Student Loans: Pay off now or pay off eventually?

[Adam Allard]

Newbie here wanting advice on starting out and getting my personal finance squared away as I prepare myself to enter the world of real estate investing. First, my plan is to get into small multi-family property investing. I'm moving near Fort Meade in about 18 months, so I'm thinking my first property will be a house hack in Baltimore. (I'm sure a lot of you will comment why I don't just start now? "18 months is a long time away!" First, I want to make sure I get my education squared away before I start anything. Up until last week, I've had absolutely no knowledge about real estate. Next, I'm moving to Monterey, CA in about 2 weeks and will be there for a little over a year only. I haven't searched much yet, but from the little searching I did find so far, multi-family properties in the area are REALLY expensive, and I think that is just too much risk for me at this point when I'm still trying to learn. I already found a local REI group in Monterey that has a meetup in a few weeks, so I'm attending that to network and ask some questions, maybe they'll convince me it's not that bad to start out there after all?)

Anyways, the main point of my discussion here is to ask about my personal finances. A recent college graduate (B.S. in Computer Information Systems) and just landed a job in Monterey at $68K. Currently, I have about $19,000 in student loans. If I leave them where they're at right now, I'm only required to pay about $130 total per month. However, there are some with interest rates as low as 4.5% while others are at 9%. It would take nearly 15 years to pay them off at this rate (I think).

I could consolidate them all (some federal and some private), for a fixed rate at about 5-6%, which would be around $200 per month for 120 months. Or I could even consolidate just the private loans (a 5%, 7%, and a 9%) which is a little less than 10K together, and this would be about $170-200 a month for only 60 months, but then I'd still have to add in the remaining federal loan payments which might be another $80 per month. 

There are plenty of other adjustments I could make (for instance, I could probably even pay them off within a year and a half by putting 1K a month), but those few should get an idea of what I'm trying to ask here. Should I try my hardest to be paying these off as fast as I can, so I start with very little debt and can start really saving for my first down payment (currently I have about 12K for a down-payment. Would love to have $30+ by the time I start if I stick to my "first house hack in Baltimore plan"). Or, should I just work at paying the minimum amount possible? 

[Lou F.]

I was in  a similar situation until very recently, even down to the loan amount and my savings. I owed $17,800 and had 13k in savings. I decided pay 10,800, keep 2k for general expenses, and pay off the remaining 7k over 12months. I ended up saving over 5K in interest and most importantly, a huge burden is off my shoulders.