My MIL sold a car a few years ago, in Michigan. The vehicle was fully paid off, but the title she had still had the lienholder on it. You definitely should get a new title with the lienholder removed.

Yes, the SOS is the same as the DMV in Michigan.

Only put it on credit if you can pay it off before there is interest. If you don't already have credit then yeah this may be a good idea

Here's a link to the PF Wiki for helpful guides and information.

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Index funds. Don’t buy individual stocks. Check the wiki for more info.

You won't get this kind of jump in most fields in year 1. It's not just performance, but sustained performance over time on key business results, that gets you the biggest raises in place.

In my field, they don't like hearing it, but most 1st year "rock stars" did great but aren't generally on critical business needs. This doesn't mean they didn't deliver value.

Expect 5% as a top performer. If you think that's unfair, try switching jobs, but depth generally beats breadth in the first 5 years in a technical field.

At 35, I have doubled my salary in the past 4 years alone from what it was 4 years ago, but the other first 8 or so years I went up about 30% total.

This!
Claim lost and don’t dispute charges to date

Remove them as authorized user- or Pretend card was stolen so they issue you a new one. And don’t share. Boom

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You have the cash saved up so you should use it. Putting 2k on the card to pay off over a few months will hurt your credit.

I would use it as the last resort after all lesser means have failed and cannot reasonably be employed.

Roll to an IRA if possible, but getting income is the priority.

No choosing high interest credit card debt is never a good option

One thing to keep in mind is what model you are looking at.

There are multiple versions of FICO/Vantage that are all based on different parameters, and they vary significantly. The scores between the 3 different bureaus can be different from one another as well. Make sure you are comparing apples to apples here.

You need to pull your actual credit report (not just an opaque number on your banks dashboard) and review it and see if there’s something wrong on it that might explain this drop. If there is, you can dispute it with the bureaus.

3% is an average value amount, but disproportionately more of those are at or below 3% with fewer of them substantially over, shifting the average. The median experience is under 2%.

Refuse to talk to this person. Tell them that from now on all communication must be in writing.

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Recommend switching to a traditional 401k to maximize tax benefits in peak earning years.

My generic advice:

https://imgur.io/lSoUQr2?r

Here is the flowchart from the r/personalfinance subreddit’s Prime Directive. If you follow that, you will be ahead of almost all of your peers.

Stop by the sidebar to see the Common Topics, which include basic money handling and investing.

You don’t need to talk to anyone or buy some random book to do this. You have all the tools right here.

i also realized this after posting… maybe i can just report it as lost and get the new card sent to me so i can stop my family from using it (it’s our main Amazon account card).

are you able to lock the card instead of closing it? you might be able to salvage the account and save your credit score from tanking since it's your oldest line. cc company could just deactivate the card they use and reissue a new one to you.

I would stop the taxable investing in your Robinhood until you had your retirement contributions up to at least 15% of income. Your are technically behind on retirement by a good amount (1 years salary by the age of 30), so aim for more while you can seemingly afford it. The value of compounding over time is huge for you.

You can save for a future wedding when there is someone in the picture and your are engaged. I wouldn't keep saving and earmark it for a wedding when one isn't likely in the near term. Until then it makes a great downpayment on a home if you want to be a homeowner. That said this sub doesn't recommend you invest money you plan to need in the next 5 years (short term).

Where is the rest of your money going? I calculated you should see about $3852 a month assuming 2 biweekly checks after 401k contributions. After rent that's nearly $3k that's unaccounted for.

As an American citizen it is extremely easy for you (or your parents) to initiate a transfer of USD out of a Chinese bank and to a US or other foreign bank. It’s true that you “have to have a reason” but in my experience (as a foreigner in China) it’s a trivial process. My bank app has an option roughly 外籍人境外转账 or something similar (foreign national transfer funds abroad) which can be selected as the “reason”. The only challenging part is exchanging funds from CNY to USD, but if the funds are already denominated in USD in the Chinese bank account, you can transfer them out directly to any major US bank. If you use a smaller bank in the US it may be more complex as you’ll need an intermediary bank.

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Me too (although older) - are you able to contribute to the employee and employer sides of your 401K (you can do that as a partner in private practice)? That is $65,000 plus a year. You can do a backdoor Roth for another $6500. I got really serious about retirement saving and planning 2 years ago. Lots of books I listened to on the way to work and back. Within 3 months I was very comfortable with making my own plans. These were the most important to me:

• A Simple Path To Wealth by JL Collins https://ia903406.us.archive.org/3/items/the-simple-path-to-wealth/The%20Simple%20Path%20To%20Wealth.pdf
• If You Can: How Millennials Can Get Rich Slowly - a free online PDF by William Bernstein excellent at 15 pages: https://www.etf.com/docs/IfYouCan.pdf
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John “Jack” Bogle
• A Random Walk Down Wall Steet
• The Millionaire Next Door
• The Psychology of Money

First of all, stop beating yourself up about this. It doesn't help, and the "everything I do is wrong, so it doesn't matter what I do" mentality often leads to more bad decisions. You're only 21; we've all made dumb mistakes and if you learn your lesson about not buying cars you can't afford at 21 (and you definitely can't afford a car that you can only buy with 22%, never mind 28% interest), you learned this lesson cheaply.

So, no, don't get another car right now if at all possible. You're already paying off two car loans, and you don't want to be paying 3. If you could even get a car loan, you'd get another high-interest loan because the lender would (reasonably) want to be compensated for the high risk that you wouldn't be able to keep up with the payments and default.

And you could look into personal loans or refinancing, but you're likely to run into the same problem that you're going to look like a default risk. But if you can get a better rate (like at a credit union), then go for it.

But you are NOT going to borrow your way out of debt, so the loan restructuring is not the solution. What you need is a (possibly temporary) infusion of extra income. If you can get overtime where you work, great. If not, you're going to need to get a second job. The faster you can pay these loans off, the less it matters what the interest rate is. Right now you're paying $3000+ of your $8500 in annual car payments to interest, which means it's going to take you two years to pay them off. If you could add another $400 a month to that, it would only take you 14 months; if you could add $1000, it would only take you 9 months. Can you figure out how to add $100/week?

Normally at this point I would say "delivering pizzas", but that doesn't seem like a great option for someone with a totaled car in their recent history. And most regular insurance doesn't cover accidents while driving for work (State Farm is an exception). But I'd really start looking for something. If you can temporarily boost your income (and/or cut expenses), you can get this behind you a lot sooner. And if you can keep it going for a while, you can add to the down payment and get a more reliable car, as well as building up an emergency fund so that any future events don't become crises that send you spiraling again.