<prompt> Human: My girlfriend and I have been in a committed relationship of 5 years and received our undergraduate degrees last year. We both plan to open up a firm together and teach. Currently we both work in the same company, making 56k each, and share an apartment and dog. We have managed to save 10k each 8month emergency fund and plan to go back to school to get our masters in two years. Our total debts includes student loans totaling 53k. Rent utilities -1450month student loan payments - 800 month and all other monthly expenses of 1500. We both plan to go back to school to get our masters in two years and spend another 50k for that. If we budget tightly we expect to save 30k this year but our unsure as to where to allocate the money. We have begun to put 5 in our 401ks with a 3 match from our employer as these estimates already subtract that. Do you recommend we pay off our student loan debt with the savings for the remainder of the two years, put more money in our 401k, put money into ETFs already invested 1k, or hold money in our high yield savings account of 1.9apy?  <response>: If youre truly committed, get married; otherwise, talking about our finances fires some alarms. We both plan to open up a firm together and teach.What does this mean? You want to start a school? That doesnt sound very profitable. Is it actually worth a 50K masters? If you are both doing this, whats your backup plan if it doesnt work? Youre putting all of your income in one basket, which is never good.I would definitely pay off the loans. 