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slash SmartVester. Today's question comes from Dean in Iowa. He says, if I have debt but also want to invest,

why can't I do both in benefit from the compounding interest?

I'm 21 and have over 95,000 in college debt.

I won't be able to pay that before I turn 30.

And I don't want to wait that long to build wealth.

Okay, so Dave, we hear this a lot.

It's kind of like that age-old argument of why can't I invest

whilst paying off debt or why do I need to wait until I'm done paying off debt to invest?

And the biggest thing, I mean, if I go back to the basis of it, it is your income being

your biggest wealth building tool. So here's a thing. You have $95,000 in debt, which means a portion of your income is going to be going to

paying that off.

And the longer you wait, the more of that income is not helping you build wealth.

So while you might be able to put, I mean, theoretically, yeah, you could put some money

into investing.

It's not going to be the full scale of what you could or should put in to build ultimate wealth.

So why wouldn't you just clear that out?

Because here's the thing.

The compounding interest works on your debt too.

Yeah.

That's the thing.

That $95,000, that's going to accumulate more and at a quicker rate than when you start from zero investing, you know, your $100 here and there.

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