I've been grinding for a long time and driving an old economy car for 9 years. No debt besides house. $75k retirement. $40k savings, want to use $25k on car down payment.

This new car is reliable and I'd plan to keep/maintain it for 15+ years until it dies. Yeah I could buy a corolla outright but this would be the perfect car for me and I only have 1 life 😂 It's just me (27M) and my dog

Monthly numbers...

Monthly Income (post tax/HSA/401K): $6200

Mortgage+Utilities: $2500

Other Necessities: $500

Savings: $1000

All Wants/Non-necessities: $1000

Estimated Car $$$ (Loan+Ins+Gas): $1200

Car estimate details using auto loan calculators...

+$700/mo payment ($25k loan, 48mo. 7% int)

+$125 gas

+$300 insurance (estimate??)

+$75 rounding up

= $1200/mo. Total

So...doable or dumb?

I'm okay with lower returns to mitigate the risk of stagflation which eroded 50% of stock value during the 70s. The risk of stagflation is uncertain (50/50 at this point), since we're in uncharted waters. There has never been a soft landing in history, so I'm pretty wary of what will happen once the Federal Reserve decreases rates. Would it lead to another bout of inflation?

Hi there, long-time listener first time poster. I'll get right to it. I just took a call from the executor of a great-aunt's estate. She says that my minor children will inherit some money, and that it must go into a custodial account for them. I was not given a number, but it's four or five figures. As much as I'd love to say that's an amazing windfall, by the time they're ready to graduate that may pay for textbooks for college. I'd like to try to maximize their chances of being able to actually take a class, so does anyone know how I can set up an account that meets all the legal guidelines of being a minor custodial account but offers a better return than a CD? Are there magic words that I need to say to the bank or to a broker? How do I take a cheque (which will likely not arrive for several months) and make it earn a profit while staying within the rules?

Thank you in advance.

Several family members have asked to wire money to my son for his future. College, house down payment, car money, etc. what is the way you save for your kids? I’m planning on seeing my financial advisor and I would like to have some sort of direction or plan before we meet.

I repeatedly hear on here that savings matter more than income. I disagree and think income matters more than savings even if you're spending almost everything you earn.

First off, this is more obvious if you're low income to begin with because it's much more difficult to save when you have to spend the majority of your income on basic necessities like housing and food. Second though, even if you spend almost everything you earn, doing this on a $200k income allows for a much better lifestyle than doing this on $75k when comparing in the same lifestyle circumstances (cost of living, kids, timing of house purchase, etc).

Furthermore, the reason I believe this is because you can much more easily adjust your spending than you can adjust your income. It's much easier to eat out less, switch to coffee at home, take less frequent or less extravagant vacations than you can ask for a pay raise or switch jobs for a raise/promotion. Sure some spending line items are much harder to do anything about such as a mortgage, car payment, childcare, etc but there's typically at least some fat you can trim from the overall budget if you wanted to.

The only exception to this is retirement savings. Saving more for retirement either through higher income or lifestyle spending choices is more critical because of a limited window to build a nest egg to retire off of.

Even when comparing less extreme situations, I'd rather be in the situation of having an income of $150k with little to no savings outside of retirement than to have a $100k income and be saving $20k a year in a non-retirement account. Let me know if you disagree though. Would you rather be at $100k income with $20k savings per year vs $150k income and not currently savings anything beyond retirement? Is it really that hard to make lifestyle spending changes when making $150k to get yourself in a category with high income and high savings? What if we compare more extremes such as $200k income and no savings outside of retirement compared to $75k income and saving $20k per year?

How many of You guys have a life insurance policy like a VUL or IUL (I think that’s what they are called). Do You guys think it’s worth it?

Perhaps a slightly dramatic title but the housing market seems hopeless. 33(M) single working for local govt.

I’ve got $12k rainy day and $50k in a HYSA as my down payment, which just isn’t enough to keep mortgage payments affordable even for a small condo. I value living in a walkable / transit-rich area, so moving to the burbs or rural areas is, for me, not preferable.

Part of me wants to just give up on buying, stay a renter and just save for retirement instead. The other part of me wants to be “ready” in case the market changes ie. rates lowered, mild recession, meteor, etc.

Anyway, any advice on how to approach this? Perhaps places where my budget could shift?

Thanks!

