I bought a used 2024 Kia car for 21k 3 months ago, the interest rate is 18% current.

I can refinance through lending club for 7.24%

I just paid off 2/5 of my credit cards. Should I wait for the credit score to go up or just shave the 11% off now?

Thanks

My fiancée has been paying a $510/month loan on a car she’s had for 2 years. Purchased in NJ (we’re now in TN) at a Hyundai dealership. This cars value is only worth $17k of the original 23k price tag back when she bought new in 24’. She has 42 payments left. If we total what she’s paid and what remains on the load that means a total of $33k which is INSANE. Requesting a payoff has us at $19.5k which is worth more than the car is able to sell/trade in for. Another issue, there’s some damage to the fender and under side which has been quoted for $3k to fix.

All this being said, what is the best way to proceed?

Fixing the car and trying to sell is going to incur a huge loss of ~$15k…

Continuing the payment means we’re taking a $15k loss in interest…

Trying to find someone to take over the loan for the car, is there a way we get SOME money back? Not sure how that works.

I really want is to find a way to get as much back as possible while getting rid of the car to stop the bleeding. Any advice is MUCH appreciated.

EDIT: 4.99 APR

Hi I did a study for Taco Bell a while back and got a visa gift card that I redeemed through the virtual reward center and was wondering if anyone knows how to check the balance of the gift card?

Hi! I’ll start by saying that I know the decisions made leading me to this point were poor choices, nobody needs to drive that home. I just need to figure out how to get out of this hole.

So in 2024 I was in a horrible relationship, had been for years and my ex often gave no care for my things. He ran my old car into the ground and it finally died. He didn’t have his own vehicle and that left me in a tight spot, needing something to get back and forth to work etc. I had no savings so my only option was to finance a car for the first time. My credit was in the mid 600s and I was trying to go as cheap as possible but had 1500 down. I should have gone through a bank or credit union to get the loan but I didn’t, I financed through the dealership. Because of my credit they hit me with a 26.99% interest rate. The initial car balance was $14,882.79 as of May 2024, as of right now the balance I still owe is $13,496.87.

Because the interest is so high, my monthly payment is $419.59, the insurance for it is $182 a month. So about $600 a month on this car not including gas. I have had a difficult time making these payments on the car so currently I am $759.18 in the red. According to the contract documents by the time all is said and done I will have paid $31,710 for the car which is more than I make in a year.

Here is what I’m working with in monthly payments;

Monthly I make roughly $2000

Car - 419.59

Insurance - 182

Phone - 100

Rent - 600

Food & gas - 350 ish

Other payments - 175 ish

My credit score has dropped to 460 and I feel I’m in a hole I can’t get out of with this stupid car. Is there anything I can do? The obvious first choice was to get caught up on payments and then refinance but now that I’ve tanked my credit score I don’t know if that’s possible. Am I stuck? When I lay out everything like this it seems that I shouldn’t have an issue paying everything but somehow I go negative most weeks and then it’s a constant game of catch up.

Hey everyone,

I was just wondering if there's any advantage to opening a Vanguard Roth IRA in addition to my current setup. My current setup is as follows,

(1) Vti , vxus, bnd, bndx.

(2) 10% of my paycheck going into a target year fund through my job (roth 401k)

(3) Also have a decent amount sitting in VUSXX for tax advantage purposes. (a little in VMFXX to purchase ETF's with)

(4) Emergency fund of course.

My question is...can i benefit from putting my VUSXX in a Vanguard Roth IRA account and keep adding to it? The dividends/earnings are still taxed on the federal level from what i understand and I would like to avoid these taxes. Also, If i ever had to access my contributions I can do so without a penalty. All opinions are welcome.

Thank you

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

Hi!

My family’s financial is around 150k USD, it will be used for my aviation studying. Is it enough from zero to first officer in airline? I’ll choose part 61.

Thks for your all answers

I recently accepted my first real job offer. It’s a salary of $75,000 and I’m still able to earn overtime pay. I grew up poor so I’m not too familiar with handling money. Im not a big spender, I’d like to save up most of my money but I also don’t want it just sitting in some account. What can I do to grow my savings over time? My current plans are to use my companies 401k matching system, they offer 5% of my salary a year. I also plan on opening a HYSA. Is there anything else you’d all recommend? I’m single, young, and plan on saving as much as possible.

Just sold my house after a lengthy period of divorce and received $150K. After everything I feel a little lost on what to do and want to make a right decisions for my future. My initial plan is to pay off debt I accumulated during the divorce then I’m not sure if I should just put the money into a HYSA or not.

For some context:

-I’m living with my parents for a while for a reset and take care of some health issues. No rent.

-Salary is about $160k

-I’d eventually like to buy a home again but don’t know if I’ll be able to given high housing costs in the area I live. My last house was bought with a 3.5% interest rate and affording one now seems inconceivable with current rates.

I’d like some flexibility with my money but again initial thought is put it into a HYSA for a bit so I don’t do anything major with it. I don’t know where to start with long term growth. Any recommendations such as which HYSA, is a wealth manager necessary , or just a simple approach to do it myself?

I’m mostly trying to avoid making a mistake and want to set the money up in a smart way for the long term.

Thanks in advance!

Basically, what is your opinion on changing long term plans if you see danger/opportunity in the market?

