Good morning /biz/, still rather new here but I've been

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Good morning /biz/, still rather new here but I've been lurking and trying to devour as much information as I possibly can. I have a couple of basic questions that I can't seem to find answers to yet.

So I'm 23 and this is the first year I've ever contributed to my Roth IRA, prior to this I haven't done ANY saving. I think that sadly most of my generation won't have the same realization that I am having at the moment. I'm in a desperate scramble to make up for lost time investing and saving. From what I understand, things like Roth IRA's and 401k's are what you want to be maxing out before you put your money towards anything else. I set up automatic payments based on how much I'd need to contribute to hit the 5500 dollar limit every year, but this year I only have 1100 dollars in there and won't hit that 5500 before the end of the fiscal year unless I use a lot of extra cash.

I'll be going on a deployment in a month or so, and I'm considering selling my car. I owe 5,000 on it right now and I think I should get at least that much for selling it. Would I be better off paying the last little bit of debt I owe? Or should I use that to max out my contribution for the year since it's a one time only thing???