Hello, currently putting 12.4% of income into pre-tax contribution. Is this the 401k? Is this good? Is after-tax, or Roth contributions better? Idk the differences. I also put 4% to a deferred compensation program, should I remove that and put it all into the 401k?

I also put $55 bi-weekly into my WeBull account.

I’m 26, full-time public worker.

TIA!

Hey everyone! I’m currently a college student and I’m thinking about opening a Roth IRA for the first time. I’m pretty new to investing, so I’m trying to learn as much as I can before I open an account.

I’m wondering which brokerage/bank you would recommend for someone in my situation. I’m mainly looking for a Roth IRA with low fees, good investment options, and something that’s beginner-friendly and easy to manage.

I’ve heard about companies like Fidelity, Vanguard, and Charles Schwab, but I’m not really sure how they compare or which one would be best for a college student. I’m also curious about what kinds of investments people usually choose inside their Roth IRA, such as index funds, ETFs, or target-date funds.

I don’t expect to make guaranteed “profits,” since I understand that investing involves risk. I’m more interested in learning how to invest for the long term and making smart choices early on.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Which Roth IRA provider you use and why

What you invested in when you first started

Whether there are any fees I should watch out for

How much you think a college student should contribute, assuming they have some income

Any beginner mistakes I should avoid

First of all, I know it’s a lot. I’m very ashamed and I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. I really need help.. I honestly don’t even know what to say, so I guess I’ll just breakdown the debt. Please reply with any suggestions or advice that could help me with my situation..

Student Loans - $59,430.95

Car Loan - $28,167.45

Capital One CC - $4,168.71

Amazon Store Card - $474.25

That should mainly be it.

Im actively trying to find a job. For about a decade, I worked at a company and towards the end, I was making about $40k a year. After finishing my degree, I took a chance for more money, and took a job with a software development company making $60k per year. After about 5 months with this company, they started laying people off, and I was new so I went first.

I tried living off of my savings for the last few months while looking for a new job, but I’ve run dry. I’m now claiming unemployment, but it’s only about $400 a week. I also take care of my father who is retired and on a fixed income, so we don’t have much to live off of now.

I feel like I’m drowning and there’s no way out. Please offer any advice to help me get out of this mess… If you need any other information, please let me know. Thank you.

I got a cold call from a financial advisor at a recognized financial services company wanting to evaluate my company's 401k Trust. After speaking with them about the performance, they asked if they could join as a financial advisor. Our retirement trust is with Ubiquity, who confirmed there is no fee for adding an advisor. The advisors told me they are compensated through each fund's management fees, and the trust plan modification documents indicate the advisors are being paid through "12B-1 Fees." Would this indicate that in fact my trust, and therefore employee accounts, won't be charged any additional fees by bringing on the advisor? My intent is to have them educate our employees on retirement planning (for free) and from there the employees can utilize the advisor as they wish. I have already confirmed the advisor is real so this isn't a scam, but it does seem a bit too good to be true that essentially their services won't cost me anything additional.

After a few different employer changes I’ve finally decided to start consolidating my retirement accounts to make it easier to manage.

I have a 403B with both pre-tax and employer contributions. I believe I can roll these over. I’m trying to decide between my current employer or a Fidelity IRA.

I already have a traditional IRA at Fidelity that I use to do backdoor Roth every year. Can I just fund into that? If so, how do I do my Roth conversions each year?

Hello all, I am a 20 year old who is about to receive his first credit card in a few days. Does anyone have any advice for how to use it? Pretty much every adult in my life has told me not to use it and to only use it for emergency’s, but then how could I build up a good credit score starting from a young age. I’ve heard different things from everyone
Use it all on one big purchase no more then 30% of your card and then pay it back during the month but not right after.
Use it on all like a debit card and then pay it back at the end of the month.
Only use 30% of the limit and of course don’t forget to pay it off and never pay interest.
That’s all the stuff I’ve heard but some of it is a little contradictory, as someone who’s not to smart with finances what’s the best way to use the credit card for the most benefit.

I do not have a financial advisor yet, nor do I know one. I have 80K in my 401K from working for about 4 years at my company. I went broke paying for my a family members funeral and I really need the money. I need to pay off a car that was deemed total but the insurance company wont pay for (about 6K). How bad would it be for me to take 10K out of that account to pay off my cards and get back to normal?

Disclaimer: I'm very uneducated in finances, my explanations and terminology might be wrong, so bear with me if I say something that doesn't make sense. I can clarify if need be, just let me know. I tried looking up similar situations but I couldn't really follow.

So here's the situation. My mom has been working for 27 years to date, she's now 65 years old and she's looking to retire soon and claim her pension. Her pension is about 300K. We've never thought about opening an IRA prior to this, because frankly we never really knew how this stuff worked and my mom only recently discovered she even has a pension to begin with. We started educating ourselves on the subject afterwards, so we're kind of scrambling to get ourselves set up to receive this money.

