Personal Finance

Between rent and school payments, I am paying quite a lot over ACH and am wondering if there’s any way to also get some benefits back from these payments.

There are cards out there like the “Fold” card that will give back up to 1.5% in BTC for ACH transactions, but that’s contingent on you spending a lot on other transactions and the card also has a $100 annual fee.

I don’t care if the rewards are USD, BTC or booster packs of Pokémon cards. I’d just like something back from these transactions.

I'm young and a student and I have most of my savings in a VMFXX money market account which I basically use as a low risk place to set and forget my money. Most of this fund is federal cash and securities. I like that it is there when I need it and that it makes more interest than a savings account.

I've been hearing vague things about Elon Musk messing with the treasury since Trump got elected and there is just seems to be a lot more uncertainty in the federal government overall.

The value of the money in this money market account has never dropped before, but is there any risk that the current administration could mess things up enough that my savings could be at risk? If so, is there anywhere else I could leave my money that would be similarly low risk but earn more interest than a savings account with my credit union?

Location: USA

My last job was barely paying me enough to get by and when I had a health issue last year I fell several months behind on my mortgage and other bills. That medical issue has since been resolved so I am no longer falling further behind but I am also not catching up.

Things are starting to look better though because I have recently gotten a new job which should pay slightly more (starting hourly rate is barely higher but overtime is more likely) and it should vastly reduce my expenses (cheaper and better insurance along with a company provided vehicle and gas). In addition it is going to be a far more secure job in the comming economic crisis. Honestly, it's also looking like my dream job. However this new job requires me to purchase many of my own tools. There is a tool stipend but it accumulates hourly and only pays out quarterly so I will need to front my own tool costs to start with. The problem here is that even the cheap tools are going to cost me about $1000 and if I want a set of tools just good enough that they aren't an active hinderance I'm looking at closer to $2000. I currently have no money which isn't allocated to bills that I am already behind on.

It seems like a simple solution would be to take out a loan from my 401k. Right now I could take out a maximum loan of a bit over $6,000. $5,000 would be just about the perfect amount to catch up on all of my bills and buy the tools needed to do my new job. If I set it at a 5 year repayment term then the monthly repayment is under $100 which I should definitely be able to afford with my new job. I could go with a shorter repayment plan but my thinking is that without knowing exactly what my finances are going look like, I want to have the smallest required payments and just plan to pay it off early if my finances are where I expect they will be even if that means I pay a bit more in interest.

At the same time I don't like the idea of taking out a loan to pay off debts that aren't charging me any interest. My bank isn't forclosing on me yet and, considering I am still paying them every month, I doubt that they will. My medical bills may go to collections if I let them sit much longer but there aren't any late fees and I can always pay off the collections company as I get money. Just looking at the money it almost seems like the more financially sound long term plan would just be to choose to fall a bit farther behind on my bills now to buy my tools and then catch up on those bills later. My credit is already trash and will be for a while. But I also already own my home, have no plans of moving, and tend to buy dirt cheap used vehicles with cash, so I don't really need a good credit score right now or anytime soon. So my late bills really aren't doing anything but causing me stress right now. Does it really make financial sense to start paying interest on a loan just to get rid of that stress?

At this point I am heavily leaning towards taking out the loan. But I can't help but feel that I'm going to be paying a whole bunch of money in interest just to feel more secure. I've also never taken out a 401k loan before. So should I take out the 401k loan or just temporarily fall even more behind on my bills? Also if I should take out the loan is there anything I need to know about 401k loans or any pitfalls to watch out for?

Pretty much as the title says.

The wife and I are currently using Simplifi and it works well enough, but I’ve been hearing a decent amount about Monarch Money. Just curious if anyone here has tried both and why they prefer one vs the other. Even if you haven’t tried Simplifi, if you’ve used Monarch, I’d be curious your opinions of it!

