<prompt> Human: Ive read a lot of really helpful advice on rpersonalfinance on student loans and so I was hoping to get some on my husband and my situation as well.I graduated from law school and am currently making 170k at a firm. My husband will be graduating soon and will start making 160k from the fall. As is common in big law jobs, we get salary increases every year. The problem is that even though we want to get a house and go on vacations when we get the time, we have a combined 350k in student debt. The breakdowns are as follows:Private - 145k 3.4Private - 45k 3Govt - 10k 5Private - 40k 4.5Govt - 110k 5.5 to 7.9 the aim is to refinance those government loans with Sofi or another private lender after my husband starts working later this year so the interest is lower.My question is about how exactly how to tackle the loans vis-a-vis other things in life that require money. Were paying the minimum on my loans until he starts working but how much should we start paying after that? Is this a situation where we need to aggressively tackle the loans for our future ie: dont continue to pay the minimum - 10 year repayment? Or is paying it off over that 10 year plan a totally reasonable thing to do?The number is just so big that its hard to understand how to tackle it. Well be making 17k per month post-tax. Our rent is 2,500 right now and we pay 250 a month to lease a car. How much do you guys think would be good to try to commit to the loans per month after my husband starts working? Id love to hear your thoughts. Thank you so much in advance! :Assistant: Live like you are broke and try to pay them off in 3 years. Sounds reasonable with your income. Avoid lifestyle inflation. Live cheap.Human: I totally understand the necessity of paying down these loans as fast as possible and fully agree that its the ideal choice. The only thing that keeps me from fully embracing it is the idea that life is short and so maybe it is credited to have some moderation between big lifestyle inflation and living like were broke. If living like were broke pays this off in 3 years and lifestyle inflation pays it off in 10 years, is it that terrible to do something in the middle and pay it off in 5 years? Or is the financial cost of the extra interest just so much more that its better to do it more quickly?  <response>: Theres a very high percentage chance that you will not be making 300k for the next ten years. People get pushed out of big law firms all the time, or they simply want to switch out because the stress is insanely high and going in house will generally not pay as well. If theres another recession then you may well be SOL on even finding any job. A lot of people plan to be lifers and then realize that life is short, and working at a firm sucks. Make sure that when you do you are in a good financial position. Pay it off, invest like mad, and then in 10 years you will have enough cash making you money that you can either keep working for a big firm if you enjoy it or go off somewhere else and pay cash for a nice house and spend your time volunteering. It also will make you more willing to take risks, which is great when you are just starting off your career. When one of your clients asks you to join them you want to be able to say yes and have a wild potentially incredibly lucrative ride rather than worry about whether you will be able to pay off your loans.On the plus side this probably doesnt matter that much since you probably wont have time to take many vacations anyway. 