Basically you give them the full amount back and you correct it on your taxes. That’s typically how these sign on bonus paybacks work.

You spend a lot on vehicles and pets. Those jumped out at me. Also food is kinda high. I don't have interweb I use my mobile Hotspot with unlimited data and it works fine. Phone is high as well. Mint mobile is super cheap. I used to have pest control. When I moved I dumped it and in 2 years haven't had a problem. Ymmv. You could free up like 2k if you get tighter with it

Those look like annualized yields

Was there anything in the contract saying the bonus would need to be paid back if you left before X date?

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>leverage credit and at least get to keep my money making me income

Honestly - how much after-tax income are you making financing a $1,000 phone?

I would tighten the budget, drop 10k on it and pay it off as quickly as possible. Then rebuild the EF.

You are probably holding too much cash, you should follow the flow chart in the wiki here.

>The dog walking alone made me cringe.

Why? $200 a month is actually pretty reasonable for a HCOL, is the dog supposed to walk itself if they are both working outside of the home?

If I’m not mistaken I believe they still do that?

Everything should always be done correctly and not incorrectly, that much is true.

It's just a kelly blue book quote. I'd imagine their own company would offer close to what their quote was, of course they could just claim X damage on the car but I don't expect any damage as I have no accidents, I bought car covers and I bought the special plastic floor thats easily cleaned.

Discover 3.5% APY (not the highest) but they do offer a bonus of up to $200 if you deposit a min of 20k. $150 bonus for 15k if you don’t have 20k. They upped my initial apy of 3.3% twice in once month. 3.3-3.4 and 3.4-3.5 all within the past 2 weeks. I’ve only been with them for a month and have no issues with them. I did a lot of research and ended up settling with them. I would have gone ally but discover was offering the bonus money at the same apy

My top 3 were Ally, Discover, and Marcus. All reputable companies with great customer service. All around 3.5% right now. There are always going to be small no name companies offering 4.5-5% but usually money transfers take longer and customer service is sucky.

Thank you

Less think the better.

Where “can legitimately do” = “if you are doing it correctly”.

That’s not true. Married filing separately you get the exact same tax credits just divided by two. Things like tax credits for dependents, you need to choose on who’s tax return it makes the most sense to put it on.

If OP does VTSAX for thirty years he should have enough dividends even in a down market that he will have no financial problems at all.

That’s dealer retail, or private party sale / trade? You won’t get dealer retail.

Thank you this helps put it into perspective

How long will it take you to pay back the 401k? If you could pay it back quickly, I don’t see it has harmful as others might. I took 10K from 401k but it was paid back in like a year and my retirement is still well ahead of the typical markers.

But if it can’t be paid back quickly, I would not touch my retirement. If your house appreciates or once you get to 20% you can get it taken off most mortgages.

>Should we consider getting a prenup even though neither of us have any assets or wealth?

What do you imagine would be the benefit of this prenup? What would it protect?

Do you know and share each others' long term financial goals?

Maybe use about 8k to get ahead of interest, try to pay 2x monthly interest and try to save $250/mo until your savings gets to 6k, then make as large of payments as you can without starving until payed off.

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If they are going into college, often they can get a college specific checking account that has no fees. I used Chase for mine and never had a single issue with it. You can just ask to set up a college account. If not, Chase is still a great bank and ive never had any problems. Good luck!