I'm a complete newbie. The only "investing" I've ever done is use HYSAs. Obviously the yield there, while pretty good, isn't as good as investing in say, the S&P 500. So I want to invest a chunk of my savings into that and just leave it there until I retire. I'm not really looking into daily/active trading or anything. The problem is I don't know how fees work with brokers.

I saw this graph a while ago so I was thinking of Fidelty. It also helps that I already have an account there for my employer RSUs and my 401k. On the other hand, a colleague of mine suggested Schwab and said they don't have any fees.

Can anyone suggest the best broker (minimal/no fees, easy-to-use, set-and-forget) that I should go with if I just want to invest in the S&P 500?

There's a pretty popular savings chart in the personal finance community, and I just noticed it seems to be missing the option for when your employer offers an ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) unless I'm completely missing it.

Where would you guys put it if you could add it to this chart?

10 years ago, I graduated Uni with no debt and about $1,000 net worth.

My first job (engineer) paid $100k/yr. After taxes & expenses, I saved $70k per year for 3 years.

With $200k net worth, I lived on $5k per year and for the past 7 years, I worked only 30% of the time – just enough to cover my expenses without dipping into my savings.

This year I sold bitcoin (bought for $7,000. sold for $1,000,000). My target to retire-retire was $800,000, so I've finally reached my goal.

The sell orders executed so fast that I don't know where to put it. I already stuffed every US bank that I have to the $250k FDIC max, but my last sell order exceeds that. I've applied to open bank accounts with maybe 100 banks in the US, and I've only succeeded in opening 1. My requirements:

[1] No monthly fees
[2] No inactivity fees
[3] No phone or phone number required
[4] Online Banking with 2FA support (TOTP, Webauthn, or email)

99% of the banks that I've tried to open with auto-deny me. My credit is great. When I call and ask why, they say something about the information I gave them not matching their records. The ones that have an appeal process told me "the system" denied me, and there's nothing they can do – even supervisors.

My long-term plan is to buy a small condo in a city and a lot of land in the country. But it'll probably take me 6-24 months to find and finish those deals, and in the meantime I want to keep my money somewhere safe.

I'm also a bit worried about the USD tanking. I've looked into banks in Europe and Canada, but Canada requires a tax ID and I only speak English. Can anyone recommend a very stable bank abroad (with English language support) that a US American can open remotely that meets the above requirements?

Where would you put your money if you were in my situation?

Hi all–

Just had a tax meeting today in Denmark, and the Danish government like a fair few other governments, recognize 401k/trad IRA investments as retirement, but not Roths. This means you have to pay annual tax on the gains for your Roth, that you can't touch until you're 59.5.

This leaves us looking at pulling the money out and eating the tax/penalty. And my questions in case anyone knows are:

1. is that money income in the US?
2. is there anything particularly good to do with the money? Beyond the obvious of buying a house (here)
3. how has no one told us about this in all the posts/threads, financial advisors, etc that Roths are fairly commonly not acknowledged and are absolutely terrible if you plan to leave the US?

Thanks in advance. Sorry for my grumpy tone... I'm certainly grumpy

For the last decade or so, my SO and I have been more or less dividing our expenses, and Venmo/ PayPal-ing the other as needed (rent, etc).

I know a lot of couples use a shared account that they both contribute to via direct deposit. How many of you do this? Any drawbacks or other options I haven’t mentioned?

For someone in their 30s, does the following allocations make sense? The goal is to have a fair amount of diversity and to more or less “set it and forget it”

55% VG INST 500 IDX 35% VG INTL STOCK IDX 10% VG TOT BD MKT IDX

I’m wondering if maybe there should be less in International and more in one of the other two, etc

I found the graph at 10:55 to be especially interesting because it shows how someone with around the median income ($65k) can make it to the lower upper class by retirement through some discipline (10% saved per year).

