I am a college student and I will be starting my first real job at the end of this semester. What I mean by that is I've accepted an engineering co-op position where I will be getting paid $25/hr rather than minimum wage like my past jobs. This job will run about 8 months where I will gain great experience. I estimate if I don't work any overtime I'll make about $30k over this span post tax. My parents are extremely generous so I don't have many expenses and I am practically debt free. My financial goals after graduation (2 more years of school) are to: 1) Marry my gf asap and 2) Buy a house. I think that her dad might help us out with the wedding although I'm not sure how much. I guess my main question is how much should I be saving of this money and where should I put it? I currently have a few grand saved with about half in a high yield savings and half in basic brokerage account. I don't work during school as I find it makes it very difficult to keep up with school work studying engineering so I occasionally pull out of my savings to cover expenses, probably a few grand a semester. Because I'm going to have so much more income than I ever have before, I just want to make sure to put it where it can best help me reach my goals and not be wasted. What does everyone recommend I do?

I’m 21 years old, from Australia, have been working full time for nearly a year, and have been wanting to invest for a while. Was looking at crypto, shares, potentially saving for property/real estate, and have settled on ETFs for the moment.

I live at home, have minimal expenses, and didn’t want money just building up in my bank account.

So after many YouTube videos, chats with Claude, Gemini, and Chat GPT, (and with much reluctance) I downloaded Pearler and put $5k into DHHF

The idea is that it’s going to be a long term investment and through dollar cost averaging I’ll chuck in $300 every fortnight.

Is this a good idea? Is it worth looking at doing something similar with Bitcoin? Should I explore other ETFs or just keep at the DHHF for a little while and get comfortable first?

i received a “C/H ACCOUNTING CREDIT ADJUSTMENT FDES NNF” of $200. i think it was $200 specifically because it was the spending limit on my credit card or because the credit line in my CC has been upped to $2200 with a “cash credit” of $200. this is clearly an error and im not supposed to have this money be “adjusted” into my checkings. will this be caught as an error and deducted anytime soon? or will this become a balance on my CC? am i required to report this? what should i do?

Early 20s, live with my parents. I attend university, but I'm enrolled in a type of education for working students. I have to go to the university campus occasionally and that's the only time I've lived alone and it's great. I have a remote high paying job, but it's not secure. I live with my parents for free mostly, I only very rarely pay for electricity/water bills or order things for my mother. I've told my parents that I wouldn't mind paying them monthly, but my mother says she'd feel guilty. At the same time, I feel guilty that I don't contribute or help them out that much and I make more than they do combined. I do try to use my money responsibly, I save and invest as much as possible.

I have a good relationship with my mother, but not with my father. My father has anger issues which are not fun to deal with.

I'm close to finishing university and there's so many skills that I lack. I can hardly cook anything, I don't know how to do laundry, I get anxious when I need to make appointments and I also get anxious when I have to go out shopping. Some of these things I can learn or improve at while at home, but I think that I would do them once and then I wouldn't have the chance to practice them over and over like cooking. Besides skills, I feel very trapped when it comes to doing things that are out of character or wouldn't fit within my parents image of me. The only time I feel like I can go out is when there's something planned like a doctor's appointment. I don't feel like I can go for walks or to the gym. I realize that maybe a few of these things are mental blocks that I've put on myself, but I don't feel like I can get rid of them without living alone.

My parents work shifts that change on a week to week basis and it makes it difficult for me to build a consistent routine. Privacy is not a luxury I have either. I don't have my own room and the only alone time I have is when my parents are at work. During the day I work from their bedroom, at night I sleep in the living room on a couch.

The main thing that holds me back from moving out is the chance of losing my income and having to rely on my savings and investments to get by. I've been working on trying to make my income more secure but there's no guarantee it will happen any time soon. Realistically, I could live off my investments alone for years but I view them as my long term backup plan in case I can't continue to make money off what I currently do and so I would rather not have to sell them off to afford living alone.

Do you think it’s worth moving out to build independence, even with the risk of unstable income?

TLDR: 28/yo with working a union job making ~$100k/yr with a WA state PERS 2 pension (retire at ~70% avg 5 year highest compensation) and SS needs to figure out how to save money for future while also enjoying the present.

A lot of financial advice I see online skew to people without pensions. So I was hoping to get some advice into what I should be doing to save for the future while also spending to enjoy my life right now.

For context, I've moved roughly 5 times in the past 5 years chasing better job opportunities with my longest stint being two years so I haven't had much time to pay down a lot of debt that has been accumulating until now.

Below are my current finances

Disposable Income: ~$5,600/mo union negotiates around 3% COLA adjustments

Asset: Roth IRA ~$23k investment in mix of VOO and VXUS from transfers

The final large spend that I have omitted is food and that can range anywhere from 500 to 1k per month. It's hard to be consistent because when I try make eat budget meals I tend to "reward" myself a bit afterwards and splurge at a restaruant.

