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Merou posted:Currently I'm planning to use the extra cash to pay my car off early, maybe start an IRA, and maybe start saving to buy a condo or something. Also finished my emergency account, its got 10k in it. I reckon that ain't bad for a 27 year old. That's awesome! Congratulations!
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Aug 30, 2012 04:49
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I opened up an account with Charles Schwab to start investing money. As of now, $50 of every paycheck automatically gets deposited to this account. The plan is, every month to research and buy into various mutual funds. While it's not a big deal on the surface, it's crazy to think that a little over two years ago I was living paycheck to paycheck and had to claim Bankruptcy due to bad decisions. The biggest thing I can contribute my success to is signing up for Mint.com. The site is so helpful if you are willing to put in a little work upfront. With no cost, it's a no-brainer to get set up.
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Aug 30, 2012 17:07
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savesthedayrocks posted:I opened up an account with Charles Schwab to start investing money. As of now, $50 of every paycheck automatically gets deposited to this account. The plan is, every month to research and buy into various mutual funds.
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Aug 30, 2012 21:26
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Harry posted:Don't do this, the fees will massacre you. Do it like once a year. What he said. At $7 (or whatever a trade) that is almost 20% of your investment. If you just want to invest in mutual/index funds why don't you open up a Vanguard account, they don't charge fees on their own funds I believe and they have the lowest expense ratios? Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.
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Aug 30, 2012 21:45
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Lyon posted:What he said. At $7 (or whatever a trade) that is almost 20% of your investment. If you just want to invest in mutual/index funds why don't you open up a Vanguard account, they don't charge fees on their own funds I believe and they have the lowest expense ratios? You are absolutely correct. I have my Roth contribution set to direct deposit from every paycheck directly into the Total Stock Market Index Fund.
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Aug 30, 2012 22:51
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Finally, two years after graduating in what I thought was a high need field (math degree with educational certification), I have the perfect teaching job. I'm middle class! Now I just have a mountain of student loan debt to worry about, but years of lean living will help me get in a good position to pay it down. Plus I have loan forgiveness down the road because I'm teaching at a title I school. I know that increases my tax burden when it goes through but we have time to prepare for that. I can provide for my family without spending more than I make. Time to figure out how this "saving" thing works.
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Aug 30, 2012 23:50
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Lyon posted:What he said. At $7 (or whatever a trade) that is almost 20% of your investment. If you just want to invest in mutual/index funds why don't you open up a Vanguard account, they don't charge fees on their own funds I believe and they have the lowest expense ratios? I think I'm doing it right, but I haven't been charged a fee yet and I've made several purchases. There are plenty of Mutual Funds that are "No Load/No Fee" and haven't charged me a fee yet. I have to hold them for at least 90 days according to the site: quote:Individuals can access thousands of mutual funds from hundreds of well-established fund families with no loads and no transaction fees through Mutual Fund OneSource. It wouldn't hurt to look into the other place you mentioned as well.
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Aug 31, 2012 03:22
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What folks are concerned about is that schwab will charge for the transaction when buying/selling any security. My experience is that if you're buying schwab funds though through a schwab account, this is waived.
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Aug 31, 2012 13:37
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Granted I used grant money, not money I earned with the sweat off my brow, but I just paid off my last bit of credit card debt. That card has been at or near the limit since I stupidly got it five years ago, and now it is gone. Feels really good.
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Sep 1, 2012 05:34
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SweetTooth Mephisto posted:I just got the biggest raise I've ever gotten at this job and I've gone from 3rd shift to day shift. All I had to do was work hard for five years and make myself valuable enough survive multiple rounds of layoffs. Yay! You wouldn't happen to work at a forensic mental hospital in Florida would you?
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Sep 10, 2012 02:49
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Cancelled a "bad credit" credit card with exorbitant fees that were absolutely killing me after ~2 years. Yes, the improvement to my credit was nice, but going in the red because of it sucked. Also, I convinced my boyfriend that we absolutely 100% need to stick to our budget and if that means eating leftovers then he's just going to have to deal with it. Two things that seem very, very small but are huge in the grand scheme of oh god I only make $10k a year.
