Personal Finance Weekday Help Thread for the week of January 29, 2018 |
- Weekday Help Thread for the week of January 29, 2018
- $65k+, hate my life vs. $45k, happier
- Always be vigilant in looking for a new job. Just jumped from $15 an hour to $23
- Tracked all of my spending and earnings for January and i ended up putting $600 in savings!
- Turbo Tax Filers: You probably DON'T have to upgrade to file your interest earned.
- Got new glasses; have been getting screwed over by the glasses place and I just fond out they don't do refunds
- My unconventional personal finance tip: buy an HP-12C and learn how to use it
- [CAN] How do I eat healthy on a budget?
- I need to save up for a lot of surgeries in two years time.
- Northpointe getting rid of 5% ultimate checking on 3/1/2018
- Currently an Intern at a tech company making 10 dollars an hour. My manager is requiring me to train all the new Junior Engineers who are all salary paid.
- Employer not matching 401k 2 years in a row. Should I keep putting in 15%?
- 30K in debt and I haven't made a payment in years.
- Can the amount of money that I pay towards interests over the life of my student loans go down if I pay the loan off quicker?
- Family I house sat for wants to give me a 1099
- About to pay off a loan in lump sum, need some advice
- How much home/condo can we really afford?
- Didn’t get into law school in time and now my student loans are coming in but I have no money to pay them with.
- I owe $4000 in taxes but I only make $15,000 a year
- Is it weird for me to get a second job in the same industry?
- If you have Nelnet for your student loans, payment allocation changes are coming soon.
- Roommate is flaky on bills. Would switching services to solely his name save my credit score?
- For Working Parents: traveling for higher paid consultant work vs. full time employer close to home
- My full time hours are getting cut from 40hrs to 32hrs. Looking for ideas to supplement the $200ish I'll lose on each biweekly paycheck.
| Weekday Help Thread for the week of January 29, 2018 Posted: 29 Jan 2018 05:08 AM PST If you need help, please check the PF Wiki to see if your question might be answered there.While we never remove posts just because a question is answered in the wiki, this thread is a low-key place to ask any question no matter how "moronic" you think it might be. Make a top-level comment if you want to ask a question! Also, please don't downvote "moronic" questions! If you have not received your answer within 24 hours, you can feel free to start a discussion. A big thank you to the many PFers who take time to answer other people's questions! For past help threads, please search the Weekly Archive. [link] [comments]  |
| $65k+, hate my life vs. $45k, happier Posted: 01 Feb 2018 07:17 AM PST Currently work in an exceptionally high pressure field as a manager and frontline customer service personal. Very time sensitive and strict line of work with many different and demanding "bosses"(customers, insurance partners, actual bosses) to appease. My workplace is a 70km round trip commute(which I loathe). I am essential personal and expected to man my post regardless of weather conditions or conflicts/complications in my personal life. In 10 years I have missed less than 10 days of work. Monday to Friday I leave my house at 6:30AM and do not return until 6:30PM or later. Frequently I am working beyond that, 12-14hrs a day if the work volume so demands. I often remote connect to my work conputer from home on the weekends and evenings. The workload is overwhealming as I am the only person in my workplace who handles the type of work I do. Every customer, and every phonecall is more piled on to an already overflowing plate. Generally speaking, I have a strong distain for my workplace, customers and employer. I feel totally burned out and complacent. That being said, I have a salary of $65k+ with benefits, which from my limited perspective is pretty good. I have an offer to move to a large multinational insurance company. The office is a 4km commute from my home, the hours are 8-4 and the workload would be a fraction of whats currently demanded of me. The only hang up Im having is the $20k+ pay decrease I would face. Base salary for the position would be $42.5k with an increase to $45k(plus pension and benefits) after 6 months. I know for my mental health the change would be a good thing, but I am so hung up about the salary disparity. I truely feel like a wage slave. Could anyone ring in with an outside perspective to aid in clearing my mind? Thanks PF community. Edit: Holy jeeze this got a heap of response, I am trying to answer everyone, sorry if I dont get you to promptly! [link] [comments]  |
