I come from a long line of tight wads , I guess it's in my DNA. I have family members who make Dave Ramsey look like a rookie when it comes to being tight with $. I'm a big fan of getting paid interest instead of paying interest.

If you owe less than $100k TOTAL I would say you are not really in bad shape. You are in good shape.

Think on some extreme level you can obsess with debt until you are both debt free AND broke.

Right now is not the time to discuss retirement savings but I do see a lot of people who think paying off their home early is the key to financial success. It is NOT when you are doing this at the expense of saving for retirement.

You can't start saving for retirement at 50 years old. And you also need to be thinking along the lines of if I anticipated I would need $1million for retirement.... you are going to need $2 million by the time Biden is out of office.

That's my advice. I'd hold tight. Having $60k saved is nothing to get hyperactive about.

Nothing like sleeping in a paid off house.

If he only owes $54k, then the mortgage interest is no enough to itemize. So that argument is moot.

Pay the house off first. Keep the rest of the money in the bank as a cash reserve. Pay $1000 (Plus that month's interest) on the truck every month and pay the truck off in 22 months. Meanwhile bank the extra money in a high interest savings account. Some are paying over 4% right now.

I less than 2 years you will be debt free and have a nice chunk of liquid cash in the bank.

The OP is way ahead, he said he maxes out his Roth, has another IRA , a investment account and some $ from a former biz. Sounds like he's pretty solid at this point.

The correct answer is buy a boat and go fishing

But need to finance the boat to insure your credit remains good. 🤷🏿

This is really the sad state of affairs. You could pay all your mess off, and pay cash for everything, and then apply for a loan only to find out you have a mediocre credit score. The guy at the lot I bought my truck from told me your credit will go up with a truck note. He was right. I got from no note for YEARS!! to a note, and boom, higher credit score.

It's bassackwards if you ask me.

Another option would be to buy stocks that consistently pay dividends. Then just let it reinvest them. When you retire, you have an income stream there too.

Aldeer is slippin. Hookers and blow

I think a super easy way to keep your credit score active is to just use a credit card for fuel and keep it paid off every month. Heck, my in-laws use a credit card for most of their expenses every month and pay it off every month and their score is stellar (and they used to accumulate air miles for travelling at the same time).

The tax benefits are a joke brother. You talking about a chump change.

I'd pay the house off for sure!

You’re missing the point, you pay cash so you don’t get the note which puts you back in debt. Who cares what their credit score is when you pay cash.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^[

There are multiple ways to make money work for you. Arguing about one being better than another is like telling somebody else what deer they should or shouldn't hunt.

Most folks are driven by emotion and miss the opportunity to have money truly work for them. Fear of not having enough will cause you to miss opportunities. Think "scared money can't play." The other common emotion is Greed and that will cause the focus to be more, more, more and then money owns you.

I prefer to be a cheerful giver than a shrewd investor. In this, the Giver always has and God is always pleased and I never have to worry about where or when it's going to arrive.

That’s not true anymore for basically everyone (now).
Even if you don’t have a cent of deductions, the standard deduction is $25k for a couple. Over 90% of people now do not itemize, which means you take the $25k standard.
This means all deductions below that amount help you exactly zero.

Mortgage deduction is effectively no longer an argument unless you’re pretty wealthy or someone who makes $100k and gives away $30k to the church. If that’s you, good work! And if not, you won’t get any mortgage benefit.

I don't know why folks get so hung up on it.

This is what I was talking about. The other qualitative benefit of paying off truck first is that it's a quicker win that eliminates a higher interest rate. Quick wins help psychologically when folks set a goal to be debt free.

Either way, OP is in good shape.

A lot of good advice here. If it were me I would really pray for God to reveal to me what I should do. He owns it all anyway and everyone’s situation is going to be different.

Life happened and I was unable to respond to this thread. But here is what I decided to do.

Pay off the truck

The house has no tax savings for me because we take the standard deduction. I don't have enough taxable expenses to itemize. I saw some comments about the tax benefits for owning a home.

The main reason I am going this route is because I don't want to empty my emergency reserves.