<prompt> Human: Ive been wondering this recently, brought about by reading rpf and seeing a constant theme of sacrificing everything to pay debts, without taking into account opportunity costs basically, how much a persons free time is worth. Ill use a personal example - we are high income 182k base, high debt 335k. They are all student loans at 4 fixed or better, no CC debt and we do not own a car. link: In our situation, we are averaging paying 7.5k every month for our loans, with an estimated payoff of 5 years. I have high rent costs 2400, but they allow me and my wife to walk to work, save 250 in transportation expenses each month, allowed us to sell the car, shaved 1 hour each day for both of us, give us more time to cook, spend time with each other, close to free parks and activities, etc. Ive run the numbers, and a comparable place would be 1800 further north Chicago. Thats 600 cheaper, but the extra transportation costs of 250 kick in so its 350. Also, utilities are included at my current place including internet so subtract another 50 from the differential. Over the 5 years we will pay the loan, 300pm which I still believe is on the high end, we didnt factor in moving costs, the fact that grocery stores are further away, additional healthcare costs as we are exercising lesssleeping less etc works out to 18,000 Thats roughly 2.4 additional months of paying the loan, but it involves 2,500 additional hours of commuting, which equals 2,500 less hours together. Coincidentally, 2,500 hours divided by 24 hours in a day is exactly 3.4 full months... so what we saved in time on the back end we paid for over 5 years on a daily basis. I guess the question is, at a certain point of income additional tweaking of finances results in marginal at best improvement. At what point do you say good enough, knowing youll never be able to live those 3-5-10 years again? Thoughts?  <response>: I think a lot of people underestimate the value of a shorter commute. If youd spend 2 hours commuting 1 per person per day, then at your current salary level thats equivalent to about 189day. Its also a lot less time that you get to spend with your SO or with your friends, or cooking, like you said. With a salary at your level, even with your debt, you can afford to spend 24kyear on rent so you can keep your commute time down. Factoring in the added costs for transportation if you were farther away, its probably less than 3500year to save yourself 2 hours of commute time each day.. definitely worth it.When deciding what to spend money on, I generally compare the costs of something now like a more expensive apartment to the amount of extra time Id have to spend working at the end of my career. If something costs me, say, 100, thats equivalent to maybe 2 days that I wouldnt have to work before retirement for example. So if I want to spend that 100, I have to decide if its worth working 2 more days for that item.If your goal is just to have enough to spend to make your family reasonably comfortable and you plan to work until at least 60, then cutting down hard on every possible expense isnt really as necessary, as long as youre saving enough for retirement and you have a reasonable emergency fund. I think paying down your debt aggressively is a good idea either way, since most people feel a lot more free when they do that, and it gives you more options for switching to lower paying jobs if you choose that path, but if the debt doesnt worry you as much, just paying it down on a schedule of some sort is fine. 