| Always be vigilant in looking for a new job. Just jumped from $15 an hour to $23 Posted: 01 Feb 2018 10:43 AM PST I've been doing the same job since high school and I'm now in third year university. I started at one store making $11 an hour. I left that store after two years to go to Costco which started me at $13 an hour. After 3 years at 1000 hours a year I only got a rise to $15. The old store I used to work at is super in need of meat cutters so I applied with an expected rate of pay of $25 an hour on the application just to fuck with them. They accepted me at $23 an hour. I'm ecstatic. [link] [comments]  |
| Tracked all of my spending and earnings for January and i ended up putting $600 in savings! Posted: 01 Feb 2018 02:09 PM PST I had no financial plan 2 years ago. I didn't really know how much money I was making or spending and I didn't have any financial direction. I subbed here, and started reading stuff and learning about it. After a long time of slow steps I finally spent a few minutes every day in January to track how much money i spent and how much I earned. I ended up with a surplus of over $800 and I put $600 into savings right away. This might not be a lot by some accounts but compared to 2 years ago with no plan I am so excited! I think I probably spent a total of 3 hours of my time over the course of the month tracking my money. Now I have 600 in savings that definitely would not have been there had I not done the work. I feel like I made $200/hr just by dedicating some time to tracking my money! [link] [comments]  |
| Turbo Tax Filers: You probably DON'T have to upgrade to file your interest earned. Posted: 01 Feb 2018 11:08 AM PST This was my first year with Ally, getting any sort of substantial interest. Turbotax saw this and wanted to force me to upgrade to their paid service for $40.00. A bit of googling found this old thread Long story short, do NOT auto-import your 1099 from your bank, enter it manually (still took me around two minutes to do), and you should be able to file for free as normal. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Feb 2018 08:08 AM PST I went to an eye exam exactly a month ago, picked my frames, had VSP insurance and only paid $200 dollars. Without VSP it would have been around $550. Anyways, for some reason it took 18 days to get my glasses. They said they were shipped to the wrong facility after 12 days so I had to wait a lot long to get them. Okay understandable. However, when I went to pick them up 18 days later, they were the wrong frames and the fucked up my prescription. I told them they were wrong and they didn't believe me, I had to go back with pictures of the original frames on my face and compare them. After comparing, they still said I was wrong and that they don't carry the original frames I picked out. I looked through all the glasses and eventually found them. No apologies from them. I wore the wrong frames for 2 days to test my script and it was waaaay off. I went back and told them, and I set up my 1 time free re-test. It wasn't even a retest, the doctor sat me in the chair and compared my old script that's actually still good to my new one. It took all of 2 minutes so they ordered the original frames I picked with my old script. Okay. Now were at about 23 days later from the original order. I go to pick them up 3 days ago and the script is still fucking off. Now I'm pissed, I just called them and they said they don't do refunds and all sales are final. These people have been fucking me over for far too long for this shit. How do you suggest I go about getting my money back? [link] [comments]  |
| My unconventional personal finance tip: buy an HP-12C and learn how to use it Posted: 01 Feb 2018 03:08 PM PST What's an HP-12C? It's a financial calculator released by Hewlett-Packard way back in 1981. And in the intervening 37 years (or 13,302 days - you can calculate days between dates on this thing or what date will it be ___ days from today!) nobody has invented a better one. These things are fast to use, useful, and built like tanks. Wall Street bankers still use them and the finance officer at your local car dealership will wilt like old spinach when you pull yours out during a negotiation. They have a ton of features that you may never use like discounted cash flow analysis, bond yield calculations, and even statistical functions. You can even write basic programs with it for multi-step calculations you need to do repeatedly. So why get one? Because the basic financial calculations are so useful to understand and easy to manage. Essentially the five keys in the top left are: n: number of periods i: interest rate PV: present value PMT: payment FV: future value And if you know any four of these values you can quickly find the fifth. For example: if you know what your maximum desired mortgage payment is, how long your loan will be, and what your interest rate is you can find your maximum