and then making minimum payments after that, leaving 5000 remaining to be canceled out in 3 years. The total interest cost would be 1600 total over that time.You could also achieve similar results by just increasing your monthly payments so that about 5000 is left to cancel, while keeping your savings fully intact. A monthly payment of just over 300 with the extra applied to the highest interest rate loans, would do that, and would cost 2000 in total interest, a slight but not terribly high costs over the pre-payment to keep your savings fully intact.As you can see, going for the loan forgiveness is a net positive of 3000-3400 depending on which path you take, while also keeping your savings account mostly or totally intact in the meantime. 