[deleted]

That’s the shit part of retention bonuses.

You either have to quit in the same year you get it so the employer can get the 7k back from the irs and you just pay back the 13k or you have to stay until it expires.

If you don’t like a job, the best thing to do is take the retention bonus and put it in a high yield savings account until the contract expires.

Agreed. We need some specifics from OP. What did OP mean by losing quality of life? This is kinda subjective and differs from person to person.

People really comment in this sub giving advice to others despite making their own bad decisions lol.

Over 10% of your monthly take home is for a car? Yikes.

Let me ask you this. Would you borrow 15k to invest in the market if a car was not involved?

As long as you separate from Company A the year in which you turn 55 or later, and keep the money in Company A's 401k, you qualify for the Age of 55 rule for Company A distributions. Company B or C distributions do not qualify.

IRS does not care about future employment. Sometimes you hear the mistaken belief that you have to "retire" there for it to count, but it's not the case.

From IRS.gov:

>Distributions made to you after you separated from service with your employer if the separation occurred in or after the year you reached age 55

This, start with your EOB for the visit. It will be more useful than trying to ask for an itemized bill.

It looks like neither ID or MT have PTO pay out requirements. CA does, but if you're based in ID and travel to work in MT and CA (rather than a remote employee working in CA) I don't think the CA requirements supersede in that situation.

Car loan rates have increased as the fed rates hav increased, so the spread here is much smaller. If you were buying a car a couple years ago when you could get 2% or less loans, this idea makes more sense.

But the more broad item you are missing out on is called sequence of returns risk. So if the only way you can do this is by needing to cash out the investment monthly to pay the loan, then it likely isn’t a good idea.

Important caveat: if you are on income-based student loan repayments and your income will be higher combined, you might consider filing separately.

You’re going to wind up paying $31,500 for the car once it’s all said and done. You could have gotten a cheaper car. Like others have said, it is what it is. You can probably afford it but you could have spent less and probably been just as happy.

Thank you! This clarification is so helpful.

Fees will kill you over 35-40 years. The second reference shows a great table - a 1.5% fee over 40 years will rob your retirement portfolio of 45% potential growth! Add on another 30 years of retirement paying 1.5% and you are down by 65%!! Look into doing it yourself with a Boglehead 3 fund portfolio.

• A 1% fee can cost millennials up to $590,000 in retirement savings https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/millennial-retirement-fees-one-percent-half-million-savings-impact/
• Boglehead’s excellent table showing how much fees decrease your nest egg https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/How_much_do_you_lose_to_annual_fees_after_many_years%3F

Doesn't really matter I don't think as my point was that the two questions were effectively opposites.

Though I'd say no to 1 and yes to 2.

The side job likely withheld taxes like you were only making $7k for the year.

Read this all the way through...

https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance/w/collections?

If the semiconductor industry is undersaturated its not reflected in our salaries. My CS friends with lower grades and fewer ECs are doing quite well compared to me. My coworkers are fairly open about their salaries and even mid and high level salaries are pretty meh. At worst it would be a lateral career move, the recent tech layoffs seem exaggerated to me as long as you don’t work for a major tech company. I have a few software engineer friends working at F500 companies and they’ve been completely unaffected.

As far as getting experience on the job, I’m a ChemE working as a process engineer. When I’m using software it’s Excel 95% of the time. I’ve made some useful macros for my team but other than that my role is so far removed from anything programming related that I don’t see a reasonable path for learning on the job. My role is pretty hands on, I’m not even using a computer half the time.

I get that this might seem like a stupid decision but I’ve thought about it and it’s right for me. Personally I feel like I need the structure and goal of a degree to ground me as I learn new skills, even if self teaching would be cheaper

I'm starting to wonder if the employer was even withholding taxes. This might be an even bigger hornet's nest.

Where does he get the extra 7k TODAY to pay back his employer before he can reclaim it via tax time next year?

[deleted]

Looking solid. I don't see anything concerning. You can increase your retirement savings if you're comfortable doing so.

For clarity, are you making Traditional 401k contributions, and does this $400 include your employer match? Only asking because you list it below your net income, but Traditional contributions are taken from your gross income (not listed).

When you have jobs, neither employer knows about the other from a payroll perspective. Therefore each assumes that they are the only money you make for your withholding. The US has a tax bracket system where you pay higher rates of taxes on buckets of income.

The first $10,275 of income is taxed at 10%. So your second job was withheld at 10%. However you really made more than that, so it should have been taxed at a higher rate.

If your first job was say $50,000, then that extra 7500 should have been taxed at 22% (based on 2022 rates). That's why your refund went down. You earned income that didn't have enough withheld, so you have to make up the difference.

Both employers withheld correctly as far as they knew, if you put down the standard 1 exemption withholding on both w-4s. You have to follow an alternative process for second job withholdings.

The company is based in Idaho but I performed work in California, Idaho, and Montana of that affects it. I can’t find anything in the employee handbook about a payout rate either. I suppose anything is better than nothing I had just been kinda assuming I would be paid the full value

If I’m understanding your post correctly it sounds like you’re paying your student loan down an extra $1k a month? Depending on the terms of that debt maybe it would be better to pay the minimum on the student loan and extra on the car payment. If the interest is low on that student loan why rush to pay it off?

*most of my knowledge of finance comes from Reddit so please correct me if I’m wrong.

Yup, my bad. I'll fix.