My wife(28) and I(30) currently make roughly $116,000 after all deductions and minimal mortgage. We currently have roughly $65-70k in checking and bought our first home for $338k 6.25%(currently owe $309k). We are fortunately otherwise debt free. We currently only invest 5% each into employer matched 401k’s(mine has $68k, wife’s unknown). We have 2 children under 2 and are trying to figure out the best financial path forward.

Our current mortgage is $2,795. I have played with the amortization calculator and have found a plausible amount($7795) we could send at the mortgage and own our home outright by 2031. This would assume continued 5% towards 401k’s to continue getting employer matching. However I am unsure as to whether this is the most financially sound decision as opposed to investing the additional 5k a month towards mortgage.

Hello everyone! I feel like there’s a lot of misconceptions when it comes to HSA at least for me. My works as a teacher for the district so I get all my benefits through her. From what I understand you have to have the insurance of the company to get the HSA, which means I have to pay 156$ per check minimum to get access to the HSA, of which my company contributes 1300$ a year flat. We’re both 31 going to try to have kids next year. We’re high income earners in middle/low cost of living area. I was thinking of just signing up for the insurance/HSA and letting it stack for any possible rainy day fund in the future or just use for “cosmetic” health stuff like LASIK etc. I welcome any advice, thank you all.

Edit: I fucking hate our health care system lol

Cc debt: ~12k

Student loans: ~24k

Hi all. I’m 27 F. I make $825 a week as a nanny (under the table). I pay $1300 in rent a month.

I currently don’t have a car. I wanted to lease a Honda but I don’t have any $ saved for a down payment. I have to uber everyday to work. I cannot catch up on my debt and save myself. I am drowning and I have harmful thoughts. I don’t know how to help myself right now. My boyfriend’s mom told my boyfriend that I need to step it up and that I’m not going anywhere unless I go to nursing school. My credit score is 516. Is my life over?

I've been adding an additional $500 principal into my monthly mortgage payment. My rate is 2.75%.

Should I be using that $500 towards the market instead?

I received a $25 visa virtual debit gift card that states: This Visa® Virtual eGift Card can be used ONLINE ONLY, everywhere Visa debit cards are accepted in the US. For cardholder services and balance inquiries, visit MyGift.GiftCardMall.com or call 1 (833) 626-9618.

I’m wondering if I can transfer the entire balance to like a gift card with chipotle? I couldn’t find anything about this in the details of the card and wonder if anyone else has had luck doing this. What I like avoiding is the couple dollars always left on these where it’s impossible to use up virtually.

Thanks!

I have a HYSA with Ally that I currently have 3.25% APY with. I keep between 11k-14k in the account typically and plan to continue to grow it slowly, though won’t necessarily have monthly deposit. Based on family supports and my drop prospects, baring something highly unusual and unexpected, I can’t imagine my balance will drop below 10k. It looks like there are some reputable options that have between 3.75 and 4% apy right now- when is it worth switching? I opened Ally almost 10 years ago and it was one of the highest rates at the time and I honestly haven’t paid much attention to rates since then so I’m not sure how much variation between options to expect long term and when it reaches a point that I should transfer to a higher apy account.

I was considering Openbank by Santander Or CIT bank. Thoughts on these in comparison to Ally and if it’s worth the switching?

I recently financed a $10k Kia at 80k miles and made the accident of not getting it looked at by an independent mechanic before purchasing from the dealership. I’m only 4 months into my payment of $170/month and I’ve already had the transmission, brakes, and tires replaced at a local shop for a total of about $5k. My rear hatch actuator has went out and that’s another $100 for the part.

Now my new(used) transmission is starting to act up again and I may need to take it back to the shop, the newly installed transmission itself is under warranty though at least. I’m just seriously concerned that this car will continue to cost me more than it’s worth and I’m not sure what to do, whether that is continue paying and repairing it or if I should try to recover some of its value and trade it in.