As a quick TL;DW, here are the median incomes, net worth, and percent of population for each class:

• lower - $34k income, $3.4k net worth (many are negative) - 25%
• middle
  • lower - $44k income, $71k net worth - 20%
  • middle - $81k income, $159k net worth - 20%
  • upper - $117k income, $307k net worth - 20%
• upper
  • lower - $189k income, $747k net worth - 10%
  • upper - $378k income, $2.5M net worth - 5%

Some questions to spark discussion:

• Do you agree with his breakdown of the economic classes? Why or why not?
• What strategies do you think someone in each category should take to improve their situation?
• If you don't mind sharing, what class do you think you're in, and does the breakdown match your experience?

My grandmother bought the home we lived in the 90s for 90k at a 8% interest rate. I found out she refinanced the house several times from what seems like predatory practices and malicious advice and now owes 250k at 6%. Basically the house I thought was paid off now has 30 mortgage and she is 90. Her grandkids are in the will to inherent the house but do we inherent this mortgage?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20168637

Is a TDF a good choice for growing my money, in this case? I plan to use it for a house down payment and withdraw it in 5-7 years. I've been thinking of putting it in a 2030 or 2035 TDF. Should I go this route or just VTSAX and chill?

I've been on an HSA+HDHP for a couple of years now and only realized recently the interest earned from investing HSA money is also tax free, so I want to start investing a part of my savings and see how it goes. I have 2 options, Betterment or Mutual Funds. I figured I'd try the latter to avoid fees, but I'm not sure which funds to choose. My HSA currently provides 30 fund options.

I see people mentioning Vanguard a lot so I spread out my initial investment into 25% chunks across 4 different Vanguard funds. How did I choose them? Well I literally just looked at the performance graphs and selected the ones that historically went up steadily without major dips. As a total noob, how can I improve my choices? Is there a simple way to decide without having to dive deep into the stock market?

I have been putting part of my paycheck into a high yield savings account, but haven't bothered with investing it in a responsible manner partially due a fear of losing the money due to bad investments. I'm finally realizing how much potential money I've lost by letting my money stagnate. Please advise me on how to responsibly invest my money, thanks!

I like the idea of a less profit-driven business that is maybe more community-focused but I wonder if they have the same capability as a bank? Have you been able to do your banking needs at a credit union? Was the customer service decent?

tl;dr - They haven't reported updated information since last year. How do I get them to do so, or how can I otherwise correct the information on my credit report?

Longer version:

Got a personal loan a few years ago through Lending Point. Earlier this year, I noticed that the last time they reported any updated information to the credit bureaus was December of last year. I paid the thing off back this past May, and had hoped that would trigger them to update it within a month or two, But they didn't, and as far as anyone(such as a new lender) is concerned, I still have an open personal loan that I owe a bunch of money on. Do I have to call these people and complain? Should I dispute the inaccurate information on my credit report? I spent quite a few years banging away at that stupid fucking thing, eliminating every negative account/collections/etc. Don't want to dispute that information just to find out that it's going to somehow backfire on me. As far as it stands now, I have no negative anything whatsoever on my report, and every single account on there is in good standing with a 100% perfect payment history.

Problem is, full-time job pays so little that for the last few years(basically since the pandemic started) I've been stuck more and more using credit cards and Affirm/After pay loans for "luxuries" such as... food, and having electricity, and clean clothes. You know, non-essentials. Using up more than half my (tiny) monthly income just to pay the minimums on the cards and the monthly Affirm payments at this point. Could use a new personal loan to consolidate all of that down to a single payment, but the fact that my cards are all maxed out is keeping my score down, making it difficult. And having it look like I already have an active personal loan when I don't, sure as shit isn't helping my case when trying to get a new one. Being able to consolidate would set me back into a position to where I have enough cash throughout the month to not have to rely on the cards to pay for basic shit in the first place.

My employer recently switched to Fidelity and for now I've chosen the LIFEPATH IDX 2050 A option. It looks like this one provides quarterly dividends, but the yield is 0.0%(?)

I'm looking for some fairly risk adverse options or blends that provide dividends that will be reinvested. Anyone have any recommendations?