If you could have paid off your debt before investing, would you?

[Josh Clinard]

My wife and I currently have 1 rental property. We have a decent amount of equity in the home and we cashflow $500/month. Due to our current living situation, we have the oppertunity to pay off 90% of our debt within 1 year. We make roughly 120k/year combined. We have about 50k in debt. 85% student loans, the rest is auto. We are 22 years old with hopefully alot of time to create a portfolio.

So we plan to save roughly 40k this year, and we are weighing our options. I know we could potentially get multiple properties with 40k. But with our debt out of the way, we will save about $1300/month and have around 5k disposable income a month.

So if you started investing with debt, would you go back and pay it down before investing? If you invested after paying down your debt, do you regret it? I've always leaned more towards the investing side, but lately I've been listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio and it's got me thinking some.