I’ve never made a post like this so feel free to ask any clarifying questions! Thank you in advance for any advice!

Hello! I gave birth a few months ago and my husband and I would like to set up a few accounts for our daughter. We are planning on opening a 529 account that we will contribute to over the next 18 years. Our daughter has received cash gifts from family members that we would like to invest for her. Both my husband and I feel a little strange about putting her "gift" money in an account for education as we feel like that is something that we should be providing for her. My husband and I were also able to afford our house primarily because of an investment account that I had set up for me when I was younger. We would love to be able to save any money gifted to her in a place that will grow. Any recommendations for types of accounts we should open for her?

I’m a little concerned on being far behind people in my age group when it comes to retirement savings. Essentially, me and my husband are both 32 years old and been working for a few years. I have about 50k in my retirement savings, but he only has about 10k. Before we got married 2 years ago, he didn’t have good saving habits and never opened a Roth IRA/was in contracting positions then grad school throughout his 20s so didn’t have a 401k. I practically made him open a Roth IRA and he’s been saving abit now.

Anyone here able to advice on strategies to catch up for lost time in retirement savings? And no, I don’t think maxing out our 401k is feasible when we need the money to pay the bills. We live in CA and things are crazy expensive, but as of this year we’ll both max out our Roth IRAs every year till we retire as the minimum.

I’m a 24 year old final year healthcare student and I would say my finances were pretty in shape up until this year. I had around £35k saved / invested £5k of which was set aside as my emergency fund. However, I had a really bad year mentally and had to quit my job to work on my mental health. I also spend around £5k of my savings travelling to get myself out of a depressive/anxious slump.

To make matters worse, I was only expecting to be unemployed for around two months but it’s currently almost 5 months hence why I’ve completely blown through my emergency funds. I am currently interviewing for part time jobs but I feel really shitty about my finances. I still have around £25k saved/invested but I feel so silly that I allowed myself to make such financially reckless decisions as an adult. Does anyone have any advice so that I don’t end up in that awful situation again?

FYI: I live at home so my expenses are minimal.

Without divulging every little detail about our financial system. Here are some of the pertinent details:
Income:175k
Savings rate w/ employer match, plus 2 Roth IRA’s: ~33k a year ~18%
Retirement accounts: ~142k
Brokerage Account: ~65k
Emergency Fund/Savings/ Checking:
32k/25k/10k

Going to have a kid within the next 6 months. Planning for this major life change, to include going to single income with a SAHM. Income listed above is just mine as that’s what we’re planning to have starting in the spring. A huge priority is to send our kid(s) to Catholic school K-12. Trying to make a solid gameplan for how to accomplish this. I’ve used some AI tools to provide a plan for me on how to make it all happen and model it out. Need a human critique.

It has suggested to liquid some brokerage funds to seed 529’s. One 529 for k-12, and another 529 for college all for one kid. So there’s no major drag on long term growth needed for college. The model it ran was based on 5k per year k-8, and 8k per year 9-12, at a 3% increase every year. These numbers came from current costs - state educational assistance predicted to receive. Don’t believe I’ll be able to cash flow k-12 tuition expenses

It suggested a 10k seed for k-12 and 16k seed for college, this plus 330/mo k-12 and 135/mo college at 8% return will provide enough for k-12 and roughly 150k for college . Who know what college will cost in 20 years but that’s a solid amount to cover (it predicted that covers half or more in 20 years). Inside the k-12 529 we came to the system of funding a growth fund, and once kindergarten hits moving funds once a year or twice a year to a fixed income fund to cover the next bill, so maxing growth while having near term expenses in fixed income. ~6-6.5% return for k-12. All growth fund for college 8%.

Long winded but is this a good system? Changes? Thoughts?