mortgage amount. And once you have that amount you can tweak your variables and easily see what your new mortgage could be if your payment were $100 more. You can calculate how much interest you will pay over the life of a loan. You can calculate remaining balance of a loan at any given point in that loan's life. You can see how much money you'll have at retirement (or whatever future date) based on monthly contributions of X and growing at what interest rate. I'm often using my HP12C while reading questions on r/personalfinance so I figure other people posting on here might benefit as well. With a solid grasp of the time value of money concept you can handle any finance question that's likely to come your way in life! I also think our education system in the US fails a lot of people by not teaching personal finance classes. I don't want to by cynical but I think there's a lot of money to made off our financial ignorance in this country and perhaps that's why there hasn't been as big a push to teach us these things in high school. Buying an old HP-12C and then sitting down and working through the problem-solving guide is actually a great primer on these financial basics. Not only will you learn how your calculator works but you can learn some valuable information at the same time. And once you learn how to work your calculator you'll be ahead of 90%+ of Americans in terms of financial savvy and understanding. Pro Tip: you can buy a new HP12C for $50-70 but for the same price, or even less, you can buy a vintage HP12C from eBay. I've had a couple of new ones (made in China) and they've both been lightyears behind the old 1980s made in America models in terms of build quality and construction. Here's the one I use on a daily basis. I actually returned a newer one I had just bought after I found I used this one 99.9% of the time https://imgur.com/a/aB2P0 [link] [comments]  |
| [CAN] How do I eat healthy on a budget? Posted: 01 Feb 2018 04:00 PM PST Every day I pretty much just eat two eggs with bread, bread with a slice of ham and cheese, or noodles. edit: also canned foods like spam and vienna sausage. I'm getting sick and tired of eating this so I would like to learn how to eat healthier and tastier food on a budget. My budget is around 60 dollars a week for food. Are there any general rules of thumb to keep under 60 a week while eating healthy? [link] [comments]  |
| I need to save up for a lot of surgeries in two years time. Posted: 01 Feb 2018 04:08 PM PST I am looking to pay for sexual reassignment surgery, facial feminization surgery, and feminizing liposuction two years down the road. My current situation (leaving out retirement info and savings bonds) is as follows. $15,000 between checking and savings $22,000 in investment portfolio Monthly Bills: $1100 for rent $50 for internet ~$60 for water and electricity ~$200 for food ~$80 for medical/doctors. ~$110 for car insurance Total = $1600 25 years old, making $55/hour at 40 hours a week. After taxes ~= $5400 Montly takehome ~= $3800 As I am 25, I still fall under my parents' health plan, but will be shopping for a plan of my own very soon. In my state, there tends to be good coverage for SRS. I will be moving into a cheaper place with roommates, which should cost me about $500 a month. We already have a good amount of furniture and supplies, so beyond the cost of a moving truck/ company, I do not expect to be paying much for the move. My last move only cost me about $250 total. I work from home, so I do not have a good way to calculate gas costs. What I want to do is save up as much as possible between now and my surgeries. I have good credit (almost 800), and zero loans or debt. I am not looking for high risk, high reward situations. I am just looking to best manage my money so that, when it comes time for surgery, I have as much money as possible to fall back on. Additionally, if anyone has any tips for finding good healthcare and ensuring that it will cover what I need it to, I would greatly appreciate any input there as well. Have a nice day, and thank you for reading. [link] [comments]  |