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Sep 12, 2012 07:15
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Got a job offer today at a great sounding company. All I need to wait for is my background check and then I will actually be able to afford clothes again.
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Sep 19, 2012 00:13
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MAO TSE-TUNGACUNT posted:Cancelled a "bad credit" credit card with exorbitant fees that were absolutely killing me after ~2 years. Yes, the improvement to my credit was nice, but going in the red because of it sucked. That's kind of where I am! I just cancelled a stupid credit card that I got as a freshman that had a stupid $50 annual fee. I hadn't used the card in THREE YEARS and for some reason it kept getting bumped up every year until it had like a $10,000 limit. The guy on the phone still spent 10 minutes trying to convince me to keep the card. But now it's completely gone! I paid off my car not too long ago (only had a 2K loan but that's about 50% more than I make in a month) and have a little over 3K in emergency savings. Not too shabby for a poor grad student  And I also just found out that my state has a student loan forgiveness program for people moving to a county with a declining population. So if I move in with my fiance next year (by then he will be my husband), I'll be eligible for a $15K student loan forgiveness. That's only 3-4K less than I owe!
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Sep 19, 2012 23:47
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After six months of wringing my hands and tearing my hair out over it, my work finally gave me notice of confirmation of my position last week. I am officially, set-in-stone-for-the-forseeable-future, a trainee sonographer getting paid what I'm properly due! I now no longer have to entertain the prospect of joining the army (a job in which I have been keeping as a fall-back since November last year) or uprooting us again and moving away from here. It also amounted to an instant 26% pay-rise, though because I now get taxed more I'm still taking home much less pay than our lowest-ranked intern who rakes it in through on-call work that I don't get to do  All of this, and also getting engaged two weeks ago, has spurred me on towards overhauling our finances. We now have very specific savings targets to meet every pay period, and have strict budgets set in place through auto debit that take care of all must-meet (and some optional) expenses. My fiance is following my lead on this with 100% support, thank goodness - though if he weren't the sort to I wouldn't have proposed to him in the first place! He only has a part-time call center job while he's studying though, so things are tight. There's still a long way to go, but I'm expecting to achieve $100k in the bank by the end of 2015 for building our first eco-friendly house, as well as $20k in our Make-A-Baby fund by the time I turn 31 (28 now). Wish our little family luck, gentle goons.
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Sep 27, 2012 12:46
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Just paid off my mortgage and wanted to tell someone. Feels good.
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Sep 28, 2012 22:05
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SpclKen posted:Just paid off my mortgage and wanted to tell someone. Feels good. Congrats, my parents just paid off their mortgage as well. Owning a home outright is my next big goal but it seems like such a long way off since homes are way overpriced in general. Does anyone actually feel like their home is truly worth the price they paid or its current value?
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Oct 2, 2012 04:17
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Got a new job at a great company. My soon to be old employer is considering keeping me on as a freelance basis since I can do most of the work in the evenings and weekends. If it works out I'll be pulling in enough income to be free of my student loans in 2-3 years. I'll be debt free before 30.
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Oct 3, 2012 16:45
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cheese eats mouse posted:Got a new job at a great company. Congrats, me too (well, a university). I have somewhat optimistic aspirations to retire before 50, and this is another step closer. Going from 2 weeks of vacation time to 5 will be nice too.
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Oct 9, 2012 03:22
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Just finished my first year in a proper job (£20k) and finally got over the craziness of suddenly having a lot of money after spending my education flat broke and started saving £200 a month. In addition, it looks like my sister has her first (small-time)paying gig as a film editor, something she's been trying to break into for years now and may possibly be on the road to a real career outside retail. I'm dumping £300 a month into my mum's saving account to help her pay for stuff and pay her back for all she gave me during my education and to go towards buying my sister the stuff she needs to start her career. I just need a year or so of solid saving and I'll be functionally debt-free, my contribution to my parents notwithstanding. Its tough financially and I'm not saving near enough what I want to, but I'm fairly financially secure and its great that I can ease my parent's burden and help my sister get onto the path out of retail into something she wants to do.
