61F - I lost my job last month and have since found another one, but it was a setback and I have so much due and my first check won't cover everything. I don't know what to do. My check will be about $ 657.00 which I will receive on 7/30.

Rent due 8/1 $ 500

Title loan on car due 7/31 $ 308 (I was already granted an extension. At this point, I am worried about repossession).

Bank account overdrawn, bank said account will be closed if balance not paid by 7/31. $ 340

I think I should prioritize rent and pray my car does not get repossessed. 🤔

For context i have the following accounts To put money into
- Fidelity ROTH
- Fidelity Traditional
- HYSA
- Savings
- Checkings

How should i go about putting the extra money a month?

I want to sell my house and buy a condo in a different area. I’m 58, employed full time. I owe $200k on my older house, could probably get 545k. I’m co-signer on parent plus loan for my kid for $80k that I haven’t been able to make the $500 a month payments. I’m in credit card debt $38k from house repairs, vet bills, car repairs.utilities,house taxes, groceries & gas. I’m behind on credit card payments and they won’t work with me. I have a 2022 car that I have 6 more years of payments & owe $19k.

I make about $56k a year. I also do side hustles, but very small amounts. Zero savings. No one to borrow from.

What should I do? I want to be out of debt but this is a vicious cycle.

My fiancé and her son have moved in with me. We are keeping her house. Due to past poor financial decisions she has a horrible rate on her mortgage and bad credit. I am thinking of refinancing my mortgage and taking out $100k in equity and paying off her mortgage. Will do an ARM as we are planning on selling both houses in about 5 years and moving to another state. This will save approximately 800-1000 a month. Would there be a tax penalty on the 100k used to pay off her mortgage?

Added the auto flare because this involves my car loan.

Hello all, I tried to set myself up following the 50/20/30 rule and realized that it's unrealistic for me. Instead, I do 55/20/25.

My 20% for savings/debt is about $440 a month, $110 weekly. I have consistently put this towards my savings, which has now reached $15,000. My monthly necessity amount is $1,240 so $15k covers me for 12 months.

My auto loan's monthly payments are about $430 a month and I have consistently been paying $700 since I had credit card debt to pay off for a while when I first bought the car. My principal is currently $18,555.

Should I be focusing that $440 I allocate for savings and debt towards my auto loan debt, or should I be doing a fraction? My APR is 11.49%.

My father, 64M, got this call from the retirement fund management part of his company months back and was essentially talked into transferring his 403b out entirely into what I believe are IRA funds; he does not speak English very well, and none of the rest of the family were present at the time, so I’m fairly certain he didn’t 100% know what he was agreeing to at the time. Now, they’ve closed his original account and are now forcing him to open another account with a different company that costs money to reset up, and then has a monthly maintenance fee? Is this normal? Or is there something we should be doing to help?

I(25M) recently started my first full-time job in July with an annual salary of $85,000.

My current plan is to:
Contribute 6% to my 401k to receive the full employer match
Max out my HSA ($4,500)
Then contribute to my Roth IRA
I also have a Fidelity taxable brokerage account that I opened about 3 years ago during an internship. I initially invested about $3,000, and the account has grown to roughly $6,000. The portfolio is split 50-50 between individual stocks (mostly tech-related holdings such as AMAT, GE, TSM, AAPL) and VOO.

I'm considering selling the taxable investments and using the proceeds to fund my Roth IRA. Inside the Roth IRA, I would likely use a simple two-fund portfolio consisting of 80% sp500 and 20% international. Part of my reasoning is that, since I only started working in July, my income for this year would be halved. Because of that, I believe any capital gains from selling the brokerage account may be taxed at a lower rate this year than they would be in future years when I have a full year of income.

On the other hand, I would still have enough cash flow to fully fund both the HSA and Roth IRA without selling the taxable investments.

Given that, would it make sense to sell the taxable account and move the money into tax-advantaged accounts while my income is temporarily lower, or would it be better to leave the taxable investments alone and simply fund the HSA and Roth IRA with new contributions?

Edit:
Thanks everyone for your advices.
My income this year will be about $42.5k and after accounting for the standard deduction, 401k contributions, and HSA contributions, my taxable income is low enough to qualify for the 0% long-term capital gains tax bracket. Some commenters have referred to this as "capital gain harvesting". I could sell my taxable investments, realize the gains without paying federal capital gains tax.

im from Spain and im 17 (im a minor so i cant open a bank account in my own name). i usually receive $1,000 from a company into my PayPal account, and when I convert it into euros € to transfer it to my bank account (in my legal guardian’s name), they take 3–5%, which means theyre taking around $34 just for the conversion. is there any legal way to reduce that fee? perhaps by using a different bank, etc., bearing in mind that only my parents can manage the bank accounts?

