Personal Finance I got scammed out of $990 today and am feeling down about it |
- I got scammed out of $990 today and am feeling down about it
- Ex wife called to say she was receiving CC offers for me at her address, and I've never lived there.
- Offered a $2 an hour pay raise, but also the employer wants me to move from Salary to Hourly
- Feeling chumpy over a "12-mo interest free" Loan. They applied a portion of my first payment to interest!
- Emergency Fund vs Investment Account
- Girlfriend isn't sure how much she should be paying for federal income tax, employer says they are withholding the right amount
- Any disadvantages to paying off a mortgage early?
- How often should you buy a car?
- Anyone familiar with ADP?
- How to properly sell a car
- Please give me advice - Learning to budget. Is it enough? Am I making the right choices?
- Scammed out of $20k by my "best friend", desperate for help
- Should I go back to renting or save up to buy a place?
- Was I screwed out of $12,000 or am I misunderstanding?
- In the middle of home buying a surprise collections appeared on my credit report. Is there anything I can do?
- Student loan debt vs investments
- Taking Advantage of a Low Income Year: Retirement Account Conversion
- Doesn’t it just make sense for most people to have over 6 months of expenses saved?
- $2600 extra per month-advice/pointers needed
- Father in law wants to buy life insurance for child
- Sold some property, never had this amount of cash before..taxes? Tips for making it work?
- Can one invest exact dollar amounts in a Vanguard index fund?
- I'm currently upside down on a car loan
| I got scammed out of $990 today and am feeling down about it Posted: 15 Oct 2020 03:36 PM PDT As the title states :( Reading posts in this sub from others who have been in my shoes has been a source of comfort though, and I'd like to post about what happened to me, in case it in any way helps someone else avoid being victimized in the same way. I was approached by a man outside my bank this afternoon who showed me a money order check for $990. He told me it was his daughter's birthday, and because his own account was overdrawn by $500, he asked if I could deposit the money order for him and give him the cash, minus $40 for my troubles. That way, he would have $950 to spend on his daughter instead of the $490 he'd get from depositing it into his own overdrawn account. I should've been hearing major alarm bells at this point, but he caught me in a moment when I was slightly in a hurry and on a day I was in a good mood. My only previous experience with money orders was knowing that they're meant to be guaranteed funds, I didn't really question that it could be fake. So I deposited the money order at the ATM into my account, which accepted the funds, and withdrew $990. I honestly did feel a slight tingle of doubt as I handed him the wad of cash, but...foot in the door syndrome I guess. I looked at him and said "I'm choosing to trust you." He thanked me, stated he wasn't the type of person to do that, and offered me $40 back. I declined and told him to keep it for his daughter. He left before me, as I had another check to deposit. The bank is on a busy street in Brooklyn and as I walked out a few minutes later, I was waved over by a group of women who were selling masks on the sidewalk nearby. As soon as they called to me, my stomach sank because I understood immediately what had just happened. I felt foolish for taking that leap of faith on a complete stranger. But it's been a rough year for many people, while I have been blessed with stable income throughout the pandemic. I wanted to help...I myself moved to the neighborhood last winter and have encountered many random acts of kindness, and I just wanted to believe that he was telling the truth. Anyway, the ladies told me that guy had been hanging around the bank for weeks, and were upset for me when I told them how much I'd given him. They brought me inside the bank to speak with the security guard, even though at this point I didn't have any intention of trying to get the money back. I was visibly upset as I told the security guard what happened, and he was very comforting. After a gentle lecture on not trusting strangers, he told me that ultimately I did what I did out of kindness, and that the universe will return that energy and provide in other ways. I know this is a learning lesson, one that costs some people much more, and that what I lost today is ultimately replaceable. Trying to be thankful for that instead of feeling like a gullible idiot :( [link] [comments]  |
| Ex wife called to say she was receiving CC offers for me at her address, and I've never lived there. Posted: 15 Oct 2020 05:59 AM PDT I'm verifying my credit reports again, but I have never lived at her current address and it has never in the past been listed on any of my credit reports. I have a credit freeze in with all agencies and monitor regularly. Is there something I can do to address this? [link] [comments]  |
