Personal Finance Weekend Discussion and Victory Thread for the week of July 05, 2019 |
- Weekend Discussion and Victory Thread for the week of July 05, 2019
- Eating Out Kills
- Overcharged for credit card purchase - merchant faked my signature on receipt.
- I am getting charged $37.69 in interest on a $0.02 underpayment of 2018 State Taxes
- TransUnion dispute has exceeded 30 day threshold with no correspondence from them and no changes to dispute status via their website.
- Starting over at 27 with no job, need direction on what is realistic and where to start
- Word Of Warning
- Financed a $20k car and regret it. I'm panicking.
- How to prove your personal HSA contributions to the IRS?
- What are my options for a loan ?
- What is the right balance between saving money and paying off loans fast, and actually living a life that’s worth living?
- Employer changed retirement policy from company contributing every paycheck to making a lump sum contribution at the end of year.
- Whole Life with a twist
- Clarifying the Annual Gift Tax Amounts
- Roth IRA Conversion Questions
- Mint found fraudulent account
- Thinking of leaving my job, but I would be leaving behind a pension.
- Just applied for part time work! Feeling optimistic on my future.
- Any Reason Not to Do This?
- Getting severely underpaid while increasing the company's revenue by 70% for the last 3 months.
- Sell house to pay off debt?
- How much should I be putting into my savings account from each paycheck during my summer internship?
- So I deposited money orders into my bank ATM, but it turns out my bank doesn’t accept them
| Weekend Discussion and Victory Thread for the week of July 05, 2019 Posted: 05 Jul 2019 02:05 PM PDT If you need help, please check the PF Wiki to see if your question might be answered there.This thread is for personal finance questions, discussions, and sharing your success stories:
A big thank you to the many PFers who take time to answer other people's questions! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 09:24 AM PDT I am a 22M and have just realized how badly I've been screwing myself eating out every day B/L/D I've know for awhile now that I'd be much better off cooking at home but hadn't ever really bothered to figure out how much it was costing me. I now realize that I spend more on food a month than I do on rent and I've now racked up $2200 in credit card debt that's just added up a little bit at a time. I used to spend a check on rent and a check paying off the card but my habit has gotten to the point where a paycheck no longer covers it. I've always known eating out was killing me physically. Now that I know that it's killing me fiscally its been eating at my mind killing me mentally. I'm at a loss on what to do to kill this habit and stop spending money. I need to get rid of that debt before something bad happens. Update/Edit: I've gotten a ton of really good recommendations from you all and I genuinely appreciate the support, kind words, and advise given. I've installed Mint and have set a budget for $100 for eating out for the month. I will be going to the grocery store tonight to pick up: * x1 Gallon of Milk * x1 Box of Raisin Bran Crunch * x1 Carton of Eggs * x1 Package of Cheese sticks * x1 5 piece package of chicken breasts * x5 packages of various veggies * x2 packages of salad mix * x1 form of beef like thing I'll post an update in a week or so to let you know how it went. With any luck I'll save some money and maybe drop some of those fast-food-pounds. Thanks again! [link] [comments]  |
| Overcharged for credit card purchase - merchant faked my signature on receipt. Posted: 05 Jul 2019 09:11 AM PDT Hello! I have a dispute with my bank (BOA) that I have not been able to resolve. About 3 months ago I spent $6 at an ice cream truck. When I check my statement a couple weeks later I had been charged $60. I contacted BOA, explained the situation, and they stated they would temporarily reimburse me the $54 difference and open an investigation. I thought it would get resolved here but boy was I wrong. They responded a few weeks later saying that my dispute had been rejected because the merchant provided a signed receipt - I never signed anything!! The only thing I can conclude is that merchant knowingly forged my signature. BOA sent me a photocopy of the receipt they received from the merchant and it is clearly not mine. I called again and requested that they pull up photos of my other signed receipts for comparison - my signature is quite consistent and the signature provided by the ice cream merchant looks nothing alike. They stated that they could not help me further. Do I have any recourse? I've never heard of something like this happening and haven't been able to find much info online. It's obviously not worth me hiring anyone to help but I just feel that I've been wronged. Any advice would be appreciated, thank you! tl;dr I was overcharged by ice cream truck, disputed the charge, merchant forged my signature on receipt, Bank of America sided with merchant. [link] [comments]  |