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Oct 9, 2012 16:42
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I've been digging my way of some poor credit choices that I made when I was unemployed for 18 months for a couple years now. Starting out, I could only get a secured credit card with an annual fee and a credit limit of $500. Yesterday, I got approved for a decent rewards card with no annual fee and a limit of $7500. I never ever carry a balance, but having the higher limit will be great for airfare, hotels, and general big purchases that it's nice to have that extra level of protection on. I've got a decent at least six month emergency fund built up, which would be larger but I had to buy a car unexpectedly this summer when my roommate wrecked my old one. Now I just want to knuckle down and get these student loans knocked out and I'll be doing a whole lot better than I was a few years ago.
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Oct 10, 2012 01:22
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Just paid off $12k+ in student loans about four years ahead of schedule, doing the debt-free-before-30 jig right now. 
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Oct 15, 2012 00:12
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I just maxed out my 401k for the year for the first time. Time to spend that extra 500/week I'll get for the rest of the year on hookers and blow (Who am I kidding, I'll probably just be boring and save up for my 2013 IRA).
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Oct 16, 2012 20:37
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I'm hopefully starting a job in November or January, depending on what hiring period they wanna grab me in \/ Now I dunno what to do next.
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Oct 21, 2012 23:20
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Pollyanna posted:I'm hopefully starting a job in November or January, depending on what hiring period they wanna grab me in \ Cherish it. I had a few weeks between when school ends and work began, with some money left over. It was awesome.
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Oct 22, 2012 18:03
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As of this morning, we are now officially free of our all revolving debt! It's entirely thanks to a workman's comp benefit so there's not much to learn from our situation, except that it sure would have been sweet to just blow all that money on awesome poo poo we want...but instead, we paid back credit card and personal debts that had been hanging over our heads for years. After that, we built up a little emergency savings fund so we won't have to keep putting unexpected expenses on credit, which is how we got in this situation in the first place. (And we're going to spend a little bit on ourselves as well. Buying such luxuries as new sheets and a coat rack. We...don't really have extravagant tastes.) Now, the huge chunk of our budget that was going towards paying off credit cards can be used partially to pad out the parts of our budget that are always a struggle to stick to, and partially for building up more and more savings. I'm just embarking on a new career path as well so it's perfect...we've been given a fresh start.  I feel a little bad that we didn't have to fight and claw our way to financial freedom the way so many people do, but it's an incremental improvement nonetheless and I couldn't be happier about the future.
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Oct 23, 2012 00:38
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I got my first Real Job(tm) at the end of June, and I've finally got enough of my "oh god, first real apartment with no roommates, so much poo poo to buy" crap out of the way that I actually have a money cushion! I've even got a Smartypig account open to save for a new computer! I can also write off a couple thousand dollars of my federal student loans thanks to my job(medical technologist), so the repayments that start in December will sting slightly less than they would have otherwise! I'm so excited that every sentence needs exclaimation points! I also have no debts other than car(unavoidable since I only had $1500 to my name when I graduated, but I got a cheap Kia so it's not too bad) and student loans(which total ~$50,000 off the top of my head), which probably puts me ahead of many other recent grads. I do have a credit card, but I pay it off in full every month and only really have it for credit building & reward points. The only bad part is that I'm stuck on third shift, but I'm getting ~$200 more a paycheck than I would on first, so it balances out in the "I need money to make an independant adult life NOW" term.
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Oct 23, 2012 06:32
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I just traded in my crappy 40k job for a fun-looking 60k job  after looking for a month without my former employer finding out. Rocked the interviews and got a call back the very next day with the offer, signed the agreement and handed my resignation to the boss 3 days later.Then my bike got stolen but it's okay because now I can save up for a scooter and I don't need to move out of my expensive neighborhood!
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Nov 2, 2012 02:32
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I got VA Compensation back pay and I was able to knock out all of my student loans (about 19k) in one fell swoop! Now the only debt I have is my car loan (like 26k left on it, brand new 2012 Ford Focus). I recently got my first full-time job making about 46k a year and I'm living on my own. My lease is up in Feb 2013 and I'm looking to getting my own house! Hopefully nothing too crazy as it could be something I could rent out for income later on in life! Also, started working towards maxing out my Roth IRA for the 2012 tax year and set up 20% contribution towards my retirement with a 10% employer match! Things are definitely looking up
deltawing fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Nov 15, 2012 |
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Nov 15, 2012 06:56
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I'd hold off on the house for a bit. No reason to trap yourself in a specific area.
