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The Finances and Debt Thread

Do Not Sell My Personal Information
YNAB is another good one, but the manual stuff isn't for me. Can definitely see how it makes you be more conscious of your spending though.

Don't misinterpret what has been said, paying off your student loans early is a GREAT thing. Gouri and Jigo's advice have been purely from a credit score standpoint. Saving thousands of dollars in interest heavily outweighs a few points on your credit score. I'm 24 and have a credit score of 750 and have never tried to get fancy with my score. Although there is a thing or two I would have done different (ex. keeping a card open), its nowhere near the extent that has been discussed. A good credit score is a by-product of good financial health.

My current strategy is to look at my budget, look for anywhere I can cut down (i've already done this pretty extensively). Yesterday my promotion ended for TWC extreme internet. I called and in 10 minutes dropped it to turbo internet and saved myself $10/month. Now I know it isn't jack shit really, but why pay it if I don't need it? If it affects my internet experience, I'll just go back to it. I take 25% of my leftover income and put it towards a "fun" account (works out to about 10% of my after tax income as well), 25% towards a savings account for house, and 50% towards paying down extra on my highest interest student loan.
I'm 31 currently, and wish I would have done more when I was younger. I was never in bad financial health really (thankfully in part to picking a field with good occupations IMO), as I never paid interest on any of my debt aside from student loans (and then my house when I bought that). But I never took the time to actually budget as I could have a lot more saved up (outside my 401k) or be completely out of my student loans (the ones left aren't bad, since they're consolidated, and mostly an annoyance at this point).

I have a similar internet issue, in that I've been out of my promotion and could double my speed for $10 more than I currently pay, but do I really need the extra speed? Why not just save the $10. I could probably reduce my speed down too, but I really don't want to. :chuckle:
 
Saving thousands of dollars in interest heavily outweighs a few points on your credit score.

No doubt.

The idea isn't to have a bunch of debt. It's to have a bunch of credit available to you that you're not using and when you do have debt, to avoid slow paying or charge-offs.

This brings up another point...for people looking to build their credit:

If you're in a bind and you had to pick one bill to pay and one bill not to pay...pay your installment debt (cars, mortgages) before you pay other bills that won't immediately leave you without something you need ie water, electricity, etc. My underwriters can't see if you had a late pay on your phone bill, internet bill, hospital bill, etc. But if you late pay on your car, mortgage or student loans...it's right in front of us. We can see how many times you late paid, how long it took you to pay and how recently it happened. We don't see the late pay on your services unless they turn into collections or judgments.

I've found that student loans paid on time will boost credit significantly for people that otherwise have limited credit. We still won't approve some startup businesses owned by great student loan payers if, for example, they've only had one $1,500 credit card that they've paid on. Especially if the student loans had a co-signer, which raises the question of whether they had help paying them. And if they've never had a mortgage or a car loan/lease...even more challenging.

So you're right that paying off student loans is advantageous. But once those are paid off, it would make sense to get some credit cards and not use them.

It would make sense to get the credit cards well in advance of that even, if you're responsible.
 
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So I'm looking to add additional revenue streams to my current salary. Anyone have experience copy writing or self publishing ebooks? Any books/articles you'd recommend on these?

Thanks!
 
There's good advice in this thread... The only thing that I see consistently from otherwise smart people is not understanding some options that they have to improve their balance sheets & income statements. In no particular order:
-Having a 70/30 allocation in some account where the 30% is in bond mutual funds that after fees yields maybe 2% and these people have other outstanding debt that costs them much more than that.
-Not realizing that you can borrow from your 401(k), not realizing why you would, what the pros/cons are.
-Contributing to a retirement account @ some high amount yet carrying any credit card debt. For that matter, the math usually says even with a 10% penalty, getting your debt gone is the play.
-Not realizing how/when you can take $ out of a Roth without penalty.

So essentially, we live in a time where rates are low when you save yet really high when you owe the wrong people. That disparity is ignored by some otherwise smart people.
 
So I'm looking to add additional revenue streams to my current salary. Anyone have experience copy writing or self publishing ebooks? Any books/articles you'd recommend on these?

Thanks!

A few years ago, self-publishing porn on Amazon was a money faucet. Not so sure if that's true today.
 
Realistically tell me how much I need for a down payment on a home.

Have 30 k right now, looking to buy in 18 months, save around 800-1000 a month.
 
Realistically tell me how much I need for a down payment on a home.

Have 30 k right now, looking to buy in 18 months, save around 800-1000 a month.

20% down. You have enough saved for a down payment on a $150k home.
 
Realistically tell me how much I need for a down payment on a home.

Have 30 k right now, looking to buy in 18 months, save around 800-1000 a month.

There's a lot of variables when it comes to this. Where are you looking to buy (neighborhood)? What can your income support on a monthly basis? How is your credit? etc.

Right now you have a down payment for a $150K house putting 20% down. You don't always have to put 20% down these days, but it is still recommended. If you have good credit you can get a rate around 3.5-4% on a 30 year mortgage and your payments will $550-$600 a month, not including taxes, insurance, etc.
 
There's a lot of variables when it comes to this. Where are you looking to buy (neighborhood)? What can your income support on a monthly basis? How is your credit? etc.

Right now you have a down payment for a $150K house putting 20% down. You don't always have to put 20% down these days, but it is still recommended. If you have good credit you can get a rate around 3.5-4% on a 30 year mortgage and your payments will $550-$600 a month, not including taxes, insurance, etc.


