For the time being, I really don't have that much debt. A few hundred dollars I owe some family from when I was unemployed, some medical bills I suffered while uninsured and unemployed, and some credit card debt. All in all, right around 2 grand. I plan to have most of that taken care of by the end of next month.
I also still have about 8.5 grand in student loans, that i'd like to get paid off in the next year. Along with purchasing a relatively cheap (3-5grand) but reliable vehicle to get around on. That will leave me with, property-wise:
-Books
-Clothing
-Electronics
-Motorcycle
-Truck
And (hopefully, if I pay off my student loans), zero debt.
My dad has told me repeatedly "don't rush to pay off your student loans, about 5-10x per year. I'm not really sure why he says this, other than the low interest rate, so correct me if I'm wrong -- shouldn't I try to just pay those off and get them out of the way? My dad is far from being a financial mastermind, but is this generally shitty advice, or am I just reading into it too much because all of his other advice is generally shitty and poorly thought-out?
I've also just recently discovered this guy:
Dave Ramsey Homepage - daveramsey.com
While he seems to harp on donating extra money to the church, which obviously i'm not going to do, he has some pretty sound debt-management advice.
After I'm out of debt, I'm going to start building up some savings and look into buying property somewhere. I've always been averse to buying property due to the permanence of it, but i'm going to start researching into buying property for a temporary home and look more into real-estate investment, aka renting out a property I own, but not living there. Over the course of the next year or two I'm going to merge a lot of nonfiction reading about finance, economics, and investing into my reading.