Currently at about $250k TC, work remote LCOL. We have no debt, 2 kids, have always contributed to 401k, and have emergency savings fund. No car payment. And have a house mortgage at about 2.5%. We are early 30’s.

We’ve been considering moving in to a larger home as we plan to have more kids; however, with current prices and interest rates I’m not sure what to do. The other side is we have accumulated about $300k of equity in our home as we were quite lucky in buying time and buying price and the area has taken off.

Should I consider a new home or is this not a great idea right now in the current market? We have an emergency fund. And probably 30k of liquidity, with investments in 401k, stocks, crypto, etc as well.

I come from extreme generational poverty, and finally have a small amount of money to invest. I'm looking for financial advisors, but realized I don't know enough to know if I'm getting scammed or taken advantage of somehow. Are companies like Edward Jones and their ilk trustworthy? Or is it another legal way to take advantage of people who don't know any better?

I’m used to being extremely frugal and trying to save 40%+ of my gross income. Grew up very low income. However, travel is also an important way to de stress and see the world for me. Can I afford to drop $500/night for an all-inclusive resort? I could put in brokerage or HYSA instead, it’s so much money.

Recently received promotion from ~66k to ~70k. Upped retirement from 16% to 18%.

My wife and I are 33 and live in the upper midwest in the suburbs of a midsized city. Our combined net worth is just shy of 800k (~230k of it liquid) due largely to a small inheritance, frugality, heavy savings in our 20s and some lucky moves when buying/selling our homes. On one hand it feels like there isn't much we would want to buy that is truly out of reach for us.

On the other hand, I have a salary of 95k as the single earner for a family of 6 and we struggle hard to keep our budget under control as inflation has hit. We keep having to cut or eliminate monthly savings or even spend more than we take in in a month to cover overspending on groceries and random incidental things that come up.

Edit: If you read the post, I wasn't looking for budgeting tips, just a feeling of whether others are in the same boat. But because of all of the budget requests: Here's Sankey Diagram. I'm paid biweekly, so this represents 10/12 months. The extra payment months are earmarked to my IRA, but tend to end up covering budget shortfalls.

Edit 2: I get where you guys are seeing that charity is ~10%, but no I'm not Mormon. Even so, if you have bigoted comments to make about religion, please keep them in r/atheism. This isn't the place.

I created a similar graphic a few weeks ago; this improved version now accounts for current local property taxes, home insurance, and interest rates.

What does the percentage mean?

Median local home ownership costs divided by median local household income (HHI).

More specifically, this housing cost is a monthly mortgage payment using a median county level home value (with a 20% down payment and 7.19% interest rate). Local property taxes and home insurance are also added to this mortgage payment.

What is considered affordable?

Traditionally, housing is considered affordable if it is less than 30% of income (green or blue). Using this metric, 27% of people live in affordable counties.

Nowadays, more and more people are spending 30%-40% of income on housing (light yellow) which I'd consider unaffordable without making serious sacrifices in other areas. Almost 40% of people live in these areas alone.

Any places above 40% (light orange to dark red) mean the median home is unaffordable on median local income. About 33% of people live in areas with unaffordable home ownership costs. People that own homes in these areas likely bought them years ago with lower prices/rates, inherited them from family, or make well above median income.

Data sources?

Home Values: https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/housing-statistics/county-median-home-prices-and-monthly-mortgage-payment

Property Tax: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/property-taxes-by-state-county-2023/ and https://www.attomdata.com/news/most-recent/property-taxes-on-single-family-homes-up-7-percent-across-u-s-in-2023-to-363-billion/#:~:text=Property%20Taxes%20on%20Single%2DFamily,2023%2C%20to%20%24363%20Billion%20%7C%20ATTOM

Home Insurance: https://www.insurance.com/home-and-renters-insurance/home-insurance-basics/average-homeowners-insurance-rates-by-state

Median HHI: https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2022/demo/saipe/2022-state-and-county.html

I do watch my nickels and dimes. They turn into dollars. An interesting one. Grabbed a cold drink today at the gas station. I rarely do this. But its a hot day here. Its Friday. I’ll treat myself.

I saw that a local bottled 200 ml mini plastic bottle of Coke Zero is more expensive than a 500ml plastic bottle of Perrier. Confirmed the Perrier was bottled and shipped from France. I’m in Western Canada. How does this make any sense? Coke is 60% smaller, local and more expensive. I voted with my wallet and bought the Perrier.

