<prompt> Human: Hello!My wife and I are working to get our debt eliminated. We dont have any credit cards, but we have a ridiculous sum in student loans. Combined, we owe just shy of 120,000. So... we were idiots, basically. Our annual income is 70,000. After we make required monthly payments and budget for necessities we have a bit more than 1,700 left.Dave Ramsey suggests we put 1,000 in the bank right away for emergencies. Makes sense, though this will obviously only take care of small emergencies. Next, he advises paying off our smallest loans to begin our debt snowball. Im not sure about this, personally. It seems like its more for psychology than money saving advice. Wouldnt it make sense to pay off our highest interest loans first? For example, I have one loan for 10k with a 9 interest rate couldnt get a co-signer to bring it down, I was stupid, blah blah blah. My lowest loans are in the neighborhood of 1,000, but have interest rates around 4. Wouldnt it make more sense to pay off that 9 loan first?His investing advice seemed a little too optimistic as well, though at this point I dont think thats something I need to worry about until after weve taken care of our debt.Thoughts on all of this?  <response>: You are correct. It makes more sense to pay the higher interest rate loans first.His advice is specifically designed to get someone addicted to paying off bills loans, basically providing a sense of achievement each time a small loan is paid off. Its not too far off from achievement systems in video games. 