| Northpointe getting rid of 5% ultimate checking on 3/1/2018 Posted: 01 Feb 2018 04:00 PM PST Unfortunately got the letter in the mail today that the ultimate checking is changing from 5% to 1%. :-( Bummer, I only signed up for it about 5 months ago. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Feb 2018 01:09 PM PST As the title says. I've been working at a tech company since May 2017 and a lot of the stuff we work on is somewhat complicated. I've been interning here for all that time, getting paid $10.50 an hour. I've been recently put on big projects from one of our bigger clients and I've been doing a hefty amount of work required to finish these projects. My name also has been published on some of the projects as a leader working on these projects. My problem is that the company went on a recent hiring spree and hired some new "Junior" level engineers. I asked my boss about moving up to an engineer position full time during thanksgiving week last year and he told me that I would have to be a "full time intern" for a couple months before moving into the engineering position. Sadly, this intern pay is not paying my bills. And now that I am required to train junior engineers, it has made me much more upset with life. I am working as a "full time" intern at the moment for a company that is located about an hour away from me. Here is a format of what my bills look like. Gas - 160 dollars a month. (This is because the commute from my house to work is through the DMV and about 2 hours round trip each day.) Car insurance + Payment - 250 a month. Rent - 200 a month (This is low because I'm living with parents and I'm required to contribute by paying one bill for the house) Credit card bill - 150 a month (Misc. Expenses like eating out, Netflix, entertainment etc.) Unfortunately, My paycheck every month does not cover this but I went to school for a job in this field and I feel like I am stuck doing this until my indefinite promotion. I have resorted to bartending on weekends as extra income but it is killer as I am also a full-time student as well. (All my classes are online). After calculating my bills, I could drop this internship and go to bartending part-time and earn more. (Tips tended to earn me much more a month, usually 25 an hour average) My question to you all is, should I stop this internship for my sanity and finish school? Should I talk to my manager again? Or just keep trucking along? It has gotten to the point where I dread waking up every morning to the point of being majorly depressed. I want to enjoy life and do some fun stuff while I'm young, but I don't want to disappoint the people around me by leaving a job that has the potential of helping me in the long run. Some details about myself: 21 and in college, and financial aid is paying for my college as well as a scholarship I obtained for good academic status. I still have 3 semesters remaining until completion. Edit: Just for context, I also have finished community college and obtained an associates degree in cybersecurity. I am currently pursuing a bachelor's at a local university. [link] [comments]  |
| Employer not matching 401k 2 years in a row. Should I keep putting in 15%? Posted: 01 Feb 2018 08:10 AM PST It's a new company that I'm with and I like my job here. Very easy and low stress compared to past jobs and the pay is good. My concern is that they went through bankruptcy proceedings right after I got hired and they didn't match 401k for '16 and '17. I started in Nov. '16. They match 4% for new employees but want to put away more so I do 15%. What should I do? I am assuming they will start matching now that they are out of bankruptcy but I am concerned. [link] [comments]  |
| 30K in debt and I haven't made a payment in years. Posted: 01 Feb 2018 11:36 AM PST Hi PF. Please be kind. I am well aware that ignorant, stupid decisions have been made, but I am ready to stare this problem in the face and take action. I'd appreciate solid advice and not a bunch of financial shaming. I get it, I fucked up. Bad. I haven't made a payment since July of 2014. I been getting letters from different places so I don't know if they are the same loan or many different once. I have logged in to studentaid.ed.gov and according to them I owe a little over 30,000. Is that all I owe or is it possible I owe different loans? I been contacted by : U.S Department of Edu: 39, 401 General REvenue Corp. (loan is no longer there) $3,203 Fed Loans: 28,000 Direct Loans ACS Campus Products and Services (No longer contact me). 2,250 Alltran: Principal $2,250 I don't know where to start. I don't know where to see all that I own and who I owe it to. Please any advice will greatly be appreciated. Thank you [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Feb 2018 08:13 PM PST Right now I'm in a grace period but have 24k principal for my standard 10 year repayment plan for Stafford federal student loans (no different lenders or anything). Right now, my great lakes provider is estimating that if I make a monthly payment of $244 on time, every month, for 10 years then I will have paid 5k in interests over the course of 10 years. So my question is, can the amount of money that I pay towards interests over the life of my student loans go down if I pay the loan off quicker? Or is that 5k interests set in stone? For example, am I going to pay that 5k in interests even if I pay the loan off in lets say 5 years instead of 10? [link] [comments]  |