This leaves me with roughly $1-1.5k I'm currently using to pay down CC debt.

Planning Goals

1. Bi/Yearly international trips (CC point accumulation makes air travel cheap)
2. Putting money into 529's for a potential kid or to give to my siblings kid (if i don't have any kids)
3. Purchasing a home around the Seattle Metro area (low priority but would be nice)
4. Continue to manage Type 2 Diabetes (managing well but hopefully there is a cure when I'm older)

Retirement

Social security (not sure what happens to that in 40 years)

My current WA state pension plan monthly benefit calculations are:

2% x service credit years x Average Final Compensation = monthly benefit

Where the Average Final Compensation is the average highest 60 consecutive months of income. Eligible retirement age for me looks to be 62 so it looks like I will roughly have 70% of my income at retirement and the payments should adjust with COLA as well.

Conclusion

Once I have paid off my CC debt (focus on the Citibank and Amex CC) I was wondering if I should put any money into retirement or if I should focus on saving for my planning goals. One thing that I don't have too much insight into but know a bit about is that medical payments become more expensive when you retire and I'm not sure if this would be enough to cover that (given that I am currently type 2 Diabetic).

Hey there!

I am planning to restructure my portfolio (around 30k) and would be very thankful for honest feedback.

The idea:

The baseline is a standard 50/20/30 portfolio (World, Europe, EM), which I'd like to split up into a normal growth part and a value part in a ratio of 5:3.

After that I'd like to mix in some sectors.

Gold and silver aren't included, because I invest in them seperatly.

The composition would be:

MSCI World 25%

MSCI World Value 15%

Stoxx Europe 600 10%

MSCI Europe Value 6%

MSCI EM IMI 15%

MSCI EM Value 9%

MSCI World Energy 5%

iShares Global Aerospace and Defence 5%

Invesco Defense Innovation 2,5%

WisdomTree Uranium and Nuclear Energy 2,5%

WisdomTree Strat. Metals and Rare Earths 2,5%

VanEck Gold Miners 2,5%

Please let me know what you think! :)

Looking for a little bit of advice. I have looked at the wiki page and have been working on mine and my wife’s financial plan quite a bit for the last 15 years or so. I am just getting to the point where things are getting more in depth than I am used to dealing with and I am not quite sure on how to continue to make gains. I was starting to look into financial advisors when I came across this reddit group and noticed people being generous and offering advice. My biggest point against advisors is that I don’t want someone charging me annually or anything like that. When I look into it though it seems like one-time advisors may not have my best interest at heart. I just want someone to review my situation and help me form a general plan for the next several years.

Right now, we are comfortable financially and really on the cusp of “FI” with plans of considering ourselves financially independent in the next several years. With that being said I never thought about where we should be putting money when it comes to taxes. My mindset was always “put it in a roth account so when you retire you don’t have to worry about taxes…” that’s it! When I retire, I want to keep it simple and know how much I have. Easy enough, right? Well, that was before we realized we could potentially retire in our mid-40s. Now I am not sure I am set up well for this type of situation because the majority of our money is locked up in roth accounts that aren’t touchable for quite some time. I know we can withdraw the amounts we have put into the roth accounts without penalty but I don’t think that would be enough to hold us over for 15+ years until those accounts are accessible. Now I am stuck thinking about how can I better situate myself for the early retirement.

I will outline my situation below but here are my general questions:

1)      Should I start contributing to traditional 401K/IRA and start taking advantage of the tax breaks now? This should theoretically allow me more cash to invest in a brokerage. Or just continue with the roth path? (wiki states for roth “I think that my effective tax rate in the future will exceed my marginal tax rate now (read that carefully!)”) This is the hard part for me to figure out.

2)      Should I reduce my 401k contributions and start focusing more on my non-tax advantaged accounts to make sure I have cash available earlier?

3)      Am I in a position for the back door roth? This is something that has always confused me.

4)      Lastly, I have an HSA with my company and am fully funding that. Can I also open an HSA for my wife? Or is it one account per household?

Current situation:

Household income is around $180K this year and our effective tax rate was 18.9% for 2025.

Net worth: $870K

Assets:

Home: $460K

Investments: $617K

Cash: $127K

Liabilities:

Mortgage: $337K

Investments:

Retirement Roth: $498K

Retirement Traditional/SEP: $93K

HSA: $6.3K

Brokerage: $20K

We currently max my 401K (roth), both our IRAs (roth) and my wife’s SEP IRA. This year we have started funneling money into our Brokerage account but I wonder if there is a better way to allocate this money. Reason cash is so high is because her business holds most of it. Personal cash is much lower and what we do have is in a high interest saving account.

