Conventional investing wisdom, should i disregard

[vulturesrow]

Conventional wisdom says that one shouldnt invest their money if they are holding large amounts of debt, especially high interest debt such as credit cards.

Here is my conondrum. My wife and I have a fair amount of debt. I dont care to get into specific figures, but its not crushing by any means. We pay the bills, get stuff for our kids, and have discretionary cash left over each month. I did the number crunching and figured that I can eliminate all of it in about two years by some pretty dedicated amounts of payoff. The bad thing is we have no investment of any sort, other than life insurance. I am almost 30 and I know I have already lost value by not investing early on. Should I do a mix of investing (and I am talking about index fund type of stuff right now, maybe a few choice stocks that are solid long term holdings) and debt payoff? Or am I really getting more bang for the buck by concentrating on paying off debt? As a corollary, I currently get a bonus each year that amounts to about 10k or so after taxes. Would it be unwise to sink this into debt recovery or should I take a mixed approach? I am very concerned about the time value I am using by not having any investments right now. Thanks in advance for any answers.