Our options, from what I understand, are to take the lump sum directly into a checking account (bad idea from what I gather, because it gets heavily taxed), or roll over into an IRA. Since we don't have an existing IRA, we need to open one.

My question is what kind of IRA should we open for this situation? I have a very basic understanding of how a normal and a Roth IRA work, but I don't think I understand enough to make a well-informed decision. Any information is well-appreciated, and if there are details that I'm missing, just let me know.

I am having trouble deciding between paying my car off and investing. I recently got my remaining PTO paid out after leaving a job for another, and am not sure what to do with the extra funds. My car's APR is 4.29% at $386/month with only $4300 remaining, and my stock YTD performance is at 12%. Financially it makes sense to just invest, but I can't help to think the psychological impact of having my car paid off would be great, and it's a flat 4.29% return, no fluctuating stocks. What do yall recommend?

I'm 26 and I want to start a ROTH IRA.

I'm part time and I make about 25K after taxes. I also do freelance gigs on the side which might earn me an extra 1K in the year (If i'm lucky).

Monthly, I earn around $1,900. I pay $400/month in rent (I help my family, even if it's a little).

I pay for subscriptions, groceries, and other necessitites I may have. I travel quite frequently, maybe 2-3 times a year. Quite a few concerts too. I like to enjoy my time as much as possible, but I want to be smarter about my money too.

I opened a high yield savings account about three years ago for more "long term" expenses such as downpayments for moving out. I have almost 10K there. I put $150 into it every paycheck ($300/month).

I also have a regular "short-term" savings account which took a hit after my dog passed, but I currently have it at 8K. This account is meant to be used as savings for travels or any emergency I might have. Except, I do not use half of the money and I've been wondering if i should re-route it to a different account?(I know I said I use my short-terms for travel, but it's very rare, since I prefer to pay things with what I have in my checkings first before I tap into my savings)

This is where the ROTH IRA question comes in.

Should I take money from one of those accounts (maybe the short-term one) and invest it into a ROTH IRA? Is it possible to have two savings and that roth ira account with the salary I have? I want to be smarter about how I divide my money.

I do have a small amount of debt (1.4K) which I know I should pay off first before opening up anything else.

Any advice helps. Thank You!!

I am in debt due to student loans, never paid payments & credit cards

i am 27 & my TransUnion is 602 (fair) which isn’t completely bad

how should I break down my many payments I owe and start going in the direction of not owing any money ?

I want to buy a house and get approved for credit cards like AMEX

give me advice , what do I pay off first ? credit cards, things like klarna or student loans ?

Hi everyone, I apologize because this may end up being kind of long. My wife and I are 36 and 33 respectively, and we've agreed that it has come time to get our act together and take retirement planning seriously. To date, neither of us have really done anything at all in terms of saving for retirement. Partly because we have spent a good portion of our lives being financially illiterate, partly because it wasn't until the last few years that we started making what I consider to be good money and we were more or less living paycheck to paycheck.

I'll just give you a breakdown of where we are at, and then follow this up with some questions.

Income-

My w2 position: $63k

Wife's S-corp: $180k-$190k

Debt-

Student loans: ~$120k combined. I believe the highest interest rate for any of them is 6.3% but most are below 5%.

Mortgage: $269k @ 7.25%

No auto loan as of now, but we will be purchasing soon. Our cars are 10 and 24 years old so we feel it's time to upgrade. Our credit scores are very high so when we do purchase we will qualify for the lowest possible rate.

No credit card debt.

Assets:

$40k in savings. Really nothing at all in any retirement account.

Okay so I guess my question is - what do we do from here? Most months we have about $10k after expenses. Sometimes more, sometimes less. We're willing to take this pretty seriously and get aggressive.

My job has a 401k I can contribute to (no match unfortunately). I know my wife can open a solo 401k. Neither of us are enrolled in an HSA plan but both will have that option come open enrollment.

So what's our priority? Max out 401ks and HSAs? Attack the mortgage? Student loans? We have one kid with another on the way so contributing to a 529 is also something we would like to do but we want to make sure we get our retirement planning in place first.

Realistically how much should we be devoting to retirement every month in order to get back on track? Also, how do we go about opening some of these accounts (namely, her 401k and if we end up needing to open something like a roth IRA)? Do we need to work with someone or is something we should/could do on our own?

I very much appreciate any help you can give me!

I’m 21 years old and have approximately $300,000 USD available to invest. My long-term goal is not to live luxuriously, but to build a flexible life in which I can travel extensively and eventually no longer need a conventional full-time job.

I understand that $300,000 probably isn’t enough to retire permanently at 21, especially given inflation, healthcare costs, taxes, and the possibility of living for another 60–70 years. I’m therefore interested in the most realistic strategy for using this head start wisely.