Also is this a fine use for brokerage funds? I really don’t have cemented plans with the funds, probably a combination of next car, next house, next kids education seeds, home upgrades etc

I’m torn about how I want to handle my CC debt. Currently I have $5200 in savings and I earn about $1100 bi-weekly. One card has 0 interest with $3000 on it and the other has $8700 with interest (I’m not entirely sure of the interest rate). The reason it’s so high is because unfortunately I had to buy a new transmission for my car which was around $4500. At the time, I didn’t anywhere near that to pay out of pocket. My car payment is $350 a month and other than insurance and phone bills I don’t really have any other expenses. Currently I moved back home since I went through a divorce so I’m lucky to not have to pay rent and for other necessities. What would be the best plan of attack for the CC debt? I don’t want to put all my savings towards it just in case of other emergencies that occur.

I'm in my early 40s. Some time ago I ran up a large amount of credit card debt during a time of financial difficulty. The financial difficulty has passed - I have barely even used a credit card in almost two years - but I still have this lump of debt. I'm paying more than the monthly minimums, but not much more, and I still have around $30K to pay down.

Recently I learned I can take a loan from one of my retirement accounts. This account has $150K in it and I can borrow up to 50%. (Ultimately I do want to roll another $100K of retirement funds into this same account, and I have almost $500K in total retirement savings.)

Is there a reason I should not borrow $30K from this retirement fund to pay off my high-interest consumer debt? I am confident that A) I can pay the loan off much more easily and quickly than I can pay the cc debt off, and B) I will add little to nothing additional to my credit card balances. Running up more debt is not a concern for me at this time.

Any advice or words of wisdom are welcome!

So I guess with capital one buying out discover I now need to make a capital one account. As I am setting up and trying to sign into my account, it tells me in order to finish enrollment I need to put in my SSN and DOB which is to be expected. It'll then tell me that there are no new accounts to enroll and I should just proceed to sign in like normal. The process then just repeats itself over and over again. I call the customer service hotline to try to speak to a HUMAN but instead get trapped in automation hell and the call will usually end up just getting cut short. Any tips to help me get in touch with an actual human?

I am 32 and living paycheck to paycheck. It's incredibly embarrassing and stressful. So I HAVE to get my crap together.

I currently have a debit checking account with a local bank that has branches in the surrounding states. I pay $32 anytime I have to overdraft, but as long as I have a direct deposit going into the account, I don't pay any monthly fees.

My fiancé (25) has a debit checking account, too, at a different bank in his home state. He has it set, so he can't overdraft, nor does he have monthly fees (that I'm aware of, it was the account his parents made for him when he started working at like 17).

We want to have a joint savings account of some sort that we put both our checks into and pull a small equal amount out for general personal spending. Like going to see a movie or buy the next book in one of our favorite series. But neither one of us is financially literate or has a clue really where to start since we have our sites set on clearing up debt to start a family.

We've done some personal budgeting like tracking our bills and figured out what we need to pay off or save for certain things, but with our current set up and the both of us having ADHD it makes staying on track a little difficult, so we want to set ourselves up for success with this shift to a savings account. We're open to switching who we each have our checking accounts with, too.

But, would it be better to do a credit union? Growing up, my mom had a teacher's credit union she was a part of and still is even tho she doesn't teach anymore. She's always talking about how it's better than just a regular bank account. She's terrible at explaining things, tho so idk why or if it wouldn't even be any better than our savings account plan.

Thank you for reading, and thanks in advance for any advice you can give. I did peruse the wiki, but I didn't really feel like I got my answer to whether a savings account would be better for pooling our money for better ease to pay off bills and debts while gaining a little interest here and there (or however that works) or if a credit union can offer a better path to our goals of bettering both our credit scores, getting a home, and starting a family.

Can you please recommend the best simple book for tax planning? Not sure we need a trust but want to make sure we don’t slam heirs w taxes.

Hi all,

I worked at my previous company for 5 years, and walked away with my traditional 401k around 50k.

