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My parents immigrated to United States from a 3rd world country nearly 30 years ago and had always dreamt of owning a home. They’ve made many financial sacrifices to raise me and my sister while my father had to build his way up to a stable career. We’ve been living in an apartment since their move to the US.

Now my parents want me to help them purchase a house in CA. I (26 yo) with annual salary of $93K will be co-signing with my father (60 yo) $130K.
My mother (67 yo) is unemployed and my sister (31 yo) will pay rent for the next year or two before moving in with her fiancé. My friend has also agreed to renting a room for years to come (work location purposes). The agreement is that I will eventually become the owner when my parents pass.

My girlfriend’s situation is much different. Her primary home in wealthy neighborhood is currently being rebuilt. Her parents also own a secondary home that is rented out to pay for bills and they live in a third home in another state. So this would not be her 1st home.

I’ve been living in an apartment with my girlfriend for about a year now and we always talk about how wonderful it would be to own a house together. I realize this is my chance to help my parents achieve their dream but I also understand this decision will make it difficult for me to purchase a home with my significant other for the foreseeable future.

Any advice would be appreciated…

I’m 30 yo and currently have $96k saved for retirement. This is split into 4 different buckets, 3 different 401k’s and $50k from a previous employers Profit Sharing plan.

I always thought it was a benefit to keep them in separate buckets to diversify, but my new employer has a brokerage feature in their retirement plan that would allow me to choose how to allocate money within my 401k. For instance, instead of having 10 different funds to choose from within my 401k, I can actually invest that money into ETF’s or even individual stocks if I choose all within that 401k.

Now I’m not financially savvy enough to make those decisions on my own and would likely work with a financial advisor to help, but this additional flexibility sounds like a great benefit.

My question is – should I role all of my 401k’s into this one account? Should i role the money from my Profit Sharing plan in there as well? I spoke with a financial advisor today and this is what he advised me to do, which I found a little surprising.

Aside from having more $$ to capitalize on the brokerage feature, it’s also just easier for me to conceptualist/plan for retirement.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Loan will be for $528k. 6.325% rate. So, a shit ton of interest. Can I increase my dependent count on with work and offset what I can write off without much risk? Married, filing jointly.

I am trying to avoid a large tax refund (since that money can pay more towards this mortgage earlier).

So I (31M) am freaking out a little about the student loan pause coming to an end and have been struggling to find a side hustle or alternative source of income on top of my day job. Some background info:

Monthly net income: ~$4,865 (Field Engineer)
Monthly expenses:
Food: $400
Mortgage: $505
Car insurance: $67
Internet: $80
Cell phone: $30
Gym membership: $25
Future student loan payment: $250 but balloons every two years.

Savings: $2500 (currently saving for an emergency fund of $5,000)
401k: ~$10,000

Debt balances:
Mortgage: ~$66,000
Student loan: ~$38,000

I have just been appointed as a notary, and am looking into doing primarily RON, as my day job has me traveling all over western PA on a weekly basis and I feel that the flexibility that RON offers would be a good choice to accommodate my day job.

Ultimately I would like to get into RE investing, my plan to buy my first rental would be to buy a multi-family FHA and “house hack” the units I’m not occupying. It seems like most triplexes/quadruplexes in my service area would still cash flow positive even with a 3.5% down payment and me living in one of the units. I would also hold onto my current home as my grandmother lives in it, and she would be paying the mortgage with the intent to rent/sell it in the future.

My question is if I should take the money that I plan to save in the final months of this student loan payment pause (minus saving for the emergency fund) and buy a MFH to house hack? I feel like the income from doing the RON as well as the rent I would be collecting would really help me payoff my student loans over the 12 months I would be required to occupy the MFH under FHA financing.

Hi all, first post here. I appreciate any advice and this place as a resource for all!

I have a money market, brokerage account with Schwab that is robo-managed. I just pump cash into it and they diversify the cash into investments based on a risk tolerance (at least that is how I understand the account).

Since inception until now, my net investment is $200 more than the account value. So, in other words, in 3 years time and a sizable amount of cash pumped into this account, I ave essentially lost $200. Needless to say this is highly discouraging. I currently also have a high yield savings account earning over 4% on liquid cash. I am considering liquidating my brokerage account and putting all the money into a high yield savings account. 4% interest is much better than 3 years of essentially zero growth.

Am I missing something? I don’t understand the appeal of this money market account, diversified in stocks and bonds, that is currently returning close to 0% interest over a 3 year period (inception of account).

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Any advice greatly appreciated.

I used to use Expense Manager (the one with the blue icon) for years, until I switched to iPhone. It sucks on iPhone. Basic functions like seeing expenses between two predetermined dates it doesn’t have. Another neat function it has on the Android version is auto completing the description of an expense based on previous entries.

So now I’m looking for another app, for ios. I don’t want to link my bank or cards or anything to it (like Mint). I want to manually enter my expenses and income on it.

Any suggestions?

Hi there,
I need some advice on College Saving Plans. I understand that a 529 is a great option if all other tax advantage accounts are being fully funded. In my situation, I work for CA State and have 457b & 401k available (traditional or Roth) giving me 45k space + roth IRA 6.5k. Currently, I am maxing out my Roth IRA yearly and contributing roughly 10k yearly to the Roth 457b in addition to the state pension plan. Also married, single household income, $0 going towards spouse yearly IRA currently, so that space is available as well. Would love to fund it too, but currently don’t have the income to do so. Spouse will start working in 3-5 years and will be able to fully fund then.

In my situation, would it make sense to use a 529 towards my childs college fund or perhap use my spouse IRA space or the remaining 401k/457 space in the event that my child doesnt attend college.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

I work for a major fast food chain and my location is set to be remodeled in 2 months. We can work at other locations while ours is closed, but I’m worried I won’t get enough hours because I can’t build up a huge savings to keep me afloat when the store closes (they’re estimating a few weeks).

I know it takes a while to process it, so what happens when I receive unemployment but I ended up not qualifying for/needing it?

I came across this website that had many banks/credit unions offering 4.4% interest for money market accounts. I’ve never heard of it.

I looked online for reviews but didn’t find much. It looks legit but it’s hard to know with so little info out there. Thanks!

Hi All, I’m new to Reddit, so I hope this is the right place to ask.

I am from the UK, and they say you should pay your taxes if you have been there for more than 183 days of the year. I have been there for 0 days. I have been to various countries, around the world so where should I pay my taxes?