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Nov 15, 2012 07:05
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Also, you spent $26K on a Focus?!
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Nov 16, 2012 03:58
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Harry posted:I'd hold off on the house for a bit. No reason to trap yourself in a specific area. I plan on staying in this area for the long-term. Nocheez posted:Also, you spent $26K on a Focus?! All the features, it's a pretty awesome car. Talk to me 5 years ago and I would've told you I'd never in a million years buy a Focus. They've come a LONG way and are great, economical vehicles with some really great features (heated seats, full leather, navigation/XM, remote start, etc).
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Nov 16, 2012 06:22
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deltawing posted:I plan on staying in this area for the long-term. Let us know how that works out in a year or two.
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Nov 16, 2012 17:08
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Finally started allocating 5% to my Thrift Savings Plan (federal employee, gov't matches up to 5%). I'm 25, should have done it two years ago but better late than never.
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Nov 17, 2012 04:25
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On October 31st, I paid off the last of my credit card debt! It had started out as around $5,000 of debt on a Visa that I had racked up over one summer when I had gotten divorced and had no job, and no stuff. In addition to the Visa, I also bought roughly $5,000 worth of furniture over two years. (The furniture I did pay off relatively quickly because it was one of those "no interest until _____" things, and drat right I wasn't going to pay interest.) Anyway, I'd make some progress, slip up, take a trip to Europe... or two... I finally got serious about paying it off about a year ago, when I had roughly $3,000 left to go. First, I hid the credit card from myself (I actually have no idea where it is... but it's somewhere in my apartment.) Paid $250 a month, and whenever I ended the month with extra money in my account - paid that on it as well. I am a salaried employee, so I occasionally will earn extra money from hourly activities, and any time I did, that went on the card as well. It's a huge relief as that's the last of the debt I had. I do have student loans out, but I'm currently in a Forbearance until June when I will qualify for loan forgiveness and they will be gone! Unfortunately, my car is rather old and starting to putter out, so now I'm saving as much as I can as quickly as I can so I can get a newer rig hopefully over the summer. I'm also a huge fan of mint.com and the Mint app. It really forced me to look at how I spent my money each month.
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Nov 17, 2012 07:30
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This week I set up a First Home Saver account because the Australian government will contribute 17% into the account if I save between $1000-6000 per financial year. Obviously I'm not planning on buying a house any time soon, however 17% is an amazing return and I can roll the money over into my superannuation if I decide not to buy a house after all. What really makes this an incremental improvement is I'm not worried about having the money locked away - I know I have enough savings for any emergencies that pop up. froglet fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Nov 17, 2012 |
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Nov 17, 2012 07:50
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Harry posted:Let us know how that works out in a year or two. Considering I'm not going to lose my job that I love and I love the area and the location, I feel safe with saying I'm sticking around.
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Nov 17, 2012 12:32
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AndrewP posted:Finally started allocating 5% to my Thrift Savings Plan (federal employee, gov't matches up to 5%). I'm 25, should have done it two years ago but better late than never. I know the feeling. It took me a couple years before I realized that I was basically leaving free money on the table by not contributing to the match of the TSP. At least those first couple years were only GS-7 and -9 (I'm GS-13 now) but I totally could have afforded to pay the 5% back then.
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Nov 18, 2012 14:00
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I paid off a student loan this week. Bye bye $491 loan. $30,500 more to go. Feels good.
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Nov 18, 2012 16:28
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I got a raise, a promotion, an invitation to a position working in Europe, six figures in savings, and no debt of any kind. Now I'm freaking out because I seriously have no idea how to make the most effective use of my newfound income.
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Nov 25, 2012 04:04
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Just got a the final signoff for a promotion with a significant raise (will take me to six figures) and instead of spending the money on a new car (like I usually do) I have put it into a savings and investment plan. Picking up company shares at a cut rate, got a new accountant with a "tax mitigation strategy" that we are putting into place. At this rate I should be debt free in about 3 years (including the mortgage on my place). Just wanted to tell someone really =)
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Dec 10, 2012 11:22
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