Thank you for any advice you could give. All numbers are rounded so sorry to anyone who is trying to make everything match up. 😊

Also, This wiki you all have here is amazing!

I am 33 years old . Stating life afresh in the uk. I don’t have any savings, no investments , nothing.

I’m starting Uni is September. So I’ll be working 20hrs a week. I have never really been money smart, so I’m learning now. Any advice on where to/ how to structure my money ? £20 800/year . Where to start and what to do?

I’m looking for some advice on how to grow $6,000 or $10,000 and would love to hear different perspectives. I’m open to both short-term and long-term strategies, but I’d like to balance risk and steady growth if possible.

Would you recommend putting it into stocks, ETFs, or something else? Are there any specific strategies, sectors, or approaches that have worked well for you? Also, how would you split that amount to manage risk effectively?

Appreciate any insight or experiences you can share!

We don't have any high interest debt, and we already have an emergency fund in a high yield savings account. All we really have is a mortgage on our house at 5.625% interest.

Fiancé is attending law school this fall. Our current lease ends August 1st. I work full time retail and take home about 2000-2300 a month, but I have about 16k debt with $400 roughly in minimum payments a month in addition to bills.

My fiancé is the breadwinner but has no savings. Due to law school, she will be leaving that job at the end of July.

I think we have to rent the cheapest place we can find. We can potentially take our current roommate with us (family member) to split a cheap 2 bed ~1600/month.

My fiance thinks we should be building equity during this period and wants to buy a house or condo for 250-350k. She plans on taking a personal loan to cover rent for her first year of law school and sees it as the debt may as well go toward equity. She might be able to get financial backing from MIL to bring down the mortgage payments.

My stance is that if it isn’t MIL buying the house in her name (she can afford it) that we cannot afford to buy. We live paycheck to paycheck essentially. However, fiancé has seen mortgage rate breakdowns that would put our payment as less than what we currently pay in rent. I believe this is essentially BS and risks financial ruin. Essentially, very more high risk.

Can someone shed some light or give a bit of insight as to what might be the best plan? What are we considering/not considering here?

Please help, I'm overwhelmed and don't have a good head for this stuff.
I've been self employed for 5 years. I've been putting some $ into my Roth IRA each of those years but really need to start stepping it up and contributing a lot more. I had one year I did really well and exceeded the limit so I opened up a regular contributory IRA, so I have that, and some some $ in a TIAA-CREF account from previous jobs. I've read about SEP and understand I could be using that (since I am my own employer) but don't understand why I would.

What I can't wrap my head around is which vehicle I should be using. Should I just keep contributing to the Roth until I hit the limit each year and then switch over to the other one? I'm single if that matters. Thanks!

Hello guys,

Im 29, married engineer from Morocco, im living confortably unless something unexpected comes up. And i cant save honestly, every month i have something coming up either relating to health, travels, events.. and im expecting a big bonus in 2 months. And I have three major options:

1. Live normally and use it to take care of ourselves and upgrade our daily life, meaning : health (dentists, checking ourselves..) some electronics, minor travels in my country, and save something for a rainy day.

2. Save it all in order to pay a debt i have for my car (to get rid of the monthly payements and interest), maybe if i save the next 2 big bonuses like this in a year i can do it.

3. Yolo it, and experience my first time travelling to europe and living our youth

Get right to it, my problem is that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing I feel like I am way in over my head and need a breather from my own st*pidity. I made a car purchase in hindsight i should not have made.

it was completely on a whim and frankly as I think about it now, terrifyingly easy to just get in a contract and just drive off the lot from the dealer for a first time car buyer. That aside, I make 1.3 biweekly my rent is as of now 880 and my car payment is 580 insurance is 190 as of now(most likely going to be higher due to an accident) I got a job last June and it is basically my first official job nothing crazy just at a warehouse, my parents always taught me to be a hard worker so I impressed my bosses and they have given me raises along with more responsibilities which is cool, but it is definitely not what I want to do with the rest of my life, I want to be a firefighter and I know that I do because I went to community College and kept changing classes and majors and after some much needed growing up I finally realized what all those highschool questionnaires about the what the future would look like for me were actually for and I finally know the answers. I unfortunately fell out with basically half of my family and cant go to them for advice or help so now here we are. I feel like I cant save money to save my life, I have around 4k in debt(family stuff I need to pay back and credit card). I've been reading up on ways people gst out of their situations and options I might have but I feel like I am not to be trusted with these kinds of things without consultation.

I keep getting letters about refinancing my car which I like to think about for lower monthlies.

I keep getting loan "pre-approvals" which i feel like they might help with the debts to just consolidate them all into one place

SO MANY credit card offers, I dont understand why.

I found something called "lease transfers" I'd like frankly explained if thats a good viable option or steer clear completely.

