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One of our children is not going to go to college. The other kids got $40k toward school from an older relative, but since he’s not going, we’re looking at options for these funds.

You could argue that college was the condition for the funds, but we’re not going that route. He’s not very responsible, so we’re not going to just give him the cash.

What are some good options for giving him this money? We aren’t transferring it to him until 2028.

Hello everyone,

I just recently received a 40k check from an 80k settlement.

I am 30 years old
I have 2 credit cards both with 22.5% apr.
I have 9k debt on card 1
11k debt on card 2

I have been paying about 1000$/m on card 1 and the minimum(370$)on card 2

I acquired the debts through medical emergencies and funeral costs.

No other debts

I was slowly paying off my cards while setting some aside for my emergency fund.

I plan to pay off the cards with the check but I am unsure what to do with the other 20k I’ll have left over. I have about 8k in my emergency fund which should last me about 4-6 months and maybe longer if I pay the cards off.

I don’t want to be in another financial situation where I am 20k in debt.

I make about 4k/m after taxes and my rent is 1000/m.

I don’t have a HYSA and I contribute 10% of my income to my Roth IRA and 401k with my employer doing a 50% match on 401k.

I have no plans on changing my living situation as it’s a pretty good deal considering I’m in San Francisco.

I was thinking maybe I should use my emergency fund to pay off my credit cards?

Beginning this year was when I started to become more frugal with my spending which is why I was able to save up 8k in 10 months. Btw this is 8k in cash that I have sitting in my drawer at home. I know this is bad practice but it helps me spend less.

Advice would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if I need to include some additional info. Thank you for your time.

I have a new house with 350k on the mortgage @ 6.5%. Sold my old house for about 250k so I'm probably going to just put that towards the new mortgage. Which leaves 100k left. I could easily pull that out of my individual brokerage and just live without a mortgage. But wondering if that's the optimal thing to do considering taxes/etc. I already max out a 401k and IRA and make less than 90k a year. I am going to do some math regarding taxes/etc but just curious what you would do in that situation? I think I might value not having a mortgage more than the average person considering I want to RE.

My wife (32) and I (31) are about to buy a house and we got pre-approved with an interest rate of 7.25%. My wife will be getting a new job and better pay when we move here soon. She’ll be making $109k/yr (she was making $85k). I’m a stay at home dad and I bring in $15k/yr with my side business. We max our Roths every year. Her new job matches 4% to start and then by year 15 it gets to 7%. We figured she would just immediately contribute 7% just so we don’t get comfortable with a lower percentage. However, with our mortgage rate should we focus on tackling that instead? We should be able to put at least $500/mo towards it but should we do more? Does she drop to 4% and gradually increase as the employer contribution increases?

My mom just died suddenly. I am 28 and live with my dad. My mom handled everything financially. I know a little about finance through YouTube and reading stuff here. I will have to handle all the financial stuff now. I make around 5-6k a month and my dad around 2k, but we live in a very hcol state. My mom is leaving me with about 200k in life insurance, $100k in investments, and a few thousand in cash/bank account. I would like to stretch that out as long as we can/ only use it for emergencies.

I have questions if anyone can help with any (please lmk if there is a better subreddit for some of these):

My mom passed with 5-10k in credit card debt. Will that have to be paid out using the insurance money? I seen varying answers online and in person.

I am talking to my financial advisor on Friday. Is there questions you guys recommend me asking him?

My mom and dad were joint owners of the home, would it be smart to use a good chunk of the payout to pay our house off?

I might be forgetting things or unaware of things I need to do after a head of household passes. Is there other things I need to take care of financially or etc.

After working hard for the past 4 years I’ve dug myself out of a 425 credit score and am in a good place. My most recent report, provided today, has me sitting at 784.

I currently have a couple quicksilver Capital one cards that I move between and pay off every month but aside from a small cashback reward they aren’t doing anything special.

Are there better cards out there that people are utilizing? I do not do a lot of traveling or going out to nice dinners so I do not think I would benefit from the lauded American Express gold.

And advice helps. TIA

Hi there!
Brand new to both Reddit and this topic! I did try to read over the wiki but came across the question about what to do if your 401k is basically a bad 401k, and I did not understand this. I get it must be because it doesn’t have nice options but how would I know this? I don’t believe I even have access to options in my company 401k, it just is invested however they have decided. Can you help me understand this a bit more? Thank you!

34 years old. Engaged to be married next year. I make 130k before tax - self employed for 1 year. I max out my tax advantaged accounts (my first year able to max out both). Fully funded emergency fund. I have an extra 70k sitting in a HYSA.

We want to move in about 3 years. No exact timeline.

