[deleted]

Call the credit card companies right away and explain your situation. They will work with you.

Sell your car, use that $3500 to get a vehicle that runs, as in a Toyota or a Honda from the early aughts, with 200k miles on it. Do not incur a whole ‘nother car payment. I mean that the cash from the sale of your car needs to completely cover the cost of the car you’re buying.

Is the personal loan from a friend or family member? Can that person do without payments until you can get a full time job or a second part time job?

Do not use a retirement account to fix issues now. That is a last resort after all lesser means have failed or cannot reasonably be employed.

Make a strict budget and evaluate either the snowball or avalanche debt payment methods.

I've had one for 10 years maybe, it's fine.

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• Leaving a Job (resigning, quitting, fired, laid off, etc.)
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I have a brokerage account that I have used for my Roth. I have heard about backdoor Roth, but it seems complicated and I didn't want to do something wrong and get into hot water if I didn't understand the protocol properly (probably unfounded I know).

I know I need to do more, but as a teacher it has been hard to contribute more on my salary than the $6500 when I focused on being debt free and having an emergency fund right after college as a single income. These days, I finally have the income to work with but not so great advice which is why I am here.

Yep, no HSA. I have some regular appointments each month and a set copay so I calculate what I need for the year for those and leave a little extra for other expenses I know I will end of charging throughout the year. So far it has worked out well for me.

>it has been super disheartening to have to reevaluate my options now that I am getting married

What exactly is so disheartening? You only mentioned a Roth IRA, of which you can still be contributing to via the Backdoor method. But honestly if all you were doing was Roth IRA you probably weren’t doing enough anyway.

Do you have a brokerage account?

I mean who needs to wire money though? That’s not a normal thing.

They offer *free wire fees, but the actual execution of the wire is tedious and requires at least three business days. If you use Ally Bank, there's a $20 wire fee but that sucker goes out when you want it to go out. Plus, you don't have to call them to send it.

(*I had them for about a year and dropped them because of the clumsy performance of the wire.)

>phased out of eligibility for Roth IRA.

Look up “Backdoor Roth IRA”. Totally legit, it just involves a couple extra steps.

>I hear absolute horror stories about 403b plans

Some are fine. My Wife’s is through Fidelity and is super low cost. All depends on the employer and how much they want to spend to make sure their employees have a quality plan. The predatory ones are the employers who don’t want to spend anything

Thank you! Most of my peers who no longer qualify have robust 401k plans they use instead and my public sector friends tend to be below the limits, so it has been hard to find people in my position. I really appreciate the input and flowchart.

>I’d switch to the HSA plan if offered so you don’t lose money.

You can’t switch to an HSA unless you have an HDHP. Most likely OPs insurance doesn’t qualify and thus why they offer the FSA

Have been using them since 2016. They are fantastic, and customer service is excellent. I used them to store my mortgage down payment and were great when I needed to wire money.

No, literally no one has. You are the first.

It’s just a HYSA like any other. There’s nothing special about it.

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

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I love the flowchart! Here's the wiki page with more context and information.

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You can both have separate or combined healthcare plans. It’s up to you. If you have an FSA, it’s kind of antiquated. I’d switch to the HSA plan if offered so you don’t lose money.

If you are married filing jointly you have the income limit of a married filing jointly family. But yes, 403b plans are often worse than 401k plans.

Follow the flowchart.

My generic advice:

https://i.imgur.com/lSoUQr2.png

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.

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• Retirement Accounts
• "How to handle $"

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What’s the “downside” or con of owning this, or something similar, in a taxable account?

I have one, works fine, they up the rates at a reasonable speed, got my promo on time.

Nothing wrong with it

I have an American Express high yield savings account. I don’t remember if I did it during a promotion or not, but I’ve have it for around two years and have had no issues or surprises. Just put money in and collect interest.

I opened one last fall and have it now. The welcome bonus at the time was $300 I think, which I received in January. They periodically adjust rates to keep pace with all the other “big” HYSA banks, although all of those can be at least temporarily beat by little guys you’ve often never heard of.

The current rate increase to 3.5% just happened on Feb 16th. Think it was 3.4% before that, then 3.3%, etc. They adjust it pretty frequently, sometimes even a few times a month to keep up with whatever competitors are doing.

I also like the fact that it uses and shows up on the same AMEX app as the credit cards, and I’ve long used AMEX as my primary credit cards.

TLDR, no catches, no complaints.

Edit - just checked the handy dandy app, the account was opened on Sep 19th, the $350 welcome bonus (not $300, I was wrong before) hit my account on Jan 13.

I have an account with Amex. We have had it for a number of years. It holds money that we do not need immediately. When we have pulled money it has taken 1 day to get our money transferred to our main account. We also use Ally.