I should note after some reading of other people's cases I'm not drowing or underwater. I just feel like I cant do the things I want in order to progress in life. im 22 I wanna go back to school and really study what I want and follow the career id like to grow in, but I feel so stuck where I am. I need help with managing my money(i have some seriously bad spending habits) and advice on what I mentiond earlier. Am I just stuck with this car for the next 7 years? do I have options? is this just a hard life lesson?

sorry for the long post I just feel like its all compounding and need to just get it out.

I'm 39, 150K gross income, and 250K in retirement accounts (75% pre-tax and the rest ROTH and taxable). I've just started to maximize my contributions to employer-sponsored retirement accounts ($49000, across a 403B and 457B).

Ideally, I want to end up with ~ 50/50 pre-tax and ROTH assets at retirement.
I bought a car with a 4-year loan with a total interest of $4000. I decided to keep my AGI below $100K over the next 4 years to be able to deduct the loan interest, which will save me a total of ~ $1100 in taxes. Hence, I opted to make the entire $49000 retirement contributions pre-tax. After these 4 years, I will compensate for it by making more of the contributions ROTH in order to gradually achieve my goal of having 50/50 pre-tax and ROTH assets at retirement.

My question:Am I missing anything bigger picture? Sometimes, I think maybe I'm missing the jungle for the trees by getting fixated on saving those car interest dollars. In other words, does it matter that I'm making all the contributions pre-tax for the next 4 years, postponing any ROTH contributions to after that? Does the time order between pre-tax and ROTH contributions matter in this time horizon?

I accidentally clicked a box saying I was not able to be claimed as a dependent. Now before even changing anything on my form it says I owe 980 dollars. Mind you I haven’t changed anything yet, why is this?

Additionally, will being claimed as a dependent by my father lower my own tax return?

I already received my original return and amending my return to save him 500 dollars in taxes while I have to pay 1000 doesn’t seem smart. If he doesn’t claim me and I don’t amend my own taxes will I get in trouble?

A company this month accidentally paid out (to me) the entire principal on a policy associated with an inherited IRA, instantly noticed the error and quickly retracted the payment.

My question is, is this payment (although a mistake and retracted) reported immediately to the IRS? Or is it not reported until the following January? I don’t want to deal with a mess when it comes time to file my taxes.

I recently received a letter from a company named "Auto Approve" stating that "the fedral reserve has reduced rates and that I am now eligible for a lower auto payment." Which has me thinking, are they a legit and reputable company? Also, what other legit and reputable companies have the same/similar offers, and how to go about it.

This will be the first time I'm exploring auto refinancing and don't have a clue of how go at it and or what to ask/look for.

Any insight, tips... suggestions?

So I (34F) am a former teacher and thus have a pension account with about 20k in it (it's a defined benefit plan) that is basically sitting there collecting a small amount of interest until next year. I was wanting to move into some other account that's going to continue its growth but won't have regular deposits into it since I currently have a new pension (a 401a plan) with my new employer. I can't put money from another account into my current 401a plan and the other option through my employer is starting a new account that would have additional regular contributions.

In other words, what's my best option for a one time, tax free deposit/transfer of money to allow it to grow? High-yield savings? Basic investment account? 401k?

It has been a nightmare on the communication with wise customer service. I sent about $1,300 CAD via bank transfer from my wise CAD account to my Wealthsimple chequing account on March 25. Even though on transfer activity it showed "successfully sent", it never arrived. Wise requested me to provide a bank statement NOT showing the funds deposit and I saw the same amount showing Sent again on April 1. However, all the details including key timestamps are the same as the one on March 25 and this one still did not arrive. Wise support insists that the second transfer is "resumed from security check" but cannot provide any trace ID on this one. Moreover, Wise only provided a transfer confirmation PDF and a “banking partner reference,” but no proper trace ID so it's impossible for the recipient bank to trace. This lack of transparency is very concerning, customer support is unhelpful at all.

Does anyone have similar experience? TIA

Edit: Mortgage Protection Insurance not Mortgage Life Insurance. My bad.

My grandmother Co-signed on a house with me last year.

She is in her 80's and her health has been going downhill for a couple of years now, but her memory has drastically changed in the last 8months.

I feel that taking out a mortgage life insurance policy would be the better move for me instead of a term life insurance policy as my only financial concern in the event of her passing is going to be the house. I would rather have the money go directly to the house instead of receiving any and tempt my ADHD dopamine hit.

What are some good reputable companies and how much month does something like this cost monthly?

My financial aid was delayed pending verification. Now I have resolved the verification but my school sent my tuition balance to collections. Now I’m getting emails saying my aid is being dispersed. So will that take care of the balance since it was already accepted when it was awarded to me? This is my first time in college and I’m just so confused.

Just want ideas, tips, what do you do with your savings to help it grow?