| Offered a $2 an hour pay raise, but also the employer wants me to move from Salary to Hourly Posted: 15 Oct 2020 10:15 AM PDT The company I work for bought out another company and my old boss left because someone wound up taking his job. I got left with a lot of his duties and felt I was handling it well and was expecting a promotion. So my new boss recently gave me an offer for a new position that pays $2 more an hour, but now I have to be hourly and track my time and work an extra 30 minutes a day. I know that I can make more money up doing overtime, but it's really not about the money as it is flexibility and it kind of feels like a demotion. Has anyone else ever had this situation? FYI I was making $28 an hour when I was salary and now as an hourly employee I'll be at $30. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Oct 2020 05:36 PM PDT tl;dr : Last month, I took out a "12-mo, no interest, same-as-cash loan" for house repair. A portion of my first payment has been applied to interest. Their BBB reviews are horrible. I am afraid I'm stuck. Every article I read about same-as-cash loans describes it similarly to a deferred interest loan, which I understand quite well: if you pay the principal before the 12-mo period ends, no interest will be charged. What a wonderful way to build credit for someone confident they can make all payments within the year! Well, that's not what my loan is, apparently. These terms say they will "waive" my interest, if balance paid in full within the 12-mo window. Someone please explain this: If they apply some of each payment toward interest, how is that "No Interest" for a year, and how can I pay my balance in full if they keep paying themselves first with my payments? Am I supposed to pretend and trust that the portion they're applying to interest right now will later be applied to principal as their "waive" of interest? Added stressors: 1. Interest accrues daily at 17.99% per annum. Real balances are not provided on statements or online (must call). 2. Statement shows a "principal balance" with asterisk: "not a payoff amount. for payoff amount, call us." Called, requested payoff statement so I could view my REAL balance. 3. It will be emailed and it will not include my account # or identifying information (which I suspect makes it invalid as a real payoff statement). 4. BBB reviews show it's near impossible to receive a payoff statement from them and 5. that they have previously refused to apply people's additional payments towards only principal upon request. Yes, I read every word of the contract before signing. I'm usually good about understanding the fine print and now I feel full of chump. Maybe I should just trust that a year from now, they'll move all that interest over to my principal. Does any of this sound right? [link] [comments]  |
| Emergency Fund vs Investment Account Posted: 15 Oct 2020 03:30 PM PDT Hi everyone, I currently have an emergency fund of about $10,000 in a savings account, and I'm considering dramatically reducing that amount. I will describe my logic below, and I'm curious what everyone thinks. 1) If I transfer that $10,000 to my investment account and leave it there for the next 30 years, I am likely to end up with a profit in excess of $100,000. 2) I have about $30,000 in investment accounts that are not tax-advantaged, so they can be liquidated fairly easily. Even in a significant recession, I can expect to have at least $15,000 available at any given time. I also have a fair amount in a Roth IRA that could be withdrawn with no penalty, although the opportunity cost of that would be considerable. Regardless, I have relatively easy access to enough money to survive several months without a job. 3) I have well over $50,000 in available credit across my various credit cards, so I have the ability to pay for most urgent expenses if necessary. Even if my credit were cut significantly, I should still have the ability to cover at least $10,000 of expenses immediately. 4) I live close to my parents, and I'm lucky enough to have a good support network. If my car gets stolen, I can carpool for long enough to get a new one. Even if my home gets destroyed tomorrow, I'm not going to be out on the street. Based on this, my conclusion is that I don't really need to have much of an explicit emergency fund. My current employment situation is such that a sudden job loss is extremely unlikely, but my very long term prospects are much less certain. Having that extra $100,000 might be really helpful down the road if I end up having to retire a year or two ahead of schedule. If I lose my job at the same time as a major stock market drop, it would be very unpleasant, but it wouldn't bankrupt me. Even in that worst case scenario, if it happens 10+ years from now, I'm better off having invested the $10,000. By that time, the money will have grown enough that even a 50% drop in the market won't bring its value down below $10,000. Is there a significant hole in my logic here? For someone in my situation, I'm just not seeing how I can justify the opportunity cost of leaving $10,000 in an account that earns essentially zero interest. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Oct 2020 06:59 PM PDT My (19M) girlfriend (18F) recently got her first job at a market near our hometown. She was looking at her paycheck and noticed that on the first paycheck her employer withheld no money for federal income tax and on her second paycheck only withheld $3 however they did take out what I'd consider a normal amount for social security. We're both students and her parents are divorced. Her filing status on her paycheck says "SMS" which does not match her state filing status of "F0". She asked the owner of the market and after he talked to a few people said that he believed they were withholding the correct amount and it was small cause she didn't "earn that much". She earned a little over $500 on her last paycheck (withholdings not included) and another girl she works with that gets very similar hours with the same pay got a much higher withholding other paycheck and the other girls filing status matches her state filing status which is F0. However this girl has been working at the market for a few years longer than she has (she started about a month ago). The owner told her there were changes to the way you file federal income tax this year (2020) and that was the reason for the discrepancy. Is this normal? I tried looking around and from my understanding, she should be paying at least 10% other income but the owner says they are withholding the full amount. She did just turn 18 about a week after she started to work there. If anyone could shed some light on this it would be greatly helpful. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Any disadvantages to paying off a mortgage early? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 05:21 PM PDT I owe about $70,000.00 on my current mortgage. I have a fairly high interest rate (5.75%) never refinanced because I always pay extra toward the principle each month and it never worked out to be beneficial to refinance because of what I would have paid in refinancing fees. I currently have a little over double what I owe on the mortgage in savings. What would be a disadvantage to using half my savings to pay off the mortgage? Are there any? Should I just jump in and pay it off?? [link] [comments]  |
| How often should you buy a car? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 03:20 PM PDT I often hear that if you want to buy a car it's best to buy a used car that's about 3-4 years old that way most of it's depreciation has already happened. On the other hand I have also heard about selling a car when it's about 10 years old before you start having problems with it. That means getting a new car every 7 years or so. Does that make sense financially? I know you don't have to live by these guidelines specifically. For example. I have a 2011 Honda Civic Ex with 145k miles on it and it hasn't given much trouble until more recently when I had to fix the A/C. Because of some changed in my life I now will be driving about 20k miles a year. Would it make sense to sell it by 2021? Edit: Thank you all for the replies! I guess my biggest concern was that I definitely don't want to be in a position where a repair is about to cost a ton of money and at that point wouldn't be able to get anything for the car anymore. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Oct 2020 03:48 PM PDT I'm sorry if this sounds confusing or too much. I'm wanting to change my deposit info. I have the option to add a bank but I can't choose "remaining amount" because my other bank already has that option chosen. I can either delete that bank, and add the new one. Or Add the new bank with only a % amount, then edit the amounts in both banks that i want. What would be preferred? Will anything get messed up in the process of doing this? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Oct 2020 05:26 PM PDT So I'm in a weird situation, but I'll try to keep it short. I'm selling a used vehicle. A guy from another state (he's in Virginia, I'm in Ohio) calls and wants to buy the car. He seems really nice and reputable, and we talked for about a half hour. We talked about the car and settled on the price, and he said he would drive a trailer up here and take it home. He offered to send a deposit via PayPal/Venmo or whatever I preferred. I told him it wasn't necessary, I'd just keep it listed for insurance. He said he would WIRE the money Monday, then come pick up up that Saturday. Am I missing something? Does this seem legit? Can I get scammed via wire? I tried to play his hand and said "hey can you just bring a cashier check instead?" And he just said "yeah that's fine". I'm just trying to poke holes in this because I'm so nervous about scammers. Is a wire payment the best way to go about this? I'm mainly nervous because this is a bit of a high asking price for the vehicle, and it feels weird to give out the bank information for a wire. BUT it is pretty rare, and he said he can't find one where he lives. Please tell me if I'm crazy and if Wire is the best way to take payment. Thank you all [link] [comments]  |
| Please give me advice - Learning to budget. Is it enough? Am I making the right choices? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 06:28 PM PDT Please give me advice on how I should manage my money, what to do, and if I am putting aside enough. I am working on being independent but I do not have anyone who can teach me or show me anything. I currently live with my parents and I plan on moving to a 2 bedroom apartment with my sister (sophomore in high school) so she can have a better education. I would also need to buy my own car. I landed my first job and will be starting next month but I do not know anything about roth, retirement, investing, savings, benefits, pto, etc. My sister and I prefer a frugal quiet life so we barely buy anything or go anywhere. Info about me: Age: 23 Location: Charlotte, NC Debt/Loans: $0 Savings: ~$25k Salary: $40k / year Planning (All approximate values I am putting aside): Rent: ~$1k
Internet: $70 Utilities: ? Car insurance: ? Renter's insurance: ? Food: ? maybe $500?