Should I buy a house or just invest the 70k?

Current rent before utilities is $2300/month.

Bank statement mortgage loans for 1 year of self employment want 20% down.

I feel like I know the answer but just want different perspectives.

Thank you!

The internet rates that I am seeing are in the 10%+ range. Why would anyone use this? I ask as i would like to obtain a collector car and am exploring options.

I'm currently 44, my wife (45) and I are going to make approximately combined 275k gross this year. We live off a budget of about 68,000 per year. That includes a vacation budget of 15,000 per year. We're cheap, but not miserable.

We have a child with an established fully funded 529 for college that starts next year.

We have zero debt of any kind - cars and house are paid off - credit cards etc are all paid in full every month.

We have 1.2 million in 401k, and IRS maxing every year at the limit (plus company match).

We currently put 2500 per pay into a brokerage that is just S&P500 index fund.

Current balance is about 300k

We keep a savings account of 5-10k available, and move money to the brokerage when it gets over 10k, to drop it back down to 5k. I also get a bonus every year that goes into the brokerage (unless we have a house project or big vacation, etc). Last year it was about 20k extra deposit.

My goal is retirement in December of 2031, at 49 years old. My forecasts say we'll be at 1.5 million in 401k, and about 1 million in the brokerage. The brokerage would tie us over for the 10-15 years, even with no growth in the market (1mil/70k=14.5 years) until we hit the age we can pull from 401k - which should be at like 1.8 million at that point according to projections

Health insurance is the question mark - we have 25k currently in HSA, with maxing 9000/year in deposits there.

Copilot says we can use the ACA marketplace and get cheap/free insurance there when we retire - is that accurate? Seems too easy..

How far off are my expectations?

Edit to add: we are planning roth conversions of about 40k/year starting the year we retire. Thanks for reminding me to mention that we're planning on that.

I keep reading not to let the $3000 sit in Roth IRA but to invest it... not sure what to do but need to start building retirement as I am self employed.

Today I got an email from Capital One stating "a new employer was added to your credit file". Under my personal information, it shows a company that sent me a rejection email yesterday. Both the rejection and the alert appeared on the same day. Do I contact the company or my bank tomorrow?

Married couple (39) with combined HHI of around $225k. Only debt is $5k left on a car at 5%. We have around $300k in retirement accounts. No brokerage. A 4 month emergency fund.

We were late to investing so for the past few years we’ve been maxing Roth IRAs and contributing around 22% to 401ks. Employers match 5%.

We have always thought of buying a house as out of reach (very, very hcol area but family, work opportunities, social life are all here) but recently a family member has offered to gift us a substantial down payment amount.

So my actual question. Does it make sense to temporarily drop our 401k contributions to 5% in order to quickly put some money away for potential housing costs (closing costs, fees, etc)?

Hi all,

I'm a 30M and moved back home with my family last year to save and have more time with them. I'd like to maximize the money I'm making/saving, as I anticipate moving out in the next 1-2 years and moving in with my partner. He makes roughly the same yearly salary as me.

Is my current financial setup wise? How can it be improved from a tax and life-stage perspective?

Salary: ~$120k or $4,000 monthly take-home pay after taxes/deductions. I work in sales, so a chunk of my pay is quarterly bonuses.

Monthly rent: $400

Monthly savings: I save about 46% of my take-home pay each month after expenses. This does not include my retirement savings.

401K Balance: $200k - contribute 15% and employer matches 4%

Roth IRA Balance: $7,500 (maxed out for the 1st time this year)

• Invested in FXAIX (US S&P500 - 80%) and FTIHX (International Index - 20%)

Cash Balance: $150k

• $145k in various HYSAs (SoFi, Raisin, E*TRADE)
• $4k in checking accounts (to hit minimum bank balances to avoid maintenance fees)
• $1k in a no-penalty CD (had to open for Raisin bonus)

Loans: None. Pay off credit card balances in full each month.

Goals in order of priority:

• Lower my taxes.
  • In 2027, max out Roth IRA again. Increase 401k contributions after yearly raise.
  • Explore buying Treasury bill ladders to be exempt from state and local income taxes, as opposed to a HYSA where the accrued interest is fully taxable.
• Open a brokerage account. I have been avoiding it since I'm prioritizing more tax-friendly investments and because I am not very educated on it.
• Buy a home in the next 5 years.
• Start a business.
• Potentially return to grad school. Still evaluating if I will.

Important context: I keep a lot of liquid cash so that I can churn new bank account bonuses. I anticipate making about $10k this year from opening and maintaining accounts for bonuses.

Thanks!