| Family I house sat for wants to give me a 1099 Posted: 01 Feb 2018 09:52 AM PST Hi there PF! I'll keep it short: I house sat for a couple for about 4 weeks while they traveled. They usually pay me a few hundred bucks, but this year decided they wanted to pay for me to get my AC fixed in my car (very nice of them, but also 99% certain it was because I would have to drive their dog to day care every so often, so they didn't want him in an non air conditioned car for 5 minutes to drive down the street). Well the bill came out to close to $900 I believe. They offered to pay it as my fee, and leave it at that. I like them a lot, so I agreed. Well they just contacted me a few weeks ago asking for all my info, and told me they'd need to make a 1099 for me for that money. I wasn't super prepared for that, but I realize it was a significant amount of cash. I guess my question is, is a 1099 the right thing for this? Am I technically a contractor? And how likely is this to be a huge tax issue? I'm a pretty poor student, so that much money will effectively add probably 5-8% of my gross income. Will I need to file other forms outside of my usual 1040 in this case? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| About to pay off a loan in lump sum, need some advice Posted: 01 Feb 2018 01:34 PM PST Family has offered to pay off all of my student loan (they have already transferred me most of the money, god bless them), provided I invest the monthly payments I was going to make on the said loan off my income in some traditional mutual fund. My credit score is quite poor (~560), partly due to this loan. I have also had an account become delinquent with Citizens bank because I did not make the minimum of one monthly transaction to avoid the fee, which must have added up to about $50-100 (not sure at all) before the account was closed by the bank. Only reason I opened this account was to get some additional discount on the loan interest rate. These two things have been the biggest factors contributing to the shitty score. So now, I am asking for any tips/ things I should be aware of regarding repaying this loan in lump sum to maximize any possible benefits and the credit score. Additional advice on researching and choosing the mutual fund / other passive instruments would be great as well! Some background on me: Non-citizen Appreciate this sub, thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How much home/condo can we really afford? Posted: 01 Feb 2018 07:30 PM PST I want to see what PF believe my SO (28) and I (30) can afford for a house or condo payment. The calculators out there seem to say we can afford X amount, but the monthly payment with tax, ins, HOA seem absurd and I dont know how we could afford that for 30 years. I wanted to get people's opinion on here on what is a realistic affordable number. We are moving to San Francisco and are looking at maybe purchasing. We currently pay $2,400 a month in rent and that seems comfortable. We are maxing 401ks and IRAs right now. Maybe I dont realize how much the mortgage interest deduction will knock off in payment for us? Income:
Fixed Monthly Expenses:
My SO's work currently pays for all of the car expenses. If she were to leave, we would have to buy a car and all the expenses that come with that. Debt:
Assets:
[link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Feb 2018 07:15 PM PST I graduated business school in May of 2017 and was sure I would be in law school by January of 2018. The forgiveness period on my loans was 6 months from the day of graduation and the first student loan payment was due last month. I live in Florida and the schools are all in Florida. I did not get into the law school I wanted and now I will have to wait until August of 2018 to get a response again. I'm retaking the LSAT and revamping my file to make sure I get a better chance of being accepted. In the meantime, I moved back in with my parents and they are helping me with a lot already (housing, food, insurance...) but I have no income whatsoever and I have student loan payments coming in. The total for these is about $500 a month. I want to get a job and start paying these off but I was told if I make anything more than $4,000 a year they won't provide me with any loans for law school. I want to get a job, desperately, but I'm afraid if I do then I won't qualify for loans in August and won't be able to attend law school. I want to get a job, I want to go out and scream, I want to cry, I want to run. My birthday was a few weeks ago and I spent the day crying and feeling like I'm just piling on more and more debt but at the same time I'm so close to getting into my dream school and finishing my dream career that I don't want to stop now. I'm getting teary-eyed as I type this because I feel like I have no way out of this one. But if you have any suggestions as to what I can do please let me know. [link] [comments]  |
