+ Do you have a cash reserve?

Have a cash reserve that's 3-6 months of expenses.  Before doing ANYTHING else, we would want to be sure you have a savings cushion that you're comfortable with BEFORE saving or investing for other goals.  Everyone is a little different on what a comfortable cushion looks like.  But the reality is, life throws us curveballs from time to time and you have to have money set aside for those emergencies or opportunities.  if you start socking money away for retirement (as an example) you can't really get it back out until you're 59.5 years old without paying some hefty tax penalties.  We say you want 3-6 months of your household bills to be in savings before getting too aggressive saving elsewhere.