<prompt> Human: Hey, rpersonalfinance Heres the deal,Ive got about 57k in student loan debt. Im on an Income Based Repayment plan that is at 312month. Ive been paying 580mo towards the loan any additional windfalls I receive to try and knock it down as fast as possible.Every time I call and talk to Great Lakes about my account, they see that Im paying well above the IBR minimum, they think its a mistake and ask why I would want to do that. It makes sense to me but their constant questioning of it as well as a similar reaction in rstudentloans is starting to make me think I may be wrong. They both seem to think I should be only paying the minimum and then just worry about it when the tax bomb comes, but I dont know if thats something Im ok with.The other issue is that I have to renew my IBR application every year, and I was just reapproved for another year. The problem is that since I was paying over the minimum, I was considered paid ahead for almost a year. When they renewed my IBR, my paid ahead buffer reset to zero! Is this normal? I put my entire tax refund towards my loan principle, thinking that If any emergency situations came about, I would not have to pay my student loan for the month since i was paid ahead so far obviously Id still get charged interest but it doesnt capitalize so I was ok with that scenario.If this is normal for any paid ahead buffer to be reset every year when I reapply, is it worth it to do it this way or should I be using a different strategy?  <response>: Having an emergency fund is critical. It may seem more important to pay everything off all at once as quickly as you can but not having money set aside for the unknown can bury you. I didnt and all of my extra money was paying down debt. High and low interest. Ended up needing money for an emergency and I didnt have it saved. Right back into more debt. It took a while to recover but I learned from it. My main goals now are to have an emergency fund and enough money in another savings to pay bills for 3-6 months in case I am out of work.I had to weigh the interest from the credit cardshigh, student loanlow, and car loanlow. Slowly building an emergency savings while paying off the high interests cards first was more cost effective, for me, than paying off my student loans and car loan faster. Once they were paid off, I could then focus more money on the low interest loans and knock them out relatively quickly. 