If you are saving or paying down debt when should you do it?  Should you pay it off as soon as you have the money?  Or should you wait until the end of the month?

What I did when I was paying off debt, was wait until the end of the month.  We were living at the time paycheck to paycheck without an emergency fund.  We consciously chose to do this in case emergencies cropped up.  However we did have a budget we lived by, so we knew roughly what we should have at the end of the month to pay off debt.

However, there are many reasons to pay it immediately.  Among them is spending extra cash.  But we’ve always lived very budget conscious.  Our debts was not due to overspending, but due to student loans and initial car loans.  Our debts unfortunately were conscious decisions we’ve made, not buying something and regretting it later. 

So if you have a spending problem send the money off.  But if not consider using the extra cash monthly to either not have an EF (when paying down debt), or not touching your EF when you are out of debt.  This gives your monthly budget flexibility.  

This is also a great way to supplement Dave Ramsey’s $1k baby EF.  For many people when you have a rent/mortgage greater than $1k, I wonder if it’s not wise to hold off on debt repayments because their needs are significantly higher?

What do you do?  Pay off debt asap or wait and see?