Forced scarcity and delayed gratification is all good and needed to become an adequate saver. However, if you are consistently saving at least 25% of your income monthly, you can probably go a bit easy on your self. Just don't drop below 25%, unless of course you need to for a short time.

Learn everything you can on personal finance. Here are some suggested goals (I'm a former HS financial literacy teacher so I have had plenty of these scenarios brought to me)

1. Try and work as many jobs as you can. Enter your school's work half-day program (it may be called something else at your school).
2. Do not spend any money on anything unnecessary. Suck it up as long as you can and see how much your dad can still cover. Don't party and don't waste any spending.
3. Understand that your girlfriend is just that and not a wife. She may not be your girlfriend next year. You need to focus on how you can support yourself for now and not someone else. Please try to not get her pregnant.
4. Get on a written budget and be as strict as possible with it. Be disciplined here.
5. Ask for help from your teachers and counselors that you trust to see if they have extra resources available for you.
6. Try to get a better job if possible or start a side hustle. Grass-cutting and pressure-washing (and similar) companies are always looking to hire hungry and motivated kids.
7. Using your network, see if there are any low-rent apartments or shared-room situations to lower your rent as low as possible. This will be your biggest cost.

This is not for the faint of heart. I hope you know what you are getting into. You will be sacrificing all of your social life and more to do this but it can be done.

I'd cash them out and buy broadly diversified, low fee, tax efficient index funds. If you're not currently maxing your retirement, I would increase your contributions to the maximum and supplement your income using these funds.

I wouldn't do anything until you start making money.

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

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I’d move it all to broad market funds and then slowly use it as savings to fill your retirement accounts.

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.

Fastest way to get out on your own would be to join one of the branches of the military. This option usually pay ot a decent bonus and pays for school. You could join a active component or guard/reserve for part time but you will likely deploy somewhere before the term ends. Second would be try to get a colledge grant or scollership an move into a dorm, finish colledge and get a decent paying job. Like mentioned above don't rely on you gf this could end badly. Coast of living varies per state so google cost of living where you plan to locate to. Life is not easy so start saving now it will help you in the long run.

I never said it did but my father plans on giving me the car when i turn 18 in my name

my bad, I meant working for a VA a company the whole year. I didn’t realize I was being taxed differently for working at home vs in the office

If your mortgage interest* + state/local taxes** + 501c3 donations > standard deduction, yes, you can reduce your taxable income. However, treat this as a discount on your mortgage interest - you're basically discounting the interest rate by your tax bracket. Don't buy a home just because you can save taxes. Buy a home only because it makes sense in your situation, and only when you are able to maintain it and deal with repairs.

*Capped at the first $750k borrowed

**Capped at $10k

When you look back on your life and stack up all of your chips into retirement, is that $1,800 going to matter much in your net worth?

> commuted there between 2 and 4 days a week.

So not the full year then?

I worked in VA for the entire year, commuted there between 2 and 4 days a week. Not sure if that changes anything

Personally - having a job you hate sucks, even if it keeps you materially comfortable and on track with retirement savings. There might be other steps you can take to put you on a new career path before getting a degree.

Have you considered taking classes part time? Why do you think computer science is the way you want to go? Do you have friends, colleagues, acquaintances in CS or other fields you can take to coffee for an informational interview to learn what their jobs are like? Do you hate the job, or doing that job in a H/M/LCOL town? Only you can answer these.

Similarly what are your goals for the next 3, 5 and 10 years? Are you trying to buy a house or something else you need large liquid savings? Are you trying to simply avoid as much debt as possible? Will living with your parents again after being independent for a few years drive you crazy? Again, this is all the personal side of things.

As someone who fantasizes about going back to school and rebooting a different career, I get the temptation. Can you find other places outside of work to bring you happiness? Picking up new hobbies, or friends, or relationships - something that helps define who you are outside of work? Maybe this isn’t about general life satisfaction rather than this specific job? Similarly have you talked with possible mentors/colleagues/supervisors about how to improve? We’re often our harsher critics when thinking about how good or talented we are at our jobs.

Financially - depending on how old you are, getting those years in your twenties and early 30s maxed out is gonna do more for you than maxing them out in your later in life. The market is a bit unsettled and who knows what the next five years look like, but come 2040 and these early years have been compounding for a decade and a half you’ll likely thank yourself for continuing to invest.

30k isn’t a ton of debt to take on, especially when you have non currently. you’ll need to surmise what your additional costs of living are during school - is that just tuition? Fees? Books? Will you need transportation insurance and gas? Can you take 40k in loans to cover any gaps, etc.

You answer to the person in the mirror and you gotta do what you gotta do to make that person happy. Balancing financial goals with broader life satisfaction is probably more important than being miserable with a well funded IRA.

Lastly, Syracuse NY is getting a new Micron megafab with jobs paying 100k+ in a part of NY with low cost of living, good schools, lots of nature, decent mid-size city food/bar scene. If you stick with the semiconductor field, it might be a place worth considering to maximize what you salary:I hate work ratio can get ya.

Anyway, that’s my sermon and those are the questions I’d want to have answers I feel confident about before making a big life decision. Good Luck!

You’re misunderstanding something.

You lived in DC, so you’re income for DC will be your full income. You also worked in Virginia for part of the year (I’m assuming you’re mostly remote?) so you had some income in Virginia as well.

You’ll file taxes in virginia, then file taxes in DC where you’ll get a credit for the taxes paid to Virginia.

See the discussion on reciprocity

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Yes your insurance can drop you.

For 2.5k, by time you pay the deductible and increased premiums, you will almost surely be better served by self paying.

If you are running this as a profit motive endeavor without significant personal enrichment, then you are self employed. Small business. That's the section you use on TT.

What's your deductible? Look online, I had to replace a bumper a few years ago and it was $1500 to replace, my deductible was $1K and it was my fault so I opted to pay it myself. Based on info I got online which estimated my insurance may increase for 3 yrs, even as first and only claim in years. The prior one was not my fault, an AT&T truck rolled into me from behind at a red light.

Have you reported this to your manager each time? If you have, then the first time could have been an honest mistake. The 2nd - 3rd time is weird. This has happened to my wife once each but it was corrected before the next pay period. They just did not pay us as much on the 2nd pay period because they overpaid on the first. The gross pay was the only thing affected.

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I'd get your HR/payroll and supervisor in on this to make sure everyone understands and that you want to put a stop to this.

If you feel as if two mortgages puts you at increased risk in case of job loss, then maybe you need a larger emergency fund. Increase your emergency fund to a level that makes you comfortable, then invest extra income.

Same situation here. Invest don’t pay off the mortgage. If your worried about losing your job, stick the money in a HYSA or treasuries. Don’t forget that $3-5k in interest you’re paying is lowering the taxable income on the property too.

VTSAX isn't an ETF, it's a mutual fund. The ETF class for that fund is VTI.

Otherwise you're correct. VTSAX owns a piece of pretty much every publicly traded company in the US, in amounts consistent with each company's valuation (i.e. it buys much more Apple stock than, say, AMC).

Figure out how much you will earn per month from your film apprenticeship. Then make a budget for monthly spending on rent, groceries, utilities, transportation and insurance.