So if I don’t pay, the plan administrator would essentially garnish my wages to pay it back? I just never read anything about that when I was researching. Thanks.

I'm not sure but I totally fell into it I guess if it's not true, just have heard a lot of people say that. I admittedly don't know what I'm doing, all I have to go off of is that my score has been rising fast the last few months so I figured it was true. Then also credit karma I got an alert from them today saying that if I paid $126 of my $400 balance it would give me a credit boost, so I just paid that and it'll come out of my checking tomorrow.

Things happen and you don't know the future. You are always vested in your money and the match is free money. I'd never contribtute less than full match regardless of vesting schedule or anticipated time at employer.

Few thoughts.

How much work does the jeep need? Having a paid off car and a car note when you are in debt isn’t necessary. Get one of those assets off the books.

What is the PC payment and how long is that going to last? Computers today are cheap you could get a decent one for school for $300 or less. This payment reminds me of the predatory commercials that used to run on MTV where people paid $3K over a few years for a $500 computer because the monthly payment was affordable to them.

The USD isn't backed by oil, it's backed by full faith and credit of the government. A very small percentage of oil used in the USA comes from Saudi Arabia these days. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php

Saudi Arabia depends heavily on the USA for defense and purchases billions of dollars of weapons a year.

Do some research on the stuff these people are telling you before you try to make financial decisions on it. I wouldn't take world advice or financial advice from these people, they seem to be in deep with conspiracy theories they see on social media.

The at fault driver’s insurance is the one that should be footing the bill. This is a quick attempt to shirk their responsibility and screw you in the process. Stop all communication with the other drivers insurance and contact your insurance rep about what has transpired.

You may find these links helpful:

• 401(k) Fund Selection Guide
• 401(k) FAQs
• "How to handle $"

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You need 20% of the purchase price to avoid mortgage insurance. If you’ve got an exceptional mortgage rate, it might make sense to pay the mortgage insurance. Your lender would decide what $10k is enough of a down payment for a particular loan. Chances are pretty good they would not let you go below 5% of the purchase price for a down payment. In theory, you may have a down payment on a $200k house. Any other assets, credit, income, and whatever other made up metrics are also used to calculate your mortgage though. Technically, if the house appreciates in value faster than your loans grow; you should buy the house. Houses are mediocre investments, but a great way to save money. It may cost more to live in your own home. The money isn’t really gone like with renting. It’s in the value of the house.

To be clear, do you mean you wrote a personal check or is this a cashiers check or something else? This could matter.

If I wrote a personal check for a deposit, I’d expect that person to cash the check immediately so they are holding the money and not just a slip of paper. When the deposit is due to be returned, I’d expect to get a check made out to me which I then go cash.

If they just wanted a check made out to them which they physically hold until the event is over, you’d simply rip up the check when it’s returned and money should never have left the account.

Either way, they really should have clearly laid the plan and had it documented somehow. Did you sign something for the room? If the plan was just to hold onto a physical check which they accidentally cashed, I’d write them an email asking for an explanation on when the money will be returned. I’d also go take pictures of the room ASAP and ask them to confirm there was no damage.

If things escalate, you can threaten to just withhold the $200 from your next rent payment, but be sure to check your local rental laws about this to be sure. In my state there are clear timelines for when a tenant can do things like this. If this is a big company, they should be intimately aware of rental laws and what your options are.

A 60 month loan at that rate is a long time and a lot of extra cash for the car. You may want to wait and put down a bigger down payment, or look for a less expensive car. Maybe pick up a beater (Honda or Toyota for reliability) for 5k and let a year go by before picking up a $500/month 5 year loan.

Just IMHO. I tend to be pretty frugal.

Straw break camels' backs all the time but it's unlikely that you're going to see a drastic swing in financing if you start/stop and start in June vs just going with the flow. Obviously there's changes to prime rates that can have an impact if you delay but this is so speculative and assumptions built in that no one knows what will happen even though everyone guesses.

The smartest play almost always remains to take your time shopping and buy when your need is high but without being rushed. Look for a deal you can't refuse to hit you in the face but don't go rushing out.

Strange situation, I would try to escalate with local management. The room rental damage deposit should have nothing to do with your apartment deposit. Two separate things. IMHO they need to give you a better explanation that makes sense as to why. If it's policy show it to me in the rental agreement that I signed, etc.

