OP, never listen to someone who tells you to invest or not invest, and bases that advice on past performance. If you started today, you're just as likely to enter a bear market for the next 10 years as you are to remain in a bull market for the next 10 years. The problem is, you'll only know if you made the right decision 10 years from now. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Invest when you are ready to, not because of what the market has done or is doing. And it doesn't appear that you're ready to. Invest or don't invest.......you are, however, ready to pay back those loans, and we can guarantee what doing so will do for you 10 years from now.