I started my new job two months ago (salary 155k), and they offer both a traditional 401k and a 401k Roth

I am in my early 30's, and have a couple of questions:

1. Should I transfer my old employers traditional 401(k) to my new employers Roth 401(k)?
2. Should I transfer my old employers traditional 401(k) to my new employers traditional 401(k)?
3. Should I keep my old employers traditional 401(k), and my new employers traditional 401(k) separate?
4. Is it sound to open up both a traditional 401(k) and a Roth 401(k)

Hi everyone, I’ve had some life changes recently that have made me reconsider my health insurance options for next year and wanted to see if this community could help me make a decision.

Back in May my wife and I had our first child, but he was born extremely early (23 weeks & 6 days). He is still in the NICU and doing well all things considered. Hopefully coming home in the next 1-2 months. Even with how well he is doing, I do expect he will have significantly more doctor's visits and specialist visits than the average child for at least next few years.

The healthcare plans from my employer are very good and have made this more or less a non-issue financially. However, I am wondering if it might make sense for us to switch out of a Family HDHP/HSA plan in favor of a traditional PPO Plan. Below are the terms of each option:

Family PPO
- Employee Cost = 5% of Base Wages Bi-Weekly (Max of $541)
- $0 deductible in-network
- $5,000 Out-of-pocket max for copays and out-of-network
- $25 copay for everything except Surgery, Emergency, or Ambulance (those are $0 copay)

Family HDHP/HSA (Current)
- Employee Cost = 5% of Base Wages Bi-Weekly (Max of $526)
- $3,500 deductible in-network
- $5,000 out-of-pocket max in network and $7,500 out-of-network
- No cost for anything in network after deductible is met
- 20% Coinsurance out-of-network after deductible is met
- My employer contributes $1,750 to HSA annually

Currently, my wife and I are on a budget and would likely need to use our HSA for any medical expenses if we kept the HDHP plan. I would expect that we would use all of what ends up being contributed to the HSA next year and possibly for the next few years depending on my son's needs.

Currently, I’m leaning towards switching to the PPO for next year and re-evaluating each year as our financial position changes and our family health needs change.

Please let me know if any additional information is needed! Thank you all in advance for the help!

So yes, it’s Reddit but reading posts on here always gives me extreme anxiety about how behind I (30yo) am on investing and retirement.

Essentially I have only about ~12k in savings and have no other debt besides my car which has about 7k left on it.

Other than that. 🥲 Anyways, I am fortunately in a position (God willing it stays) where I am about to save about $4,000 to $4,500 a month.

Personal emergency fund technically funded with what I have but I don’t know what to do next.

I am in no rush to retire early by any means, the normal 60-65 sounds fine with me. But I guess when I start to think about being a homeowner, getting married, possibly having a kid if I can afford one… I’m worried I’m too behind to comfortably do these things in the “typical timeframe”.

I’ve put myself in a hole I never imagine. I have 2 vehicles with negative equity. A mortgage. And no savings. I used my savings trying to claw out of my negative equity to bring down my monthly debt to income. I was hoping to have it paid off by the end of the year.

———————-

I’ve lost my job. I’m 3 months behind on everything. My checking account is -$2000 with no income coming in. At this point I’m waiting for the lights to cut out, the vehicles to get repo’d (can no longer afford to put gas in them to drive to interviews), and my credit cards are maxed out.

Obviously this didn’t happen overnight, and I saw the signs but thought I’d figure it out. Well I didn’t.

So now I’m just looking for some direction. Really just the first step or so.

I am looking into more savings and pre-tax benefit accounts for health care. I thought I would be opening an HSA, but upon further research, I need to have a high deductible heath care plan. We are extremely blessed that my husband works for a health care company, and we have free heath care and extremely low copays.

This year, my son needs braces, so I thought we would wait the few months until we could open a HSA account. Based on what I am reading, I am not sure that we can? What are other pre-tax health care items, and what are the qualifications?

My boyfriend and I are planning on having kids in a couple years and thinking about how we’ll manage our finances during that period. I’d like to see some examples on how other couples have structured managing finances during maternity leave.

