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MJBuddy
Sep 22, 2008

Now I do not know whether I was then a head coach dreaming I was a Saints fan, or whether I am now a Saints fan, dreaming I am a head coach.

jarjarbinksfan621 posted:

I don't care for the moralistic slant of the article. It's unnecessary, and comes off smug.

I agree; and basically disagree with the entire article's absolutist position. Everything is excellent advice for someone in Irritated Goat's position but every thing brought up to cut back on are the first things I'd spend money on if I had an extra dime to spend. Yes, they're all luxury goods, but they're each massive quality of life increases and in many cases poo poo like "live in a nice place near where you work" vs "live in a shithole and ride the bus for 2 hours every day" is equivalent to "live longer and happier" vs "die younger and stressed" and I'm not sure what money is for if not to choose the better of those two options at every chance.

Look, if the income flow can't cover the monthly expenses (including interest compounding on debt), those rules are necessary and they suck as much as being poor sucks. But the second you're in the black each of those topics is unique in how you want to allocate resources to them. Yes that means you're de facto taking an X% loan to have things that you want, but if that's not a credit card-level APR that's not that bad. Some things are worth spending money one, and some things are worth spending money on now, rather than later. In BFC the standard case of someone with questions isn't the person who is in that situation, so it's fine to take a line that having debt is a sin - but it's not always a sin. Frequently, as is the intended case for student loans, mortgages, business loans, etc. the debt intended to provide liquidity and a stable quality of life that rational expectations of future earnings will compensate via increased income potential. Saying you won't take a loan to get an education, so you just stagnate is dumb. Saying you want a six figure student loan debt for an English degree? Also dumb. 30k for a degree in Engineering? Probably a good idea. And so is having dinner when you graduate and get a 45k starting salary with your entirely-manageable debt, and not living in a box somewhere so that you can pay 30x the minimum on a debt load that both isn't stressing you now, nor won't as your position/title/salary increases.

If you rationally expect to make more in the future than today, servicing debt completely in the short run may be bad with money. If you're lying to yourself about your job prospects/are very risk averse, then holding off on paying down debt is bad with money. It's all relative to a poo poo more variables than "got debt?" including your psychological responses to increases in income. Again, the typical person coming for help in BFC (and YNAB) needs to be told something closer to that blog post than "don't worry" but that doesn't mean the advice is very good for a general audience or something worth living by.

Oh, and not entertaining the idea of taking a 6% loan for 7k to get a graduate degree is bad with money.

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moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web
The author of that post agrees with you in the comments - some debt is good debt. His advice is general, and geared towards people who have the mindset that "debt is okay to have" (in the bad, Wonderhangers on your CC sense of the word) to try and convince them that no, it really isn't. While it may not strike a chord with you (or most BFC posters, or the other extreme of the poverty spectrum), I do think it's a striking way of phrasing it, one that might hit home to many who grew up with the idea that you'll just always have debt as part of your life and should accept and tolerate bad debt.

Of course this advice doesn't apply to every specific case, or even the majority, but even if it helps a handful of people change their spending habits, it is worthwhile. I find it similar to the idea of "Resistance" in the book The War of Art; when you pretend like you're fighting something (debt in this case) you get some added energy for the fight.

spwrozek
Sep 4, 2006

Sail when it's windy

Knyteguy took the advice to move to a cheap crap apartment and couldn't handle it. You could see they were miserable and they spent a lot of money to get out of the situation unfortunately.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

spwrozek posted:

Knyteguy took the advice to move to a cheap crap apartment and couldn't handle it. You could see they were miserable and they spent a lot of money to get out of the situation unfortunately.
The cheap crap apartment would've been OK if they didn't have five pets and a kid on the way, though. Obviously, the more dependents you have, the less practical living in a small apartment is.

moana
Jun 18, 2005

one of the more intellectual satire communities on the web
Knyteguy also thought that he had to spend all of his spending money so that he would be on track with his budget, so let's maybe not decide whether advice is good on bad based on whether Knyteguy is able to apply it reasonably. If you told Knyteguy to eat more vegetables, he would be back in a month saying that he got scurvy and is making GBS threads pure corn.

pig slut lisa
Mar 5, 2012

irl is good


Here's another article with basically the same message. YMMV about whether the tone is more or less your thing.

null gallagher
Jan 1, 2014
Hey thread, I'm making plans to stop being a goony goon and move out on my own (I know :negative:), and I'd love your advice.

Some details:

- I'm 25, make $65k/year.
- There's about $9k left on my student loans. I have two federal loans, both have about $4,500 balance, and 3-4% interest rates.
- No car or any related loans or anything; I live in NYC so no need for one.
- No credit card debt either.
- I have about $16K sitting in a Citibank account.