| I am getting charged $37.69 in interest on a $0.02 underpayment of 2018 State Taxes Posted: 05 Jul 2019 11:46 AM PDT Hi, I live in Maryland and have been contacted to the 'Comptroller of Maryland' that I have under payed my taxes. According to their calculations I owed them $0.02 more than the check I wrote this past tax season for my 2018 taxes. They are now requesting that I pay them $37.69 in interest plus the $0.02 in unpayed taxes. (The notice specifically says that the charge is interest. There is no mention of penalties or fees.) According to Maryland tax code I can only be charged 12% of the unpayed taxes annually, or additionally be charged 25% of the unpayed taxes as a fee. Which in this case only comes out to $0.0074. Not the 1,853,450% fee they seem to be wanting to charge me. What can I do to dispute this ridiculous charge? Should I just pay them the fee? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 10:14 AM PDT Title. Other bureaus have been quick to respond and provide updates during dispute process. Started dispute on 6/1 and haven't received any contact or updates from them once my dispute was "sent for manual processing". Has anybody else experienced this? [link] [comments]  |
| Starting over at 27 with no job, need direction on what is realistic and where to start Posted: 05 Jul 2019 05:38 PM PDT Hey Reddit Made a throwaway account as I am embarrassed to be in this position, but through therapy have found strength to ask for advice. I am 27 and in desperate need of guidance after a decade of bad habits. I quit my job 2 months ago without another lined up as it was becoming toxic, abusive, and critically endangering my mental health stability. I applied for unemployment and am still in that process (have my interview next week). I also signed up with my city's job center and am actively applying. I was passively job hunting since the beginning of the year, and now it is all engines running. I am committed to doing better and need help formulating an attack plan for the next, well lifetime, until I battle my way out of debt Here are my monthly expenditures:
and then my loans/credit cards
I know without stable income as a guide, it might be hard to get advice. But I want a plan of attack to work on now as I eventually start bringing in more money. More details: Currently live in a studio. I do not have family to ask for help, they kicked me out when I was 17. I don't have close friends and of the ones I know by name, we are all pretty much struggling. My last job I was making $33k. Credit score is 580, I racked up a lot of credit card debt being young, dumb and vulnerable to people who took me in, not going to beat myself up over it further. I am relatively in a much better place now mentally and want to work on getting the rest of my life stable. I paid July's rent and the rest of my bills earlier this week and that officially brought my checking and savings account balance to $0. I am applying to everything like I said earlier and earlier today submitted my information to start delivering food for PostMates and Uber on my bike. Please give me all the advice you have and tips. It is not an excuse, but I never had proper guidance on how to make responsible healthy choices. I put in the work in therapy, and am ready to put in the work now to handle and attack this. I will research and learn on my own as well starting with this sub's wiki. If anyone has been in a similar life situation, I would love to hear advice and experience. If you need more information I am happy to answer questions, new to this so appreciate it all, thanks. Edit : added student loan debt and location [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 09:46 AM PDT So this post is not to Garner sympathy or anything like that, I've learned from my mistake I'm just hoping others can learn as well. Earlier this year I was in a bad place emotionally and financially, I took a Payday loan for 150 dollars from moneykey, now I could have paid it off from my first paycheck but I didn't I let payments get made instead. But then I checked my loan account and I was paying 500 dollars on a 150 dollar loan. I lost my job couldn't pay the rest off so just let the payments come. I never read the fine print never read what I was signing I was stupid. Now they are pulling money cause for whatever reason the bank didn't let one payment go through and they've pulled 3 extra payments. Please learn from my mistake read everything, don't just borrow money unless it's an emergency, and always only borrow enough that you can pay it back in full on your next paycheck. Now if you do need to borrow money my wife found lend up which has been really great, you can pick when you wanna pay it back, they add a little more interest the further back you push it but the interest isn't that bad in the first place. I've done it twice now 100 bucks for gas as my job is a little further from my house then I'd like but I only paid back 125, 25 dollars in interest. That is all sorry about the long post I do hope some folks can learn from my fuck up. [link] [comments]  |
