My wife and I are in the beginning phases of deciding if we want to move to Canada. One thing that I've learned is that CIC will check your bank accounts for balances over 6 months.
My wife and I both have student loans that are very high (we both went to a private American college). We are trying our best to pay them off as quickly as possible. This means that all of the "extra" money we have, we put toward paying down our loans. We don't save money as investments, only to pay for possible future things (house maintenance, car repair, emergency stuff, etc.).
Since we have a few years before we think we'd like to apply for a permanent residence, we figured it would be a good idea to decide what to do with our money now. If we started paying less on our loans now, we could beef up our bank account pretty good before we apply.
My question is, is this the best thing to do? Would it be better for us to have a large amount of money in our savings/checking accounts, but still have a lot of loans? Or would it be better for us to pay down our loans, but have a smaller savings account?
My wife and I both have student loans that are very high (we both went to a private American college). We are trying our best to pay them off as quickly as possible. This means that all of the "extra" money we have, we put toward paying down our loans. We don't save money as investments, only to pay for possible future things (house maintenance, car repair, emergency stuff, etc.).
Since we have a few years before we think we'd like to apply for a permanent residence, we figured it would be a good idea to decide what to do with our money now. If we started paying less on our loans now, we could beef up our bank account pretty good before we apply.
My question is, is this the best thing to do? Would it be better for us to have a large amount of money in our savings/checking accounts, but still have a lot of loans? Or would it be better for us to pay down our loans, but have a smaller savings account?