If you were in my position:

1. How would you invest the money?
   
2. How much additional income or part-time work would I realistically need?
   
3. Would a “coast FIRE” or “barista FIRE” approach make more sense than trying to retire immediately?
   
4. What mistakes should someone my age avoid when managing this amount of money?

I’m willing to work for several years, develop marketable skills, or earn money remotely. My real goal is freedom and mobility—not simply never working again.

I’d especially appreciate advice from people who have pursued long-term travel, geographic arbitrage, lean FIRE, or a semi-retired lifestyle.

I am 26 y/o making $55,000/year. My current employer is a small startup that offers no 401k or retirement match/contribution.

I currently have:
- $35,000 in a HYSA
- $2,000 in checking account
- $6,000 invested in stocks
- $6,000 in a rollover traditional IRA from a previous job currently housed in INSPIRA

I do not have any type of debt and my monthly expenses (including rent) are about $1,500.

I have tried but am really having a hard time understanding what I should do with my rollover traditional IRA from a previous gig and what I should currently be contributing some of my salary to. Do I add money to the rollover traditional IRA? Do I open a 401k? Do I transfer the rollover traditional IRA money to a Roth?

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated! I am willing to book an appointment with a financial advisor if needed, but I would love to be able to do things myself.

I am expected to receive a 30k (net) bonus in March. My wife and I currently owe $30k on our vehicles combined. I recently refinanced both down to a 5% and 4.44% APR. we are currently paying double the minimum payments in each of our vehicles.

I will also be receiving a 3k bonus in December and should be getting around 10k for my tax returns next year.

I am seeking advice on what to do with the 30k bonus.
I'm debating paying off both our vehicles so we will be completely debt free. By that time the debt should be down to around 24k between both our vehicles.

Or taking the full 30k and investing it.

I already max out my Roth TSP every year so not concerned with that. I do also only have 3k in an emergency fund currently. Which I know is low, but I do have a VERY stable job. My income is not going to go anywhere. I'm planning on using tax returns to beef up the emergency fund

I'm just stuck because having no debt is obviously super nice, but because I have our APRs down so low I feel like I'm going to get a much better return by investing it and just continuing with paying over monthly minimums on the vehicles.

I have seen this question a lot lately so I wanted to throw in my situation and see everyone's thoughts on adding extra money to the principal of the mortgage or invest.

The numbers: House is worth about $320,000 and we owe $101,000 with a 30 year mortgage at 3.25% the base payment without taxes and insurance is $670 per month. We currently have extra that we could add another $300-400 to the mortgage or invest. We've already paid the mortgage down from $140,000 from when we refinanced in 2020.

Extra financial info.

We currently have about $800,000 in 401ks, $100,000 in brokerage, $75,000 in ROTH and $50,000 in HSA, along with about $50,000 in high yield savings. The extra money we have is after adding to all these accounts (except savings) every month.

We are in our late 30s as well

At my workplace, I currently have:

1) Traditional 401K which has my pre-tax contributions from my paycheck
2) Roth 401K which has a mixture of:

a. Roth contributions from my paycheck
b. some adhoc conversions I made from my traditional 401K and paid taxes on
c. after tax contributions from my paycheck which I automatically convert (mega back door roth)

After I retire, I plan to rollover the Roth 401K to an existing Roth IRA that I have for over a decade. My understanding is:

1) The rolled over funds inherit the age of the Roth IRA so they automatically become older than 5 years regardless of when I contributed the funds?
2) I should be able to withdraw my contributions from my Roth IRA before age 59.5 without penalty or taxes? There would not be any pro-rata rules since all the money in the Roth IRA has already been taxed?

These funds will help bridge the gap between FIRE and 59.5. Let me know if my understanding is incorrect and if anyone has successfully used this strategy.

Hi everyone, I'm seeking advice from people experienced in international relocation, personal finance, or long-term medical treatment moves to the US.

My father has stage 4 metastatic cancer, and we may move to Boston in 3 to 4 months. He'll likely be in a clinical trial, but we will still have major expenses.

Our current assets are mostly in land (around5 crore), plus50–60 lakh in liquid investments and 10–20 lakh in cash.

We may need to sell some land to fund this journey. I'm not asking if we can afford it, but how to structure our finances properly before moving.

Questions include how much to keep liquid, monthly budget expectations in Boston, emergency fund size, tax or money transfer issues, and common mistakes families regret after relocating.

Any detailed advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Does anyone know if there is a specific guideline for when to get a financial advisor? My parents have one, some friends have one, others don’t. i don’t have a lot of assets or money and feel like i manage it well, but could it be managed better? I’m not sure. Just curious if others struggle with this

Quick facts:

- 30 years old, married.

- 1 child, planning on 2 more.

- 152k per year, W2 income only.

- MCOL city

- 360k mortgage @ 6.8%.

