You should at the bare minimum be investing for retirement while paying down student loans. The one exception is if no penny that can be pulled from your budget to get rerouted to investing because even the bare essentials, everything is spoken for including debt payments. I always like to draw upon the mental emotional angle of having debt. For a lot of people this is a keeps them up at night situation. If you legitimately can not sleep at night or it really is a source of stress for you, hey it off.