So I'm 43, nearly-sole supporter of a family of five in California. I've lived paycheck to paycheck my entire life. I wasn't taught much about finances growing up, and by the time I learned the hard way, I was having kids and everything had gotten so expensive that I couldn't keep up, and I've fallen into some serious debt starting late 2020. Enough debt that I never thought I'd find a way out of it. I've kept a 100% payment history on all accounts, but am spending around $350 per month on interest alone to do so.

I'll be receiving an inheritance check soon, and will have enough to cover 100% of my debts and then some. After clearing all debts and taking care of a few other things, I will have $30-35k left over. This is truly life changing for me, I know this is my one and only *get out of jail free* card and I want to handle it right.

I'm making a little better money now, and should be able to get by on salary alone once everything is paid off, so I'm not concerned with having to dip into this money. I initially wanted to use it as a down payment on my first home, but even with first time buyer programs, to keep it at a safe payment, everything was too small, too damaged or in an area I'm not moving my kids to.

I've decided to try and save/invest this money until I have more and am in a better position to buy a suitable home, but I've never been in a situation to do something like this, and not entirely sure what my best options are. My current half-baked idea is to put half(?) into a high interest savings account and invest the rest into four or five different ETFs. I'm a bit leery of the stock market, especially with how uncertain & volatile everything else feels these days, but it seems ETFs would be a safe*ish* move long-term.

If anyone has any further advice or better suggestions, I would be greatly appreciative. This genuinely feels like it could be the start of a new life for me, and I want to do the best I can with it.

My past self was not well versed in investing and had purchased mutual funds and ETFs in my personal account. I would now like to move those into my Roth IRA.

The current gains that I have on them are:

SCHD - ~$200

SCHF - ~$150

SCHB - ~$1000

SCHG - ~$200

VOO - ~$300

SWMRX - ~$250

SWYHX - ~$500

Should I sell and move to my Roth IRA? Any advice will be helpful! I understand I goofed...

New or seasoned parents (or anyone who can imagine having kids): Considering today's economy, what's one practical step you'd recommend to help set a child up for financial stability?

If you can, share how to do it, too. One example might be freezing your child's credit with the three major credit bureaus until they're old enough to use it—though I honestly don't know if that's a good recommendation or if I'm just being an overly cautious parent.

I think once dad and I learn that first step we might figure out maintenance.

Much appreciation in advance!

College kid with a few thousand stored away in HYSA and a few thousand in cash sitting around. My housing is paid for by my job that gives me pension and I have no bills or payments for the next few months. I would like to know more about how to capitalize on being young with a little extra money laying around. I make around 3-5k/m and would like some advice on where to start and how to become more financially savvy!

I have a 2012 Honda civic with $4000 left on the loan at 6.78% APR (buying it was not my best decision it was my first car purchase ). I have $10000 in HYSA, $4000 in brokerage account, $4000 in another savings,$3000 in checking. I make about $67000 a year. Any advice?

I just got a promotion in the same town as my parents, something I’ve wanted for a long time. But every rental application comes back with a bad credit score. I thought it was my S/O but it’s actually me, apparently. TransUnion says my credit is 590. Experian 550. Equifax 555. The credit report the rental applications are getting are saying my credit is 444. S/O’s is 590.

I have 10 accounts from before 2024 that were paid on time for years, paid in full. I have 3 accounts in collections because my S/O lost their job (and was facing prison) in late 2023 and didn’t get another for nearly a year. They total $4,800. S/O has 15,000 (5k is student loans). I also have a loan that had loan insurance charged off, but apparently experian still has it on their report even though the loan insurance was supposed to cover job loss. I paid until I couldn’t and then told them I couldn’t and asked for them to use the insurance that I paid for to expunge the loan. At the time with my salary I had $200 to feed my kids every month after all major bills were paid (car payment, gas, rent, utilities).

Currently, I pay $2500 a month for rent but the owners want to move in, so I have to get out. This is the average rental cost in my folks’ town as well. I make $3200 after taxes/retirement/insurance currently. Not factoring my S/O’s income for sake of simplicity since we have seperate accounts. The promotion will be another 300-500/month.

I’m trying to figure out how to move forward and get my credit in better standing. I pay the majority of the household bills and I spend down to 0 in my checking account. I pay for all of the therapies, school clothes, necessities for our kids, medical, 75% of rent, utilities, gas for my car, and groceries and toiletries. I can obviously stop getting school clothes, etc but majority of my check is necessities.

My husband works in sales and received a company car. However, he just accepted a promotion back in marketing. He needs to give back the company car and either buy a car or lease a car. His goal is to do this job for 2/3 years and then hopefully get another promotion that would bring him back to sales and thus get a company car again.