Some background:
- We make the same salary
- No maternity/paternity top ups
- I’d take a bigger salary hit (~12 months off) a than him (~3 months off)
- We’re common law and don’t plan on getting married
- We live in Quebec

Our current financial set up:
- Household expenses are split 50/50 we keep track using Splitwise
- We contribute to our investments/savings separately
- We have separate accounts
- We both sign up/close credit cards often to maximize travel credit card points
- We built a financial plan for our retirement/goals
- We have one joint account that’s only used to pay our mortgage
- We have very open communication around finances

Some ideas:
- Using a yours/mine/ours set up (I think this could be a lot of work to manage with our credit card set up)
- Combine finances for a year then return to our current set up
- Keep the same set up but use a pro rata split

Very curious how others have structured this and gone about it. Thank you in advance!

I know I know. I’ve made some really poor financial decisions and I’m trying to turn it around. I quit my job in February 2026, knowing I had a 401k loan balance of about 12k. I never heard anything, I can’t find any info on their site except one statement says the loan balance, and the other there is just nothing. Will I just be screwed come tax time? I’m scared to ask, I’m sure it’s beyond paying back now

Hi personal finance gurus!

I recently settled my divorce and am freaking out that I made the wrong choices in terms of what I gave up (I am the higher income earner and live in a community property state). I negotiated the divorce on my own for a myriad of reasons (though we worked with a mediator who kept us within legal bounds, and both of us ran the final settlement past a lawyer for review), but ultimately leaned toward giving him more cash upfront to preserve my 401K. Ultimately, I gave up 57% of my brokerage account, $5,000 of my 401K, and $8,000 of my half of our future home equity when we sell our house next spring. Ultimately, he got about $13,000 over the true 50/50 split of assets due to my long-term income earning potential over his.

At the end of the day, I'm left with the below. I'd be interested to hear from this community based on the stats below if a) I've royally screwed myself, and b) if I have, is there any secret sauce to pulling myself back out of this, or is it just a "buckle up and heal" situation? (Side note: divorce sucks, even when you were the one who asked for it. What a financial nightmare!)

The stats of what's left (and general shape of my budget today, post-divorce):

Age: 37F; would like to be able to leave corporate life at 50 and transition to passive income if I can find a way

Assets:
- Checking account: $11K
- Stock investments in my company (1:4 matching program): $26K
- Brokerage account: $76K
- 401K: $280K
- 50/50 equity in family home: Estimated ~$135K (we'll sell next spring... this is a projection)

General shape of my budget: I make good money but right now I'm paying spousal support (ends 12/31/2027), child support (ends in 13 years haha), and 65% of my son's private school tuition (which will end February 2027 when he transitions to public school). I put 6% into my 401K each month (maxing out my employer match of 3%) and 3% into my company's employee stock matching program.

All of those expenses, plus my rent/utilities/car insurance leaves me with about $2,500 left over every month. I'm not really adding any money to my checking account each month as a result (very hard to stay at $2,500 in a VHCOL city with all of the obligations of groceries/gas/kid/life) but expect that will improve as tuition drops off in February 2027 and spousal support drops off after December 2027. Beginning in 2028, my only monthly obligation will be $500/month in child support, so I hope to begin transitioning to maxing out my 401K and putting whatever else I can toward either a 529 for my son or just feeding my brokerage account.

Everything looked rosier when I was married and it feels like starting over now. I've never watched every dollar I spend so closely. I'd love to hear from you folks if I left myself in a really shitty cash-on-hand situation or if the instinct to protect my 401K was appropriate (be honest!). Thank you so much!

I am 66 years old. I desperately want to retire as soon as I can due to declining health; however, it looks like it’s not going to happen anytime soon. I only have $135,000 in a retirement account at this time. I owe $32,000 on my home. Riding out the mortgage, the home will be paid for in 2030. Does it make any sense to take money from the retirement account and go ahead and pay off the house?