Young couples often ask themselves a basic question: is it smart to pay off student loans as quickly as possible?

Short answer: No.

Stuart Ritter, a certified financial planner for T. Rowe Price who also teaches a class in personal finance at Johns Hopkins University, says it doesn’t make sense to take money away from savings or other investments to pay off student loans. He says most student loans have a low interest rate and it therefore makes more sense to increase the contribution to your retirement fund, pay off credit card debt or boost your savings rather than repay the student loan as quickly as possible.

So, make regular payments on your student loans as you build your savings and retirement accounts, but don’t knock yourself out by pulling extra money from your budget to reduce the balance. Regular payments on your student loan will help build a good credit history, an important step to home ownership.

If you haven’t already done so, contact your lenders to see if you can consolidate your loans. This basic step can reduce your monthly payments and make bookkeeping simpler because you write only one check.

Keep in mind that if you don’t repay your student loan as agreed, you almost certainly will have difficulty securing a mortgage. If that’s too far in the future, remember that collection costs of nearly 20% could be added to the balance due. The default will appear on your credit report, 15% of your paycheck may be garnished to repay the loan and income tax refunds could be withheld and applied toward the balance.

Defaulting on your student loan will destroy your credit rating and make it more difficult to secure a mortgage in the future.

Being in debt is a terrible feeling. You can overcome the knot in the gut by budgeting for your student loan payment, and instead of using extra money to repay the loan as quickly as possible, pay yourself first. Use extra money to boost your contribution to a 401(k) retirement fund and build your savings.

“If the couple has credit card debt, they should pay it off before paying off the student loans,” says Mark Stempel, a certified financial planner and principal at Mark Stempel & Associates in Tucson, Arizona. “Then the couple should start saving for a down payment on a house.”

Think of your student loan this way: You’ve got a good interest rate and you’re paying it off with constantly inflating dollars. Such a deal. Relax, there’s no rush to get the balance of your student loan down to zero.

Many brokerage firms have Web sites offering financial planning tips, including T. Rowe Price (TROW), Merrill Lynch (MER), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS). Major banks also offer solid information, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C) and Wells Fargo (WFC).