Ok I have a card that got maxed out when we were going through a hard time and needed to pay a month of rent. Then of course we couldn’t afford to pay the monthly payments at the time. The card closed they charged off the debit. I just got an email saying it’s in pre legal status what does that mean?

Hi everyone, I have about $7,700 invested in this account and unfortunately, I need to withdraw most of it to pay for a series of surgeries I had following an accident. I'm 25 years old so would I have to pay an early withdrawal fee? I contributed about $6700 so would the penalty apply to this amount and/or my gains (!$1,000)? My account is only about a year old. I found some conflicting information online so I'm not sure what to do. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

I make pre-tax contributions to my employee sponsored HSA. However, my wife since her employer doesn't provide an HSA and is under my insurance now, has been in the past doing post-tax contributions to her HSA.

Of course, this is less tax advantageous for us come filling. We want to still keep our HSAs separate is there a way for me to make pre-tax contributions to two different accounts? One that is hers and one that is mine, as long as we are under the employee and employeer contribution limit for family?

I was removed from a home loan me and my ex shared in May 2026. The home loan is still showing on my credit reports, and was apparently never removed (this may be my fault, I am not certain, it was the first time I ever asked for a divorce so I didn't know the in's and out's of it all).

My questions:

1. Does failure to remove it negatively impact me in any way? Aside from my credit score, I mean. There have been no late payments or anything, thankfully my ex had it all on auto-pay.
2. Who was responsible for reporting this to the credit bureaus?
3. Is filing a dispute about this the correct way to address this? I saw it on Experian, I am not sure if it is reported to the other credit bureaus yet. Do I need to dispute it with all three?

EDIT: As part of the divorce decree, we agreed he would get the house. So he refinanced without me on the loan. I apologize for the improper wording. I had to sign a ton of papers removing my self from the loan.

EDIT 2: I went ahead and called valon, apparently the assumption didn't finalize until June 2, and it also apparently takes 60-90 days to report it to the credit bureaus. They said my name was "no longer in the system" or attached to any loans, but, I will continue to watch this like a hawk and if my ex fails to remove me, I will be taking him to court for violating the divorce decree / order. Thank you all so much for the help!

I am just about to turn 26. I started investing in November of 2020, so by and large my experience with investing is that VOO only goes up. I have lifetime returns of 18% for my roth IRA account. I somewhat remember the market downturn in 2022, where I would contribute $500 to my roth IRA and the account would still drop by $1000. It was a brief glimpse and since the markets rallied.

I am not trying to brag about the returns, I know logically that these returns are not historical and I’d like to know how to mentally prepare myself during times of stagnation and actual persisting bear market?

With employer match, I invest 30% of my income towards retirement. I have an emergency fund and relative job stability. Only debt is our mortgage at 5.5%.

Currently I contribute 15% to my 401k. My company matches up to 5% so I’m putting 20% away technically. My company has an ESPP with a 15% discount on stock and a look back clause where they buy at the lowest price in the last 6 months. I currently put 5% in the ESPP and they purchase twice a year.

I’m thinking about lowering my 401k contributions to 5% and increasing my ESPP to 15%. Then every 6 months when the stock is bought I’d immediately sell it all and take the 10% extra I was contributing to add to my Roth IRA. So I’d get the discount for the stock then fund my Roth. Does this make sense to do when I’m only contributing to the Roth twice a year or would it make more sense to contribute weekly to the Roth?

I’m a little confused about how I should prioritize my contributions and could use some advice.

I work for the government, so I have a pension plan with the typical 3-year vesting period. I started saving for retirement relatively late, so I’ve been trying to be pretty aggressive with contributions.

In addition to the pension, I currently have an HSA, a 457(b), and a 403(b). I’ve only been at this job for a few months, and right now I’m contributing roughly equally to all three. I’m nowhere close to maximizing the HSA, though.

Would it make more sense to reduce or stop contributions to the 403(b)/457(b) temporarily and prioritize maxing out the HSA? Edit to add: neither account has an employer match.

Part of my hesitation is that I also want to keep some cash available to pay down my student loans and for emergency. Any additional money beyond that currently goes into a Fidelity brokerage account.

Also, is there any downside or benefit to making additional HSA contributions at the end of the month with after-tax money, rather than contributing through payroll?

I understand there are a lot of variables here (employer match, interest rates on the loans, tax brackets, etc.), but I’m mainly trying to figure out the general priority/order I should be thinking about.

I’m 23 yr old and just started investing but I’m planning to invest long term, I’m currently using Robinhood and wasn’t sure it it’d be better off moving to fidelity or vanguard because that’s what I’m hearing is most popular. Any ideas?