nope. same account. leave traditional open with $0 balance. contribute to it first week of Jan and convert to existing Roth account.

Does your plan support after tax contributions?

>So it really can matter. Not everyone cares for their property, and that certainly can affect the value of yours.

It can also be the exact opposite like my neighborhood.

I live in a really nice neighborhood but only a small part of it is in the HOA. The houses outside the HOA are more desirable and it's actually a major advertising point the real estate agents use. You can't tell the difference between the HOA houses and the non ones.

People vastly overstate the value of an HOA to a neighborhood. Where I live it does nothing for property values and in some cases actually hurts the value a bit. I'm not allowed to remove any trees and people really don't like the risk and mess they cause. The guy across the street from me had over $250k in damages from trees and finally told the HOA to fuck off and removed all of them. If I moved 2 houses down there is no HOA and I could do whatever I want to my property, including removing trees.

I'm sure there are places like you mentioned where it does matter, but if you are in an area with a strong housing market they do absolutely nothing.

You may find these links helpful:

• Retirement Accounts
• "How to handle $"

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Join the hoa board and then work to disband it

Fwiw we LOVE our local ups. But since they’re franchises it probably matter based on location. We’ve had great customer service

Is the intro APR on the credit card 0%? If not , I’d pay down that first. The two loans are pretty low rates honestly and some high yield savings accounts will return higher amounts nowadays. I’d prioritize establishing a better emergency fund, contributing 8% to the 401k, then paying down the loans

How does an HOA benefit the home owners at all?

I went to 6 HOA meetings over 5 years.

Two of the meetings they cancelled without saying anything due to people on the board not being available.

The other four? We couldn't vote on anything due to either missing 2 of our 4 board members, or not enough home owners showing up (likely due to the meeting time being at 5:00pm in a weekday, not allowing kids, and cancelling last minute all the time without warning).

Since we couldn't vote, the board members were allowed to make decisions FOR us.

One of the votes were for new board members...

The board member that we were voting to remove didn't show, which prevented us from voting them out.

They did that for 2 years before enough people complained, and we got a whole new management company and board members, then the cycle repeated again, only this time, they raised condo fees by $50 a month every 6 months while also removing services.

They ended up claiming that all the costs went to snow plowing, until someone requested the receipts and did the math. The numbers were way off, and it was found that the new manager was increasing rates and pocketing the cash.

So glad to be out of the place.

even with my current landlord who is by far the best landlord anyone could ask for (completely absent but SUPER responsive when texted with an issue, only raised rent 1% per year), I still mail in checks via certified or priority mail and send her the tracking number ahead of time. Costs me like 2$ in postage, i can live with it.

With you, having only $50/month, it’s pointless to learn much about the whims of the stock market. In your situation, you really just need to understand 5 things.

1. Time is the most important factor. The sooner you can start putting your money to work for you, the better. The longer you have until retirement, the more you stand to gain from your investments. Start today, and don’t look back.

2. Understand the differences between basic account types such as a 401k, traditional IRA, and ROTH IRA. Especially as they relate to taxes. Taxes are going to have a major impact on your nest egg in retirement, arguably the biggest impact other than your investment selection.

3. Stick with low cost ETFs or target date funds. Don’t buy individual stocks, buy baskets of stocks. Vanguard funds are generally the gold standard. You’ll want to do at least a bit of research on specific funds like VOO or VTI and ideal allocations based on your age and specific goals… A good place to start would be googling the 4 fund portfolio.

4. Don’t panic when the stock market tanks. It happens. As long as you aren’t nearing retirement in the next couple years or so, just let it ride.

5. As you near retirement you’ll want to rebalance your portfolio from aggressive to more conservative. This basically means selling your riskier investments (stocks) and buying safer investments (bonds). You have 30 years before retirement to learn about this stuff, but if it seems too complicated or you’re not interested in learning, just go back to step 3 and stick with a target date fund. With target date funds, all you do is select the date you expect to retire and they will automatically adjust your portfolio as you get closer to that “target date”. Most 401ks have target date options.

All that being said, I’d also recommend you download the Acorns app. It’s a great platform for beginners. Fidelity is great too.

The habit of saving is far more important than any timing. I’ve been consistently putting in for 23 years and it’s a big pile of money now.

In many states if the goods or service is essential they are required to offer a free way to pay. Ironically the free way often costs the recipient more to process than the card processing fees would.

Do not under any circumstances, deduct what you think you’re owed by your HOA. You put yourself at risk for failure to pay as required = late fees, etc. etc. etc.

It definitely is a high fee to pay a fee but not unheard of. My HOA charges $3.25 per transaction through their portal. I set mine to be drafted from my bank account instead on the due dates. It accomplishes the same thing but no fees.

Definitely talk to your HOA board/president and request a reimbursement. Most board members are reasonable and will help you.

Also, it’s to your advantage to at least attend annual meetings and be involved with your HOA. Less surprises and conflicts.

Certified mail w/ return receipt requested is so much cheaper and faster than registered mail and offers similar proof of mailing and delivery. It's a rent check not some kind of irreplaceable item.

Talk to your work. You can have a different mailing address vs your “physical” address for taxes.

We have packages that get stolen and use a ups mailbox for that. When my company has to send me like an extra keyboard they use my ups mailbox.

Don't buy a house with a bad school system. Buy the expensive one or wait till something else comes along. If it were me, I'd be a little afraid of the expensive house but I'd probably buy it because it seems suitable (and then be super frugal for awhile).

Okay thanks. I'll give Schwab a call next Jan 3rd. No I only have one 401k plan. I just hope this doesn't delay anything since tax season is coming up.

Happy New Year!

I've noticed a lot of time I'm using something and I think "man this interface is shit" it's because all of the buttons are the same size. I'm looking for the button that does whatever the primary purpose of the program is and subconsciously expect it to be big. I use a lot of niche software made by like 3 people (none of which are UI designers) so it's a recurring theme.

One reason to do it as an add on fee is if they believe the prices will come back down. Reprinting menus with different prices for what they believe will be temporary is an unnecessary hassle/expense.

I hate the “shocked” faces and refuse to watch any video with one in the thumbnail.

80 percent of the things I search on YouTube shouldn’t require a persons face at all

I would contact your plan administrator ASAP to see if they can fix this. They should not have allowed you to contribute more than your limit for the year. Unless you're 50 or older, in which case the limit is $27,000.

Or is this a case where you had two 401k plans this year? In which case they would have no idea what you contributed to the other.

I believe if the excess is removed by April 15, then there won't be a penalty. The excess will be taxable for 2022, and any gains on that excess amount will be taxable for the year it was removed (2023). And a 1099-R will need to be filled out for the correction. But your plan administrator should be able to help you with that.

That's one I was looking at from the nerdwallet list! What's your least favorite part of that one?

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Yup. When I have a job done I'll just write a check if it costs more to charge.