List your pay and deductions on your most recent paystub.

ETA: Based on additional information, all amounts on your paycheck are consistent. Because you only started working in the US for ~4 months, withholding is likely overestimated. Also, if you have any itemizable deductions, you can further reduce taxable income.

Thanks for the advice! Did some quick math and I'm gonna up my 401K contributions to 1875 to meet the 22500 yearly max :)

There's a lot of "it depends" here. Are your jobs paying for the moves? Are you accumulating tons of stuff and then selling it every couple years? Does your job pay for your housing at all? I don't think I've lived in the same city for more than 3-4 years at a time my entire adult life, and I like to think I'm doing pretty OK.

A lot of people will tell you that you should buy a house or something, but if you're already investing, then you're already ahead of 95% of the population. Just manage your expenses of things you can't move with you and have to sell off inexpensively. If there's also international tax implications, keep ahead of that, too.

I recommend opening a Roth IRA at one of the big firms, meaning Vanguard, Schwab, or Fidelity. Here's what I recommend buying at each:

• Vanguard - VT - spreads your money around to pretty much every public company in the world; when you get up to $3k invested, you can change to VTWAX and set up automatic investments
• Schwab - SWTSX (US stocks) and SWISX (international stocks) - do 60% SWTSX, 40% SWISX
• Fidelity - FZROX (US stocks) and FZILX (international stocks) - do 60% FZROX and 40% SWISX

Do that until you have a better idea of what you want.

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Yes. Conversion is strictly calendar year based.

Contribution on the other hand, can be made until Tax Day.

ah, thank you. so it is the year of the conversion, not the previous year, meaning that I should be good to perform a backdoor Roth conversion in 2023 (assuming I have $0 in a traditional IRA on 12/31/2023)?

8% is a lot to bank on…

Part-time employment is fine.

I will regret, for the rest of my life, NOT trying other places. GO. The money will always be around.

You have until 12/31 of the calendar year you perform Roth conversions to empty out your traditional IRA.

You can roll over, contribute, and convert in any order, as long as you don't mix up pretax and aftertax balances in the same account.

Yes. I should qualify that as "coming out of my pocket take home pay." Taxes are withheld from my paycheck.

Seeking suggestions on how to determine the break even point between paying off my car loan (4.1%) vs investing the cash. Considering the car is a depreciating asset?

We could feasibly pay it off before the end of 2023, about 15 months into the loan term.

I'm not sure you can file W2 before January 1. Try tax1099.com in a week. It will cost you a few bucks to e-file but it's worth it.

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I’m already committed because of ED, and I did get into a school that gave some some scholarship money too, but I didn’t like it as much as where I’m going. I’m planning on majoring in either math/physics or engineering, and the school I’m going to is around T30-T40 for both (as well as it’s national ranking overall), and it should be a good investment for grad school + job placement.

It does indeed need to be realized.

If you cannot deduct the traditional IRA contribution due to your income and having a 401k, you should then consider the following two things:

1. Can you make Roth IRA contributions directly? Read about the income limit. If yes, recharacterize the 2022 traditional IRA contribution as Roth IRA contributions.

2. If #1 is a "no", then read about Backdoor Roth

That’s the yearly limit. They don’t want you to be able to have a ton of money growing tax free.

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I just keep rolling 6 month tbills in fidelity. 1/3 of it releases from ibonds in March which I'll sell in July and move to more tbills.

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I’d also say that I’m considering doing something where I could TA certain classes during my fourth year while taking certain grad-level classes, and finish my master’s in a fifth year at half tuition. That way I could save 75% of what I would be paying for grad school.

>Since my contributions are coming out of my pocket post-income tax

Are you deducting the IRA contributions on your income taxes each year?

Yeah, I would want to find opportunities through school-sponsored internships, but I’m not sure if I would want to take a year off after college to join the workforce if I were to go to grad school. Honestly, I could change my mind if I need a break and want to evaluate my options, but my family tells me the longer I’m in school, the later I have to start working, which is for the better.