Entertainment: $100
Gas: ? Questions:
Thank you in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Scammed out of $20k by my "best friend", desperate for help Posted: 15 Oct 2020 07:56 AM PDT Hello Reddit, I come to you as a desperate and broken man. Basically one of my longest and closest "friends" scammed me out of $20k since late August. I don't know what exactly he got himself into but he convinced me and guaranteed that he would return the funds quickly, insured by his wealthy family. After many broken promises and excuses I called him out nasty and he has cut off all contact with me. The transactions were all done via Zelle/CashApp, linked to my Wells Fargo account over the last month and a half. We are in Texas, I have a lot of his personal information and message logs between us showing his many promises to pay. Is there anything I can do to get my money back? I trusted him like a brother and I know it was stupid but I am very hurt so please I don't need to be reminded, just looking for help and hopefully a way out of this terrible situation. [link] [comments]  |
| Should I go back to renting or save up to buy a place? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 04:55 PM PDT Throwaway here. I'm 30 years old and moved back in with my family about a year ago after some shitty circumstances in my late 20s. Long story short, I developed a gambling problem that led me to lose my job and blow through $200k in savings + my entire 401k. I spent the greater part of my time when I was 27-28 chasing a pipe dream and ending up nearly homeless with 10k in debt. I managed to get a new job about 4 months before I turned 29 and slept there for a few months/showering at the gym before deciding to come clean to my family and asked to stay with them. I paid for groceries and some rent though my parents were generous to me from the rent standpoint. Ended up staying longer than I thought I would since covid hit and it was not required for me to go to the office so I could just work remotely for a large portion of this year. At this job I was making $90k and I managed to build my 401k up back to $20k, along with having $65k in savings over the past 14 months. Ill be starting a new job next month that will increase my salary to $140k. Should I look for a place to rent or put my savings towards a down payment? My after tax take home pay will be around $7.5k-$7.8k a month. No other debts, and Im not sure if now is a good time to get into real estate given the whole COVID situation making a comeback. I guess considering all of this does it make sense to wait it out longer or in your opinion will housing prices more or less stay the same? [link] [comments]  |
| Was I screwed out of $12,000 or am I misunderstanding? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 06:59 PM PDT I am a 5th year senior about to graduate this semester. In 2019, I filed as independent for the first time, since it was the first time my parents "allowed" me too. Before my EFC (Expected Family Contribution) was always around $30,000 so never saw any FAFSA money. However, my parents didn't pay my tuition or rent or books, but did have some money for me in a 529. They did send me $100 monthly for food (they also pay my health insurance, phone bill, and car insurance). (Car insurance is $8/year because my car is so old). I paid my rent, books, tuition and took on $12,000 in debt. When I just now filled out my FAFSA, as an independent for the first time, my EFC went down to zero, my expected Pell Grant amount is ~$6,000. Since I'm about to graduate and this FAFSA was for the 2021-2022 school year, will I see a cent of that $6,000? Did my parents cost me $12,000 by not letting me file as independent 5 years ago? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Oct 2020 06:16 AM PDT We got pre-qualified for a mortgage and have been looking at homes for a couple of weeks. Today, I got a notification that I had a new collections account on my credit report! I looked into it and it's money owed on an electric bill from 5 years ago. I had no idea I even owed this, I thought I was completely paid up when we left. We lived overseas for a while so I'm assuming that's why I never got a letter or anything. Is there anything at all I can do to prevent this from effecting our mortgage? [link] [comments]  |
| Student loan debt vs investments Posted: 15 Oct 2020 03:08 PM PDT I wanted to get some perspective on my current situation: Debts:
Income:
Expenses:
Assets:
Currently I'm wondering if it's worth aggressively getting rid of the auto loan and paying down my student loans. I can see Dave Ramsey staring at me right now yelling at me to pay it all off. I've heard the argument that the market can perform better, inflation is ~2%, etc. I know some of this may be subjective as well but just wanted some perspective because I cannot decide. I do want to have cash on hand for a wedding next year maybe 20k for that as well as possible rental property purchase so maybe 30-40k. But besides that I feel secure and feel I may have too much cash on hand. Let me know what you all think. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Taking Advantage of a Low Income Year: Retirement Account Conversion Posted: 15 Oct 2020 12:25 PM PDT Situation: I will have very low income this year (around $2k) because I am in grad school. Before school I worked for a number of years, so I have money in traditional and Roth style retirement accounts. My idea: I want to convert some traditional style retirement funds into Roth. I understand I will have to pay income taxes on the converted funds, but, my marginal rate is currently 0%. I should be able to pay 0 income taxes on the conversion (assuming the converted funds don't bump me into the next bracket), right? Benefit: I think this strategy should make me better off in the long run because I will be able to pay 0 (or near 0) on taxes now and in the future I will not have to pay income tax when withdrawing from the Roth retirement accounts. This is better than keeping the money in the traditional style accounts and paying income tax in the future. Questions:
I imagine a lot of people may have lower than expected income this year because of Covid, so I hope other can look into this strategy too! [link] [comments]  |
| Doesn’t it just make sense for most people to have over 6 months of expenses saved? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 01:56 PM PDT So I know that the rule of thumb is 6 mo in normal times but 1 year if your situation isn't super stable. But in times like these/ many times when when you probably need your emergency fund - your situation isn't stable. On top of that, it takes a long time for most people to replenish their emergency fund. We have over 6 mo saved (and we could stretch it out for years if one of us continued to work) but it would still take us a bit to replenish the savings. On top of that, when it rains it pours. Multiple back to back emergencies would drain most people. With the exception of people paying down high interest debt or who don't really need emergency savings, doesn't it just make more sense to err on the side of caution and have more money saved? Edit for clarification: the question here is if 6 months is a large enough emergency savings or if the rule of thumb should be a larger amount. I know the typical advice is to start investing once you have 6 months of expenses saved but I'm wondering if instead of investing, you should just do more saving. [link] [comments]  |
| $2600 extra per month-advice/pointers needed Posted: 15 Oct 2020 05:23 PM PDT Note-downvoted by posting this in the Dave Ramsey sub. Are we not allowed to ask for pointers? $2600 extra per month-advice/pointers needed This is kind of all over the place. I apologize in advance. Background- We recently refinanced my house to get 2.9% from 4.5%. We did cash out and got 20,000 total to pay off some stuff/pay the mortgage people etc and we have close to $100,000 of equity on the house, not sure if that matters or not. I own a business and my husband does, too. I have 2 jobs (not including my business) that I make $3500 a month with, I'll say after taxes, $2600 is probably a good number to say I can save. We just started saving so this is all new. By the end of the year I should have $6000-7000 (maybe more) after paying taxes. I also got a Roth IRA and have $3500 in it. My goal is to put $6000 in it every year. That's it, for retirement. We are early 30s. On to my questions- 1-Say I have 7,000 in December of savings. Should I put $2500 in my Roth from it? 2-I owe 16k on my car. Should I put some of that money on my car, too? 3-By December next year, I should have over 30,000 in savings, less when I put it into my Roth IRA. Should I take most of it and pay off my car with it? 4-Once my car is paid off we will have no debt besides our mortgage. How much of the $30,000 that I save every year go into putting on my house? My mortgage is 1400 a month. Unfortunately it's a 30 year loan, but I plan on paying extra every month. I guess I'm just wondering how much extra I should put onto my house, and how much extra to put into savings for retirement. My husband isn't really on the same page when it comes to the extreme saving I want to do/am doing. So, I'm not including his income with this. He wastes a lot of money eating out, doing his motor cross stuff, etc. So, I figure I can at least control what I do with what I make. He did just pay cash for his truck so that's good, at least. Sorry this was all over the place, and thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Father in law wants to buy life insurance for child Posted: 15 Oct 2020 03:41 PM PDT So my well meaning father in law wants to buy one of these life insurance/investment things for my child. It's $25 a month which he can afford however I do not see him living more than a couple more years. I absolutely don't want to continue paying it once he dies. I realize this is kinda of a relationship question but what can I tell him is a good alternative or maybe just what is bad about this thing? I know he bought one for my wife when she was a kid. He's a simple kind of guy so it's going to have to be easy to understand. [link] [comments]  |
| Sold some property, never had this amount of cash before..taxes? Tips for making it work? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 07:16 PM PDT Hello! I'd like to open with this is my first ever post on Reddit on any account I've had, despite having this account forever and never really using it. Branching out here in 2020. Anyway, I just sold some farmland to my uncle and got a pretty sizeable chunk of change, at least to me. I was curious what I'm looking at as far as taxes and how this may differ from standard income. Maybe also some quick advice on how to make this money work for me? I was told I wouldn't have to be worrying about capital gains or anything like that. I want to be as responsible as possible but I kind of feel like that kid who always wanted to be dropped by himself in a candy store but you just don't even know where to start ince you get there. I'm excited, but again, want to be responsible. Thank you in advance for any assistance. [link] [comments]  |
| Can one invest exact dollar amounts in a Vanguard index fund? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 04:44 PM PDT For instance, if I want to invest exactly 1270.65, is that possible? Or does it have to be in dollar increments? [link] [comments]  |
| I'm currently upside down on a car loan Posted: 15 Oct 2020 06:56 PM PDT I owe $10,500 on a car that's only worth about $8,000. How much damage would it do to my credit if I just gave the car back to the bank? [link] [comments]  |
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