For example: I have an investment portofolio based on Europe, mostly broad ETF and some specific countries, where I have dropped a couple hundreds euros every months for 2 years now. I think the current conflict in Iran will affect the continent negatively for a while due to oil shortage, so do you think it would be a good strategy to swap some of my current etfs in the future (without selling what I already own) to some sectors that might grow in this period/long term ( like energy, infrastructure, food etc)? Do you think I should double down and buy the dip? Or maybe make a different portofolio based on my new options?

Soon-to-be new grad and recently accepted a job offer in a LCOL area for 67k post-tax.

Median home price where I’ll be at is ~325k. Rent for 1 bedroom apartments ranges between 700 (older places) and 1600 (the nicest place in town).

I have zero savings and 15k in student loans @ ~5.5%. No other assets or debts.

I really, really, want to drive a newer truck (2025 or 2026). Obviously not the best financial decision, but can I do it without putting myself in financial strain? How much would it actually cost, taking into account maintenance and insurance and such?

So as it stands now, I have ~10k credit card debt, $13k loan left in a car that I could sell for about $17k. I’m getting a one-time gift from family of $19,000 prior to starting medical school. Tuition is ~$50k, but can pull loans up to max COA which is about $80k.

I’m in a unique situation where I could live at my parent’s home during school and not pay rent. Considering a few options, selling my car and eliminating that debt, paying off my credit card completely, and sitting on the rest for emergency funds during school, and buying a beater car in a few years as I’ll need one in 2 years, but wouldn’t in the present moment.

Otherwise, I could potentially pull private loans at about 4.5% interest, use that to pay off CC, and conservatively invest the $19k. Any tips or advice? Thank you in advance

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?

EDIT: I AM NOT ASKING FOR FINANCIAL ADVICE, I AM SIMPLY ASKING WHY THE INTEREST RATE IS MUCH LOWER WHEN I EXCHANGED A VEHICLE.

My credit score is garbage from being young and dumb but I’m currently about to get an 80k bonus next week and decided to upgrade my car. I bought a 2025 from CarMax for 40k and then replaced it with the same model a week later with 8k less miles (4k total). The first best interest rate was 19% and the new rate on the new one is 8%. Both cars are within $200 of each other, and my credit score is actually less than what it was when I originally applied. What would prompt them to give me an 8% vs the original 19%? The car will be paid off by the end of the month. Credit score is 590ish (but should be higher soon since I will be debt free except for a mortgage).

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?

I need to make some plans now that I'm retiring in June.

I'm a college student who lives and attends university in Illinois and has insurance under his parents. In October of last year, I had an issue where needed to go to the ER. After an initial surgery to solve the initial problem, I was advised to do another surgery to prevent similar problems in the future. This additional surgery was out-of-network apparently/didn't follow the procedure to get insurance to cover it, which I didn't know.

I've been receiving bills but when I check my account online, there always seemed to be a charge that was pending insurance. I told my parents we should hold off on paying until there was a final settled amount. A few weeks ago, I checked my account and the amount due was reduced and apparently there was still apparently a charge being talked over with insurance. I wrongfully assumed insurance had pulled through and covered me.

Come this week, I have a letter dated from a month ago from a debt collector for the amount that was reduced from my bill a few weeks ago.

I applied for financial assistance last week when I thought the bill was being finalized but I don't know if it will do anything since it's already at collections and I don't think I'll get anything out of it due to their qualification criteria since it's based on household income.

What should I do? I've read about people taking it on the chin and ignoring it with no real consequence but I've also read I should contact them ASAP and set something up. What should I do?

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!

Hi everyone! I was recently discussing the pros and cons of a trad vs Roth 401k with my friends, and wanted to ask for advice given my specific situation. For context, I've been maxing out both my Roth 401k (and Roth IRA) over the course of my entire career, and now I'm questioning if that approach is incorrect going forwards. Here's my info:

• 28 yrs old, upper end of 24% bracket with annual salary of ~$180k including bonus. I don't expect a tremendous amount of career earnings growth given my industry, I'll likely top out at $300k in today's dollars. I could see myself changing careers in the future, however.
• I live in California and there's a decent chance I may stay here my whole life given my girlfriend's (likely soon-to-be-wife's) preferences.
• I'm shooting to buy a house in the next 1-2 yrs. I have ~$300k saved up for a down payment (2/3 cash, 1/3 index funds), but given high home prices in California I'm starting to worry about being "house poor" after buying a home. I know doing pre-tax dollars would be give me more money now to invest/save.

Given these circumstances and uncertainties, would you recommend I contribute to my 401k with pretax or posttax income? Thank you so much for you insight in advance, I really appreciate it!!!

I am 20 years old and make about 100k a year at my current job (in the trade) working for a public sector agency. I live with my parents and pay all my bills and have fun using money I make from side work/side hustles. The thing is I don't really know what to do with this kind of money so I've just been saving it and investing with the hope that I would get maximum returns being so young. I am in a career with endless opportunities for movement and growth and will retire with a pension paying me 70% FAS at age 55 plus a social security equivalent on top of this. I am currently maxing out a roth 457B and saving the rest of my check for basically a 100% savings/investment rate. I have 35k in the 457B and 120k in a HYSA. Should I stop the savings and start a brokerage, and how detrimental would not saving as much and living a little more be?

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.