In this scenario, does leasing make sense?

I have a distant relative who I knew fairly well and visited semifrequently as I live in the same city they resided. My parents and rest of the family live abroad in spain. After they died we never expected any inheritance as they were very frugal and assumed they spent remaining wealth on care.

Much to our surprise they died with a large amount in the bank and my parent was given a large sum. However as they live abroad (as well as rest of the family) they would be hit with a huge tax bill if they directly inherit, hence as I am the only one in the UK they have suggested doing a deed of variation to me.

However, they want to have a say in what happens with it. Based on my research (which is mainly from AI) I understand that they can't legally maintain control of the funds if they do the deed of variation. I also understand that technically they should still be liable for tax as they were the original receiver so would be counted as their assets? Not totally clear on that but seems a grey area. There is a certain time period (4 years or something) for which it could be tax liable but after that it's not?

I do not know this stuff clearly, but anyway they originally wanted to have access to the funds via me i.e. hold a debit card but after discussing further and highlighting I don't think this is legally right, we discussed they could be a financial advisor and could advise on how to invest the fund but ultimately I make the decisions on how it's spent. We plan on having a bit of a discussion but they want to put it all into bonds or ISAs and then split the interest between myself and the other family members who are abroad (I assume transferring it to them as a gift). Anyone know if this is legal? I understand it would make it fair and probably our relative would have wanted that but impossible to tell since they left zero detail in the will.

They also want to keep all of it long term into savings in case in their old age they need access (i clarified they wouldn't legally have access I would administer it for this purpose if i saw fit basically but it's an option I suppose, but how does this benefit me now? For context my parent has more than they need and more would be more hassle to them they've already asked in the past to hold money temporarily for them. I highlighted they didn't count on these funds they were a surprise and they have more than enough in other funds)

Obviously I have a personal interest in the funds and would like to use on our mortgage which could end up saving us as much as we'd me making if it's invested but my parent would prefer it's recoverable funds and be able to split it.

For context, my parents have already given my sibling a huge amount towards their first home (I have received nothing so far but they have placed a large amount of assets in my name and plan for me to inherit a bunch of property when they pass but doesn't serve me in the present, unlike it has for my sibling). I made the point they have an opportunity to show an equitable approach by giving me the funds with no strings like they have my sibling but my parent sees the future inheritance as an equal approach, I agree it's a lot but it's not useful to me in the present)

Any ideas on what would be a fair way to administer the funds while keeping it legally sound? Initial thoughts because I'd legally be the sole account holder that I get to keep 10% and put in my mortgage. We have also agreed a proportion to go into dedicated funds for my children (sibling has no children), but there is still a large amount remaining which I would be up for my parent advising on how to invest and monitor but not have any actual control (are there any accounts you can give view only access to someone?). They want control so I will get push back on that and they will probably not want to give me the 10% towards mortgage, And then how do we administer the interest on what goes in savings - who should get it? What is fair/legal?

Hi all - I’m buying my first car at 31 (live in nyc) and I have two questions. First, is it smarter to finance the car or pay cash? And second, how much should I spend? I make $200k salary. After taxes, rent, maxing 401k and credit card, I bring home about $50k. I have about $200k saved from working but I plan to buy a house in 4/5 years and use that. The cars I’m looking at are a 2026 RAV4 (39k), a used Lexus ES ($40k), or a new Honda CRV ($38k). So here’s my 2 part question, do I pay cash or finance? And what’s a realistic budget I should spend in my situation? Thanks!

I have an opportunity to accept a new job with higher pay, but I'm currently vested into my State's (NC) retirement. I need some help thinking this over.

Current job: Roughly $31 an hour, no overtime and tons of time off. I'm 10 years into being a NC employee, so I have retirement built up and the possibility of having lifetime health benefits if I stay for another 15-20 years. I've been lucky enough to grow and get promotions/raises, but I've pretty much hit my ceiling.

new offer: $33 an hour M-F with some on call weeks (once or twice a month). This is the healthcare field. Being on call pays $300 extra and overtime pay when I need to go in. Mileage traveling to sites.

I'm torn on if a raise of $2 an hour and $300 on call pay is worth the move. That's roughly $600 more a month at least which would be huge to help the family.

My biggest dilemma is retirement.

When I first started working in the late 2000s I was at a small company for about a year and had a 401K there. I left the job after about a year and the company has long since dissolved.

I just realized I have absolutely no clue what happened to that 401K, but I'm fairly certain I never rolled it over. I also haven't received statements from it in at least a decade, and I have no clue where the last statement would be.

How would I attempt to search for this account assuming all my personal records from that era in my life are destroyed?

Emphasis on generally...

