Pay off debt or invest?!

[Katie Ferguson]

I am in a unique situation and would like to know what you would do.

A little back story- My husband and I were in the beginning stages of building a new primary residence. My aunt filed for divorce, knew we would be selling our home soon, and needed a place to stay. This was in February of 2019. She wanted to buy our house, but can’t until her divorce is over, so we told her that she could rent our home until she could buy it and we moved in with my in-laws.

When the house sells, we will have about 60k in equity. Because we were planning on it selling earlier and using that money on our new home, we ended up with about 30k of building supplies on our credit card (10k is 0% interest, 20k at 12%).

I was initially planning on using the 60k to pay off the credit card, but I am just starting to build my portfolio, and wonder if it would be smarter to use that money to invest in a property. I am currently reading The Millionaire Real Estate Investor - there was a similar situation mentioned in the book, and they took the money and invested it.

What would you do?

[Mike V.]

Pay off any debt over 6% interest.. which will almost certainly mean paying off your credit cards.