I live in Phoenix (@Lee help?), so the areas are kind of limited in terms of what 150k buys. If I can get up to 40, I can get something in a better part of town. Should have good credit? Always pay cards off, and never missed a payment on vehicle.

The issue is I make 2k a month take home, and more than likely going to end up renting a room to a friend to help offset that.
 
So just a little update...the mint app is awesome can see all of my finances including my investments I have through work. After this next payment coming up I'll have paid off $2k of my debt while still saving some money. No clue what the fuck I was doing before, being an idiot I suppose.

Thanks again for all the advice I got from everyone. Once I get shit paid off I'm thinking I'm going to talk to a financial advisor and start investing into more things. I'm sure I'll be back in here for more questions.
 
So I'm looking to add additional revenue streams to my current salary. Anyone have experience copy writing or self publishing ebooks? Any books/articles you'd recommend on these?

Thanks!
Uber/Lyft driver.
 
After watching that HBO guy buy 14m in debt for 60k, then forgive it all, it makes me want to buy some debt and forgive it.

RCF Debt Forgivers, LLC?
 
Here's a little bit of an update on my financial situation. I've started going in the right direction for my credit card debt. I'm either paying stuff off with cash/debit or putting it on a credit card that started off with no debt on it and paying off the statement balance each month so as to not get charged interest. I got that fucker who I had to take to small claims court to pay up after 10 months of dealing with him. And a tax refund helped too. I can also now claim as married for tax purposes, which allows me to keep about 5% more of my paychecks.

I'm tackling the two 24.24% interest cards first. My grandfather is selling his farm after 50 years, and my parents are transferring the mortgage loan under their own mortgage. I never asked my grandfather if I could use his loan for the rest of my debt (which is a moot point now), but I might see if my parents would be willing to at least take on my credit card debt and I'd start making payments onto their mortgage loan (which I'll be doing soon anyway). If they refuse, I might consider seeing if I could get my own loan. But I'd prefer it if they could take it on since that debt would no longer show up on my credit report. Then I would hopefully be able to refinance my car loan and get a lower interest rate on that.

I'm also considering starting to save for retirement since I haven't started on that yet. I just turned 27. My company I work for matches the first 3% 100% and the next 2% 50% for both a 401k and Roth IRA. Since I'm in a pretty low tax bracket right now and taxes could be much higher as the US inevitably becomes more socialist, I'm leaning towards going in at 5% of my income for the Roth IRA.

However, I'm not sure if this would be wise until I pay off my credit card debt since it's all ranging from 14.24%-24.24% interest. I guess I could look at it this way: this credit card debt I have incurs 14.24%-24.24% interest per year, but putting money into a Roth IRA with company matching effectively doubles that money for the first 3% and 1.5x it for the next 2%, and that doesn't include the interest. Would the company match plus interest gained on that money outweigh the extra interest incurred from not being able to pay down my credit card debt quite as fast?

Oh, and my wife also got a job. It's only part time, but it will become full-time in September. It's just been one thing after another in terms of costs of immigration for her (she's Canadian) to the US. Luckily, we will be done paying the lawyer by January 1st.

Fuck, being an adult sucks.
 
Here's a little bit of an update on my financial situation. I've started going in the right direction for my credit card debt. I'm either paying stuff off with cash/debit or putting it on a credit card that started off with no debt on it and paying off the statement balance each month so as to not get charged interest. I got that fucker who I had to take to small claims court to pay up after 10 months of dealing with him. And a tax refund helped too. I can also now claim as married for tax purposes, which allows me to keep about 5% more of my paychecks.

I'm tackling the two 24.24% interest cards first. My grandfather is selling his farm after 50 years, and my parents are transferring the mortgage loan under their own mortgage. I never asked my grandfather if I could use his loan for the rest of my debt (which is a moot point now), but I might see if my parents would be willing to at least take on my credit card debt and I'd start making payments onto their mortgage loan (which I'll be doing soon anyway). If they refuse, I might consider seeing if I could get my own loan. But I'd prefer it if they could take it on since that debt would no longer show up on my credit report. Then I would hopefully be able to refinance my car loan and get a lower interest rate on that.

I'm also considering starting to save for retirement since I haven't started on that yet. I just turned 27. My company I work for matches the first 3% 100% and the next 2% 50% for both a 401k and Roth IRA. Since I'm in a pretty low tax bracket right now and taxes could be much higher as the US inevitably becomes more socialist, I'm leaning towards going in at 5% of my income for the Roth IRA.

However, I'm not sure if this would be wise until I pay off my credit card debt since it's all ranging from 14.24%-24.24% interest. I guess I could look at it this way: this credit card debt I have incurs 14.24%-24.24% interest per year, but putting money into a Roth IRA with company matching effectively doubles that money for the first 3% and 1.5x it for the next 2%, and that doesn't include the interest. Would the company match plus interest gained on that money outweigh the extra interest incurred from not being able to pay down my credit card debt quite as fast?

Oh, and my wife also got a job. It's only part time, but it will become full-time in September. It's just been one thing after another in terms of costs of immigration for her (she's Canadian) to the US. Luckily, we will be done paying the lawyer by January 1st.

Fuck, being an adult sucks.

Hang in there. Just got my first real job at 26 almost 27. :chuckle: Got 25k in loans to pay off, thank god I only ever had one credit card with a measly 2k on it. Looks like it's time to join this thread.
 

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