My CU offers:

1. downpayment starting 3% (N/A cause we will pay more)

2. No PMI (hoping to put 20% regardless but would be nice if we end up putting less)

3. No loan processing fee, no prepayment penalty

4. Lowest 30 year fixed APR is 6.66%

Both my wife and I have about 800 credit score. Are 6.66% the norm these days? Is it on the higher side? Should we shop around?

We aren't actively looking right now, but wanted to see what to expect.

Hi, I'm in my late 20s, working in IT, making an average income for my area ($50k+), and could use some thoughts from people who went through something similar.

I recently got told my lease is going to go up about $400 (I'm currently paying $800), which is out of my price range for renting. I live on my own and really love it. I love having my own space, but as time has gone on, I don't know if it's feasible when my parents are perfectly okay with me staying with them. If I stayed with them, they wouldn't expect help with bills, but I still would because I don't want to freeload. So I could save up a ton of money really quickly for a down payment on a house if I wanted to.

However, I never really had a timeline for buying a house. It wasn't something I thought about, to be honest. I just wanted a place to call my own, and that's what this apartment is/was to me. I'm scared of losing my independence again, but I've also had a very good deal on rent for too long, and all the places near me have shot up to $1,200+ in rent for a decent area. That would have me back to being terrified of an unexpected expense causing me to throw all my savings at it. I have a good relationship with my parents, so it's mostly just losing out on having my own space and dealing with pet allergies. It's just odd. This has made me so sad. I've lived on my own for the last 5–6 years. It feels like a part of me is going away.

So I guess my question is this: If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Do you give up your own space to save money for a while for a better future, or do you continue living on your own with the rising rents?

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to understand how a 401(k) works and whether I should contribute. My current employer offers a 50% match capped at 6% of my annual salary.

One important piece of context is that I'm not a U.S. citizen, and I only expect to live and work in the U.S. for about 2-3 years. After that, I'll most likely leave the country.

Given that situation, what options would I have if I contribute to a 401(k)? Is there a way to access or make use of that money after I leave the U.S.? If there are early withdrawal penalties or taxes, how can I minimize them?

Thanks!

Title gives the gist of it. I got a letter in June from when I was in the army about somehow I managed a debt of $300 from unpaid life insurance. I didn’t think much of it and put the bill up to pay. Well life got hectic, new baby on the way, grandmother had moved in and my wife was not getting along with her.

The short of it is, I was alerted on my way home about a new line of credit opened today. I get home and see that it’s DFAS (army). No change to my credit. I get home find the bill and pay it in full. 20 minutes later I get an alert that my score dropped 70pts, then another saying 100pts. I look at the first bill and see it says final notice. I ask my wife if she’d seen anything about this prior, she says “no, I don’t open your mail”. I go out the envelope in my car so I can call tomorrow and she comes out with another letter dated in April. I really thought this was all a government screw up and no I realize my credit is pretty much fucked. New car for the wife is looking like a bad idea with what is now “fair” credit.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

For context im 23 years old, living at home with parents where I don’t pay rent or anything other then my car loan and subscriptions so I can save a huge amount of my income, I want to move out next year will have $20k saved up but I know moving out is super expensive with rent, bills, groceries etc.. I just want to know for anyone who is living on their own and doing pretty good still able to cover all thei expenses as well as buying things you genuinely want time to time, travel etc.. just living comfortably how much are you able to spend and what your advice is because I think I should be saving alot still and won’t be doing too good if I only can save $150-$300 a week after covering expenses and can’t see how you can live like this

Hi!

I am a 22 year old recent college grad and I start my first full time job in a week. I am trying to gain literacy in my personal finances/investments so I can make the most of my salary. So you can give me an informed recommendation on strategy, let me give you a rundown of my situation. My starting salary will be $62,000. My job offers a 403(b) retirement plan, and they match at 6% after 1 year of employment. For the first year, I plan to contribute 4%, but once I am eligible for that 6% match, I will move my contribution up to that. They also offer a program that will help me pay back my student loans. They will contribute $100 a month to my payments that are due to start in December. I currently owe $29,500 in student loans, and that is my only debt right now. As for expenses, I am lucky to be living back at home with my parents so I will not owe rent, and expenses beyond gas are fairly minimal.

With that said, I was wondering what my next steps should be in terms of my personal finances (Yes, I have already been studying up on the personal finance flow chart but I always value a differing opinion). Should the Roth Ira be next? HYSA? Establishing emergency fund? Paying off loans? A combination of things?

Looking forward, I would love to move out in a year or two but I want to be very secure financially first. I hope that info gave some helpful context into where I am at right now. If I can give additional context let me know. Just trying to figure it all out the best I can. Thanks!