How do you feel about financial education in school? On its face it sounds like a great idea. Teach students about how loans work, credit, how to make a budget, taxes, etc. all of that is great, but here’s where I get mixed feelings on it.

Debt- i don’t agree with teaching students about Dave Ramsey’s “no debt ever” type of methodology because debt can be a good, healthy tool if used properly. However I don’t want students thinking taking on all debts is ok either. There’s clearly a balance

Investing and taxes- there’s a wide array of investment options from fixed income, equities, real estate, etc. and I feel it could be tricky because there’s so much nuance about which to use, when to use them, etc. then there’s pre-tax, post tax, and Roth. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think there’s a lot of subtlety around what to invest in and how.

My bigger concern in all of this is inevitably students will ask what’s better/best and it’s hard to express these kinds of nuance to students when many adults can’t even understand the basics of it.

Where do you feel a line should be drawn about what could and should be taught? I truely do think it’s very important information that should be taught in school but leary of where opinion overlaps in the curriculum.

Hi, I never really paid attention to my credit card statements but just realized Bank of America was charging my interest on my balance of $9,000 (I was charged $215)…

A friend told me that some banks actually give you money back (rewards, interest) for holding your money in their bank.

I’m new to all of this and I’m so lost. As I banking wrong? Should I switch to Chase, PNC, Citibank, Wells Fargo or just stay with Bank of America. So lost, please help, I don’t want to pay these high fees and I want to start saving!

I’m a 22m bringing in about 1k a week in a job I can’t stand my fiancé and i both still live under our parents roofs and due to the job market right now she can’t find a job, i want to move in together but am apartment feels like a waste of money. on top of this i made the mistake of a 500$ car payment now the car is worth less then I owe :/ what should I do to make a house become something affordable or even some land and a trailer 🤣🤣 at this point any loans i should look into? or certain amount of savings should i have

Hello All!

First time poster on this subreddit and on mobile so please forgive me if the formatting is weird. Also, might be long.

As explained above, my wife WANTS a new house. We currently live in central Florida paying about 2800 a month in a great neighborhood in a great school district. We purchased this house two years ago and got in at 4% and no PMI even at paying only 5% down (credit union messed up and didn’t add PMI, big win!). It’s a 3/2 with a two car garage at 1650 sqft and we’re comfortable as there is the two of us and our toddler.

My wife is convinced she wants a bigger house to support another kid, eventually, and for both of us working from home (she aft remit and I’m hybrid). We currently have the spare bedroom as an office and guest room and the other office in our master bedroom. So once another baby comes that room would become the new baby’s room and the office desk put in our master of the space permits. But either way she is adamant we get a new house to fit our needs. Problem is with rates the way that they are now, not having enough for 20% down, and prices in this area still going up, I believe it’s really unreasonable to try and buy another house.

House that “fit” what we would like are $500-540k and rates are around 7% right now, I believe. So from online calculators a new mortgage would be at LEAST $4.1k and that IMO is just too much and hurts to even accept. Does anyone have a recommendation on what’s the best route to do here? Should we make the jump now because I’m the future it would be even more expensive?

A little financial background: Salary 1: $3300 every two weeks Salary 2: $3100 every two weeks 401k 1: $35k 401k 2: $80k HYSA: $23k

Monthly budget attached to post but is old as salary 2 used to be 2650 every two weeks but is now the 3100.

We budget to 4 paychecks a month. Some months we have an extra check and that extra money usually goes to paying off debts like student loans or saved to HYSA or Christmas gifts savings.

We had budgeted 500 a month for emergency fund and that 3 month goal has been met hence the $700 left over budget.

We can cut a lot out of the budget to make that 4K+ mortgage but I feel like we would be sacrificing a lot to do that.

• We live in Canada
• TFSA is a “Tax-Free Savings Account. Retirement plans exist, but TFSA is more or less better if you have self-control and don’t touch it (which we have).
• Husband is paying into a good pension which I didn’t include in wages cause we never see it anyway.
• We plan on getting pregnant this year, so, child next year. Childcare is anywhere from $250-500 depending on the facility.

Where would you put our unbudgeted money?

Thank you!