- 660k in cash earning 3.05%.

I have been sitting on this cash since May, paralyzed and unable to make a decision. I wanted to give myself 3 months to sit back and really think about my options, but I haven't gotten very far. The two scenarios I keep going back and forth on are:

Option 1: Pay off mortgage and invest the remaining $300k into $VTI.

Option 2: Invest the entire $660k into $VTI and refinance when interest rates drop to 5-5.5%.

We max out our Roth's and HSA every year. We only contribute 5% to our 401k. We keep a $35k security fund in a HYSA. (This is not part of the 660k).

Looking for advice. I feel like I’ve done okay, but I’ve also been skeptical of people or scared of being taken advantage of. This has probably held me back in some ways and slowed my financial growth. Any advice on finding a solid retirement/investment strategy + finding a trustworthy advisor/mentor would be greatly appreciated. Here’s a brief snapshot of my life:

I’m 32yo, a wife and 2 kids (4 and 2)
I own a blue collar business (LLC filing as S corp)
Business grosses around $4m annual
180k salary + owner draws if I choose to
Paid off house (worth around 600k)
No vehicle or personal debt
100k savings
~ 250k invested with fidelity (mix of brokerage, Roth IRA, Roth self employed 401k, and traditional self employed 401k)
I match 25% of my salary for employer retirement contributions to my traditional 401k (46.5k/yr)

I feel like I’m just guessing with my investment strategies, but my goal is long term investments. I have no interest in day trading or trading stocks at all. My life is already busy enough, so I want something/someone that is reliable and steady while I continue to work hard and grow my business.

TYIA for advice!

Financial advisor / agent is pushing converting my 401k VXUS (about $50k) into a RILA (tracking MSCI EFA). Here’s what he’s provided as the terms of the RILA in an email matching what he told me verbally:

1. Term - 6 years

2. No dividends reinvestment 

3. 5% downside buffer

4. 140% participation rate (over the 10% combined growth rate over 6 years)

5. No cap rate (140% participation rate is valid for any unlimited growth value over the 10% hurdle)

6. My assumption was the 0.32% expense ratio of MSCI EFA would apply. No other fees except funds being locked for the term. He says this expense ratio doesn’t apply.

7. The funds can be rolled over in kind from my 401k to the RILA and back out to my 401k (after the 6 years term) without any tax issues.

Running the numbers, I’m struggling to see what my downsides are except in severe bear markets. I looked through Fidelity/Vanguard/Morningstar’s predictions and they’re all projecting about 5%/yr growth over the next decade which will get me over the 10% total threshold in this RILA.

I can’t help but feel I’m missing something. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

Just looking for someone to double check my math. I'm comparing the difference between keeping my future MAGI under the ACA subsidy limit for cheaper healthcare before 65 vs. paying that full cost but filling up the 12% bracket with Roth conversions. Don't want to double count something or omit something else. Basically with passive income I'll be just under the limit and can either pull from a Roth to stay there, or pull 50k from the traditional to pay for the healthcare and convert the rest.

My thought was that the calculation should be [(Tax Deferred now)*(Years deferred) + (Tax Saved at lower braket)*(Years of Conversions)] - [(ACA Subsidy)*(Years Received)]

If the answer is positive, then money is saved by converting. If negative, then contributing more to Roth and staying under the MAGI limit is best. Does this seem right? Obviously only to be used for estimations.

When planning for a child's potential future education cost, many institutions are quick to point me toward 529 type accounts. They do have an attractive lack of tax penalty, however their rate of returns dont ever seem to be that high. They also require that the funds are used for education purposes so it my kid decides they dont actually want to go to college you're forced to either roll it to their dependent one day or convert it into a retirement fund for a large penalty.

Am I crazy or should I just be putting that same monthly contribution (let's call it $400/mo for arguments sake) in VOO and taking the tax hit when its time to pay out for tutuion in ~17years? I realize theres no guarantee VOO will be this strong over the next 2 decades but at least it grants the freedom to bail and switch whenever and use the funds for anything after taxes.

Just transferred my pre tax 401k from my previous employer to a traditional ira rollover and now that it's all transferred I'm not sure what to do with the money.. It's currently not earning interest.. I was thinking about setting it up for a non call protected (callable) cd of 2 years so if they end it earlier then I can get the higer interest rate for a lower amount of time or just keep it for the full term if they don't call it... I'm not sure if this is the best option because call protected cds are often 0.40-0.80% worse than non call protected (callable) cd.. I also am willing to explore other options too besides CDs but currently I'm not sure what to do with the money.. I don't plan on adding anything to my traditional ira but instead put my future deposits in money market and/or Roth ira accounts but for now until my situation gets better and can afford to pay more I will only be saving $1200 per year post tax from my paycheck as my current employer doesn't give a pretax/401k option to save.. What should I do?