| Financed a $20k car and regret it. I'm panicking. Posted: 05 Jul 2019 07:24 PM PDT I (25M) was in a terrible car accident (car completely totaled) about 2 years ago which left me with PTSD and a host of mental health issues. Immediately after, I replaced my car with the exact same model because I figured it "saved" me in the accident so was obviously a safe choice -- wrong. It made my PTSD much worse and constantly reminded me of the crash. Anyways, fast-forward to about a week ago and I decided I was going to get rid of it. Made the mistake of purchasing a car I always wanted (a mustang, used) at about $20k after taxes. I don't really know what I was thinking -- honestly, I really wasn't. I had never bought an expensive car like that before and know that the salesman screwed me on the price as well because I wasn't really prepared and let him talk me into it. Not only did I overpay and get screwed on my trade-in value, I financed about half the value at a high interest rate. I also under-calculated my insurance cost and that's murdering me now at about double the cost of my last car. The monthly payments are manageable at about $250/mo but I can't help but be consumed with an overwhelming sense of guilt and regret for spending so much on a car. Realistically, I can pay the remaining financed amount off within a year but the fact that I'm going to lose $5k+ trading it in really bothers me. I suppose this is a learning experience and all I can do at this point is pay it off as soon as possible. Sorry for the rant, I just feel like a really terrible/irresponsible person and don't really know what to do. [link] [comments]  |
| How to prove your personal HSA contributions to the IRS? Posted: 05 Jul 2019 10:10 AM PDT 5498-SA form has a box for "Total contributions made in 2018" but not for my contribution. In other words, I'm looking for how to prove the amount I put in line 2 of form 8889. I received a letter from the IRS asking me to pay income taxes on what I contributed to my HSA. They said even if I have proof of my contribution, I still can't deduct it but I'd still like to have it as the first step in fighting this. I know it should be tax free. [link] [comments]  |
| What are my options for a loan ? Posted: 05 Jul 2019 06:50 PM PDT I'll start off by saying a have bad credit with a previous loan that didn't get paid in full . I've been calling all the loan companies around my area trying to get a loan to get caught up in bills but I'm always denied due to credit I'm guessing . I'm looking to get a long term loan ( no more than $1,000) to get ahead of bills so I can finally start saving . Me and my wife probably bring home a little more than 3k a month combined so it wouldn't be hard to pay back the loan , it's just hard getting caught back up when your behind every week . Is there anyone that gives people with bad credit a chance on a loan , I also don't have a bank account at the moment ( getting one soon since my job is going to mandatory direct deposit the first of the month) so that might be a problem with online loans . Any help and advice is very appreciated , thanks . [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 04:28 AM PDT So, for some background, I'm leaving my job to go to grad school. I have an emergency fund, plus about $8,000 in savings, $21,000 between investments and retirement funds, and a bunch of savings bonds that I haven't checked in on in a while. I just turned 26. I'm getting paid for vacation I didn't use at my job (so, all of my available vacation days since I didn't take any this last year...or the year before that). My check will be about $3,000. I'm completely burned out from working so much these last few years (I worked during undergrad, and immediately after I graduated, worked 6 days a week, and finally in this last year, I was only working 5 days a week with some remote work on the weekends). So, my plan was to take a 10-day vacation before school starts. I already booked my flights through frequent flyer miles, but when it came time to book my hotel and rental car, the costs got overwhelming. I haven't taken a vacation in 7 years so I was a little bit out of touch with how much hotels cost (I feel like $100/night is pretty expensive, no?). I cancelled my trip, and honestly I'm devastated. I was so excited. I was really looking forward to unplugging in the mountains of Washington State. But I figured that my money was best spent on my loans for grad school, which all-in-all will be about $25,000. But what's the right balance? Did I do the right thing? Or am I always going to regret not spending some time and money on myself just so that I can have fewer loan payments after grad school is over? I see my friends, who have more debt than I do, going on vacations and having all of these great experiences. It seems irresponsible to me, but am I just being overly cautious? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 07:28 PM PDT So my company is getting rid of benefits and one of the noticeable ones I saw was that they switched from Mass Mutual (which wasn't that great) to VOYA through ADP. The plan options are much less than what we have now (37 options) now with VOYA it's only 18 options. The expense ratios are all over 1.00, the lowest is .94 Per the new policy the company will only contribute based on last day rules. Meaning they'll only contribute at the last day of the year, but they also have the discretion to not pay anything. If I leave the company before end of year, I will not get the matching contribution. But if I remain employed at the time they will make the contribution, but they also have the right to not make any payment into my plan account. And any delayed payments are deferred until the last day of next year! Based on what I think they're doing, is making a system where they are no longer allowing pay increases at my company, and using the 401-K contribution to act like the bonus or merit increase. "Well, we did make the benevolent decision to contribute to your retirement account this year, so no real need to consider you for a bonus or merit increase. Can't be greedy." But the retirement plan is a job benefit as a condition to working there, not an award. Benefits are not supposed to be subject to job performance or merit. It's a benefit I should automatically receive without hinderance or review. This is bullshit. What should I do? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 04:10 PM PDT I recently took control of a whole life insurance policy in my name, taken out many winters ago. It's considered "fully paid up" and has no premiums. As far as I can tell over the last year, the cash value grows by ~$20/mo and the death benefit grows by a few thousand a year. I contribute nothing to this policy. I have never seen an instrument like this before. I know the usual advice is to cash out and invest in an index fund, but I can't think of a reason for this one in particular. I am approaching 40 and $5K frankly doesn't move the needle much; from my perspective the cash value is essentially a HYSA that also pays more in case of death, something I can keep as a last-dollar situation. My only other life insurance is a small policy through work, but I have no dependents and a positive net worth so I don't need much as it is. I would shop for a term policy if family circumstances changed. I feel like I'm missing something, has anyone encountered this before? [link] [comments]  |
| Clarifying the Annual Gift Tax Amounts Posted: 05 Jul 2019 06:51 PM PDT I looked it up online but wanted to get some confirmation to make sure I understood it correctly. In California, USA you're annually allowed to get up to $15,000 from an individual without paying taxes on the transaction. There is a lifetime exemption of $11,200,000. Do you ONLY get taxed for annual gifts above $15,000 if you've also gone past your lifetime exemption limit? Example. Let's say I've never gotten any gifts and someone decided to gift me $300,000 which is way more than the annual $15,000 limit. Do I have to pay taxes on it? Thank you for the clarification. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 06:49 PM PDT I have a traditional IRA that I started this year, and it has only about $1300 in it. I learned today that the max income limit for a single person of $137k is based on MAGI. I had thought it was based on gross income, which is false. If I base my income on MAGI, I qualify for a Roth IRA without doing a backdoor. Here's my plan:
Is my plan above the right way to handle this? Is there any issue with doing the conversion now vs. the end of the year? When do I fill out the tax form 8606? Is it next year during tax time or now? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 06:37 PM PDT In January I saw a charge on my bank account for something MoneyLion, I called my bank and they refunded me my money. Wednesday I got an email from Mint that showed that there was a delinquent account reporting from Transunion, apparently the MoneyLion charge was connected to an account being fraudulently opened. I'm note sure how it showed up in Mint but I'm glad it did. Today I filed a fraud claim online with Transunion. What should I do next? How do I check with the other reporting agencies to make sure no fraud accounts are there? [link] [comments]  |
| Thinking of leaving my job, but I would be leaving behind a pension. Posted: 05 Jul 2019 04:58 PM PDT I have been with my company for 15 years. When I started, a pension was part of the package, but it was phased out a few years later for new employees in favor of the company matching 401k contributions up to a certain %. (I do not get this match since I still have the pension plan) The company covers all of the costs and payments, I do not pay anything into it. As of my 3/31/2019 statement, my "accrued benefit" is $3,799.67 which I assume it my monthly payment when I reach retirement age. I do not know much else about it, but I assume the longer I work here and the higher my salary goes, the more they pay into it - leaving me with a higher monthly payment at retirement accordingly. I am considering leaving for another job, and let's assume almost everything else will be equal - salary, health coverage etc. except new company will match 401k up to 6%. Would I be pretty shortsighted to leave the pension benefit behind and all of the potential additional free money that could be accrued if I were to stay put? The only reason I am considering leaving is due to the commute. I would go from about 1h 15m one way to about 10 minutes one way. So a better quality of life and hopefully more time with the kids. There is no major financial or career upside, I would be doing the same exact job with the same exact growth prospects. Thanks for reading. I don't know if I should just tough it out with the commute so as so avoid costing myself $. [link] [comments]  |