Nothing is impossible, but USD hyperinflation is extremely unlikely.

More importantly, almost any scenario that might produce hyperinflation in USD would almost certainly make GBP just as dangerous, if not more.

Most fiat currencies are scary in this scenario. Might be a more appropriate question for a doomer subreddit, not a finance one.

Where did this myth come from? I see it all the time lately.

Pay them all off entirely every month or don't use them.

Since you're covered by a retirement plant at work, and make too much for Roth IRA, then, unless you're Married Filing Separate where the Roth limit is $10k, then you must make too much to deduct traditionally IRA contributons.

So among trad IRA, Roth IRA, and normal brokerage, you're paying income tax up front regardless. But Roth IRA means no income tax on withdrawals, unlike the trad IRA (tax on earnings) and normal brokerage (capital gains tax on gains). So Roth is your best bet here.

Well, it's back of the napkin math using the 4% rule of withdrawal for the annual income I mentioned above that I assume I'd need to afford the things I want to do in retirement. Travel is one thing, but hobbies aren't free.

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When I had one several years ago, it did not come with any linked debit card. I'd pay daycare out of pocket, request an invoice from them, submit that as an expense to the FSA provider, and they would handled reimbursement as an electronic transfer out of the FSA into my linked checking account.

So it's not quite as easy as you hoped, but it's still a way to get a "discount" on your childcare expenses with only a little effort. You're putting $5k into the FSA, but your take-home pay would likely drop only $3500-$4000 (depending on tax brackets). Your FSA contributions will be untaxed for federal income tax, state (AFAIK any of them) income tax, and payroll tax. So your savings could be in the 20-30% range depending on your income level and state.

A few quirks:

• The FSA will only reimburse up to the amount of the expense or what you've contributed so far that year, whichever is lower. However, if the expense is high enough that it' doesn't get fully reimbursed, the remaining expense amount should be kept on record and used to pay you as new contributions occur. Ideally this won't require you to submit multiple requests for the same expense.
• You don't have to submit each expense as they're incurred. You can "roll up" your care expenses during the year until you've built up $5k of payments and submit that as one big request. With $10k / year expected, you'd likely hit that around July, get paid about $2500 (the amount contributed to that point), then get the rest reimbursed as new contributions flow from your paycheck.
• With a single dependent, the $5k FSA benefit will wipe out any "qualified expense" that you get to claim for the "dependent care credit" on your tax return. But unless your household income is pretty low (<$30k-ish), the tax break of using the FSA is larger than the credit you'd qualify for.
• You can only select an amount to contribute during enrollment, and that is locked in until your next enrollment period. Any of that $5k you can't claim is lost at the end of the plan year. With your expected expenses, this isn't likely to be a problem, but unexpected situations can crop up.

Thanks for this insight. I appreciate it.

"doesn't seem like very long from now to get to what I assume I would need; roughly $3 mil or so."

Your issue is you are basing this entire thing on an arbitrary number. All you can do is invest as much as you can and whatever you have in 20 years, that's your retirement number if you decide to call it quits at 65. So much depends on what you plan to do in retirement. Society sells us this image of retirees jetting off around the world after grafting for 40 years when the reality is most retirees just want to sit on the porch, enjoy the sunshine and pet their dog. I don't know about you but I don't need 3 million dollars for that!

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You guys got notes?

Ask yourself, if you sold 11% of the global supply of something globally but 75% of your sales of that something was sold in North America and 39% of your sales of that something was sold to the US what currency would you probably want to consider using?

The beautiful thing about the internet is that anyone can share their thoughts and information. The bad thing is that most of that information is trash and makes no sense once you peel back the first thinnest layer of the BS onion.

Novel idea. Thanks for not being crazy lol. I’m road tripping with my family right now so Reddit does not have my full attention.

Yeah I’m prepared to not have the rates they’re advertising, and I do have financing from my own bank already lined up! I’m worried about the dings to my credit if I get to the dealer and get to the point of them going ‘we’ll offer you xyz% if you finance through us’, am I just misunderstanding that? Because if I really can’t get a better rate now, then I’d just wait until June, but would these financing checks later affect my credit when I want to purchase then? Thanks again for your help!