| I owe $4000 in taxes but I only make $15,000 a year Posted: 01 Feb 2018 03:35 AM PST What happened?! I work as a teaching assistant at a special needs school and don't make very much. Usually I qualify for an earned income credit and get back a few hundred at tax time but this year they are saying I owe 2600 in federal and 1300 in state taxes. What should I do? I did get some federal health insurance premium subsidies this year, which I was expecting to have to pay back, but they only provided me with $2000 in benefits for the year so it just doesn't add up. The biggest thing was I acquired control of my dad's stock account. He saved up around $15,000 for me for college and I never used it. He set it up as some kind of stewardship and they forced him to give it to me completely once I turned 26. Before it transferred over though he sold all the stocks and the money was just sitting in a money market waiting to be reinvested. I'm thinking they are taxing me on the stocks sold since it happened in 2017, even though it was in my dad's name when it was sold. I don't have that kind of money, and paying a third of the college money is some bullshit. Is this normal? Should I try and avoid taxes by opening an IRA or something? Or did I just mess up somewhere on my taxes and it's all a mistake? [link] [comments]  |
| Is it weird for me to get a second job in the same industry? Posted: 01 Feb 2018 01:05 PM PST Sorry if this doesn't fit here, but I figured I'd get better advice here than askreddit. I work in manufacturing full time at one job, four 10 hr shifts Monday-Thursday and some Fridays. I have the opportunity to get a second job at another place doing very similar work just on Saturdays. I'm not hurting for money but I am young and only have one year of experience in my industry so I mostly see it as just that, a chance to gain experience and see how others do things. My dilemma stems from the fact that I signed an NDA at my original job. Do you think there is any conflict? Also how do you think my original employer would react, or should I tell even tell them? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| If you have Nelnet for your student loans, payment allocation changes are coming soon. Posted: 01 Feb 2018 05:19 PM PST https://www.nelnet.com/payment-allocation-update From their website: We are changing the way we allocate your loan payments after your current amount due is paid. Beginning at the end of February, if you have more than one loan serviced by Nelnet, any payment amount you make in excess of your current amount due will be allocated based on interest rates and repayment status. This may help you pay down your loans with the highest interest rate more quickly when you pay extra, which may save money in the long run. This shouldn't prevent you from also overpaying on specific loan groups. You can also opt to continue to have the overage divided up among all of your loans. A pretty neat change, if you ask me. [link] [comments]  |
| Roommate is flaky on bills. Would switching services to solely his name save my credit score? Posted: 01 Feb 2018 06:26 PM PST Right now, we're both on things like electric, internet, etc. I was wondering if switching these services into solely his name could prevent my credit from being damaged if things go unpaid. I'm honestly more concerned with this than having things shut off, simply because I'm not home very often. [link] [comments]  |
| For Working Parents: traveling for higher paid consultant work vs. full time employer close to home Posted: 01 Feb 2018 04:50 PM PST I work as a financial crimes investigator for a large international bank. Decent salary, benefits, 401k etc. But I have the opportunity to do the same type of work on a consultant/contract basis which could almost double my income, but would require a lot of travel. I have a wife and kids (under 5) so my question, for working parents is, would it be worth it to take on a contracting role where I will have to travel for long periods at a time (can fly home on weekends) but can increase our earnings? Or would I regret effectively "missing" a few years of my kids lives just to earn a buck? I'm torn as the money would put us in a better place but I don't want to look back and feel like I missed some priceless memories that I can't get back.... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Feb 2018 03:30 PM PST I am the breadwinner in the house. My wife is a stay at home mom with our 10 month old. So I'm trying to think of something I can do to at least break even. We would now qualify for SNAP but that takes time to get approved for and we were just informed that the hourly changes happen next week. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
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