| Just applied for part time work! Feeling optimistic on my future. Posted: 05 Jul 2019 10:33 AM PDT I posted recently about my debts and what to with some money I will have access to soon. I decided that in the mean time, I will do what I can to work diligently to pay down my debts so that I can use the money more efficiently. The part time work will go alongside my full time job, where I don't make that much money, but have a high sense of personal fulfillment. I do have opportunities to advance and to have higher pay, but not in the immediate future, so I decided to take my money into my own hands and see how it goes! Thanks for the support and advice. I'm looking forward to continued learning from this sub. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 02:13 PM PDT I have $80k in an Elite Money Market at a local bank earning 1.73%. Using Depositaccounts.com I found Northpointe Bank in Grand Rapids offering 2.55% with a minimum balance of $25k. Any reason I shouldn't immediately just transfer all $80k into a new savings with this institution? I'm thinking about putting $50k into a 12-month 2.85% CD, but I can do that subsequently and this would still leave me with a balance in excess of the required $25k. [link] [comments]  |
| Getting severely underpaid while increasing the company's revenue by 70% for the last 3 months. Posted: 05 Jul 2019 09:58 AM PDT A couple weeks ago I made a thread on a different sub asking for guidance and advice on how I should go on about asking my boss for a raise. I have been working at this company for about 4 years now and 3 months ago I was asked to move to marketing since I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to SEO and SEM. The week before I was supposed to start the new position my boss said to me " If you prove to be a difference in the company when you start doing SEO, you will be making much more money than you are making now since you're current position doesn't have much more room to grow." I agreed, since I was only making 17/hr so lets fast forward a little bit. After 2 months my boss told me he gave me a raise and payroll came around and when I checked it was just a $1 raise, which to be honest felt like it is nothing based on the improvements so far but at the same time I dont want to sound ungrateful. I am making about 37k a year, being a 27 Y.o in NYC this is not much really. SO I decided to check on payscale,Indeed, DoL, GLassDoor and salary.com and found out I was making 20k less than the entry level, mind you I have about 5 years of experience doing SEO and SEM. I love the job and I have been putting 70 hours a week in the job which I basically get 50 hours out of the 70 because I just love doing what I do and when I have some free time at home I really just work. Please guys go over the screenshots and tell me if I am being a little too sensitive with this or am I really just reaching? If you guys think I should ask for the raise How do I make case clear and how to proceeded. I have never asked for a raise before in my life and this is SCARY! Results : April 2019 compared to March 2019 : https://imgur.com/R9trAfo May 2019 compared to April 2019 : https://imgur.com/5vdrLy0 June 2019 - compared to May 2019 : https://imgur.com/3fzSSuY April to June 2019 compared to December to March : https://imgur.com/nf5H9IB same 3 months of last year compare to this year : https://imgur.com/wgWb9Hc [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2019 04:15 PM PDT We have racked up $70k in credit card debt since buying our first home in 2012. We have a home that is worth around $585k and our mortgage balance is $370k. I really think it's time to sell the house and rent for a while. It's hard to make ends meet nowadays and I'm NOT considering filing for bankruptcy, I just want to pay off the debts and move on. What do you think? [link] [comments]  |
| How much should I be putting into my savings account from each paycheck during my summer internship? Posted: 05 Jul 2019 07:54 PM PDT I'm making about 1000 each paycheck (every 2 weeks from working 40 hrs a week). I'm going to be graduating next summer so I'm mostly saving for somewhere to live once I graduate depending on where I get a job. I'm planning on trying to find a new job in a whole new city out of state (let's say the Dallas area) so this would likely be an expensive move. I've been taking out a few hundred the last couple of paychecks and putting it in my savings account (I already had 2300 saved to start the summer). Am I already saving enough, too little, or too much? Thanks in advance for any advice [link] [comments]  |
| So I deposited money orders into my bank ATM, but it turns out my bank doesn’t accept them Posted: 05 Jul 2019 07:48 PM PDT Sorry if this isn't the right subreddit to post this on, but I didn't know where else I could get advice on this for. So basically, I received two money orders today (my job gave out the past two pay periods payment through money orders because they ran out of checks) and since my bank (Bank of America) is closed, I used the ATM to deposit my two money orders through checks. Very stupid of me to do that without checking if the ATMs even accepted money orders, I know, but what's done is done. So what I was thinking is to just call that bank first thing in the morning tomorrow and see if I can come in person to get the money orders back, but is it possible they might hold on to it and send me the money orders back through mail? I'm just worried because my pay was already given to me a little late and I can't afford to wait another two weeks to receive my next pay. Any help is appreciated, and thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
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