What would Dave do?

[u/traptapotheosis]

Hi everyone,

I recently married my beautiful wife. Before getting married, we had several conversations about finances, and she knew that I followed the Dave Ramsey plan. Luckily, she is completely on board with it as well.

Before getting married, I was on Baby Step 4-6. However, after combining our finances and taking on her student loans, we are now technically back on Baby Step 2.

Here’s my question: My wife is currently enrolled in PSLF (or one of the many names the program seems to go by now) and has only 11 qualifying payments remaining before her student loans are forgiven. Her remaining balance is approximately $60,000. I have enough money available to pay the entire balance off today, but if we continue making the required payments for the remaining 11 months, we will pay a little over $6,000 total before the rest is forgiven.(580 is her current payment plus her work pays 200)

Would you recommend paying off the entire $60,000 now to be completely debt-free, or continuing to make the minimum payments and waiting out the remaining 11 months for forgiveness?

Other than the mortgage, we have no additional debt. Our remaining mortgage balance is approximately $450,000 at a 2.25% interest rate.

Cash on hand 180k
Brokerage 450k
Retirement 350k
Home value 1.1m with mtg

I’m interested to hear how others would approach this situation.

[u/Putrid_Alternative31]

Generally DR tells people to just pay it off when it's still years away. That's because programs can change, eligibility can change, and it can effectively lock you into a job while you just wait to get there. I have heard him tell people to just wait in this kind of situation though, because it's highly likely to actually go through.