Order of Importance?

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I wouldn’t recommend it. You get a huge tax if you take it out and not above a certain age. I think it is 40% tax on the 401K or something like that.

You can temporarily put your 401k percentage to 2% or lower if you get serious about paying off debt quickly. I only did this when we got serious in other areas of cutting costs.

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Original Message —-
From: Kristin
To: Budget101_@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 8, 2008 9:20:34 AM
Subject: Re: Budget101.com : Order of Importance?

What if you have a large amount of debt, yet have $20,000 in retirement. Should you take out the money from a 401K to pay off the debt?

Stephanie wrote:

Is there a general rule of thumb about what debt should be paid off in
what order? And where do long-term goals fit in?

For example, if you have:
debt: credit cards, home loan, auto loan
long-term goals: college fund(s), retirement fund, emergency fund

Assume your credit card interest rate is larger than your mortgage
interest rate.

And assume you can only put money in one at a time (a tad unrealistic
I know, but for the sake of argument let’s assume you don’t have
enough to do all at once).

How would you order, from “Pay off or Invest in First” to “Pay Off
Last or Invest in Last”?

Thanks for playing!
Stephanie

Kristin
Streamwood-Barrington and Bode

[Author]

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