I agree with your approach only if you have a high paying job and that cash flow you accumulate will be sufficient to support you for 30 or 40 years. You are growing your assets which is a good thing, but you have to realize you will always have debt. You need to take a balanced approach of growing assets and minimizing debt at the same time. If you start now taking small steps you can make sure are better prepared in the future.
What a lot of people don't take into account is appreciation and deprecation of assets, inflation and purchasing power.
Some of your assets appreciate over time such as stocks or houses. You want to have more of these even if it takes you some debt to get them. This is also a form of investment. If you rent and get a house instead then I would highly suggest that over blowing money on the market where you are not comfortable.
Some of your assets depreciate and lose value over time such as electronics, new car etc... You should minimize purchases of these.
Inflation over time reduces the purchasing power that you have. So if start saving that $100 now and you make 1% interest in a savings account while inflation is at 3% your $100 is worth less over time. What you think you need to retire 10 years from now can change drastically with inflation as time progresses.
It's not hard to invest. Just buy some bank stocks or a house.
I still have a 30k student loan that I'm paying off as slowly as possible. I make the monthly payments and no more. I can pay it off now, but the interest is tax deductible so it works out to be something like 2.5%, but I'm making over 10% on my investments. The key is to make sure you have enough cash flow to support your debt while your assets grow over time. I try to put away 5% of monthly income into alternative investments while the majority of income is dedicated towards debt repayment. It takes time to get there. Been doing it for 12 years now and I'm living a very frugal life style. I also work less than 3 hrs a day.
Retired at 30....retired at 40....dammit I guess I guess I ****ed up along the way somewhere here! 35 and still a way's off from retirement!
Personally I think paying off the loans is the best option. I recently paid off a 0% loan (about 9k) on a car because I wanted to free up the monthly cashflow. Also had a 3% loan that I paid off as well (10k or so) as I wanted a clean balance sheet with nothing but mortgage on it. Plus the cash flow of an extra $750/month really helps out on the aggressive saving for a downpayment. But each person's situation is different. I guess I'm from the old school where having any debt / liabilities is bad.
I've got a meeting with the bank (BMO Investorline) to set up an account on Saturday so looking forward to learning more about the market and hopefully making little bit of $ in the near future. Not sure what the proper strategy is at my age, but need to definitely start thinking more about retirement as company pensions are few and far in b/w and unless you can take care of yourself, no one else will.
Boots good on you with having a car, and bike at your age. Most friends of mine graduated with massive student loans that they're still paying off (12 years since graduation). I lived at home and have never had any type of debt except some car loan, which never lasted long.