Is it a good idea to pay off all my student loan debt in one go right now? I don't need to get an apartment immediately, my family's fine with me living with them a while longer, but I'd really like to get out on my own ASAP.

The one issue with that plan is my Citibank account has a minimum balance requirement of $10,000, otherwise you get hit with some service fees. Since I opened it when I was 17, because they were the closest bank to the house, I'm gonna switch to a credit union.

Also, are employee stock plans generally worth it? I don't have all the details right now (don't feel like logging on to the company benefits site), but apparently you can buy the company's stock at a discount. A few of my coworkers are enrolled and just immediately sell, so it sounds like a good idea.

Dik Hz
Feb 22, 2004

Fun with Science

null gallagher posted:

Hey thread, I'm making plans to stop being a goony goon and move out on my own (I know :negative:), and I'd love your advice.

Some details:

- I'm 25, make $65k/year.
- There's about $9k left on my student loans. I have two federal loans, both have about $4,500 balance, and 3-4% interest rates.
- No car or any related loans or anything; I live in NYC so no need for one.
- No credit card debt either.
- I have about $16K sitting in a Citibank account.

Is it a good idea to pay off all my student loan debt in one go right now? I don't need to get an apartment immediately, my family's fine with me living with them a while longer, but I'd really like to get out on my own ASAP.

The one issue with that plan is my Citibank account has a minimum balance requirement of $10,000, otherwise you get hit with some service fees. Since I opened it when I was 17, because they were the closest bank to the house, I'm gonna switch to a credit union.

Also, are employee stock plans generally worth it? I don't have all the details right now (don't feel like logging on to the company benefits site), but apparently you can buy the company's stock at a discount. A few of my coworkers are enrolled and just immediately sell, so it sounds like a good idea.
Paying off debt is usually a good idea. But manageable student loans with low interest aren't terrible. If you have immediate goals in other directions (like getting your own place), and you have an adequate emergency fund, you don't need to prioritize them. That being said, you can't go wrong by paying them off either.

With your situation, paying service fees for a bank account is bullshit. Go somewhere where that's not an issue.

You gotta run the numbers on stock plans. Buy and sell immediately if it's worth it. Holding company stock is a bad idea, because anything that crushes the stock also could affect your employment. Diversify.

But seriously, you got your poo poo together. You don't need dudes on the internet for validation.

Ham Equity
Apr 16, 2013

The first thing we do, let's kill all the cars.
Grimey Drawer

Irritated Goat posted:

I'm in some serious need of ideas. My wife and I just got married and moved into our own place. With her bills and my bills combined, we are in the hole about 99.9% of the time. I've cancelled anything excess I can find. We don't buy anything that isn't necessary.

It isn't our spending killing us but our monthly bills. Mostly debt we both created before we were together. Right now, our credit card debt from before is our biggest issue. Knocking 1-2 of them out will pretty much save us.

The problem is, how do we get ahead enough to do that without driving ourselves farther into debt to do it? I can only think of a loan but that might be just shifting money :(

Edit: Current bills

Rent: 810/mo
Car 1: 387/mo
Car Insurance: $210/mo
Internet: $60/mo
Gas: Around $150/mo (her car is older and only takes premium. Mine is newer and better gas milage)
Short Term Loan: $180/mo ($658 left)
Credit Card 1: $33/mo ($156 left)
Credit Card 2: $27/mo ($934 left)
Credit Card 3: $62/mo ($1908 left)
Credit Card 4: $92/mo ($3,300 left)
Credit Card 5: $188/mo ($5,109 left)
Credit Card 6: $422/mo ($10,929 left)
Student Loan: $50/mo ($9,000 left)
Medical bills: $100/mo ($600 left)
We both make around $16 an hour. Around $3800 a month take home.

About the only thing I haven't lowered completely is Internet but it saves $35/mo tops.

:sigh: I know it's a ton of CC debt. We both did the worst possible thing but we're fine living sparse to fix it. I know the snowball method and such but I can't even reach that point right now :(
Here's some more practical advice: If you didn't have the car, you could at least check into Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

That being said, is the student loan federal, or private? If it's federal, it's very easy to put the payments on hold for several months. You could then use that $50 a month to start snowballing, though you'd want to pay down the interest on the student loan before it rolled over into the principle (tax-deductible).

Whoever said "cancel the internet" is an idiot. Yeah, it sounds good at first, but most people will just end up spending more money on stupid poo poo if they cancel the internet because they're bored. It's human nature, people aren't loving robots. As far as entertainment/utility bang-for-your-buck goes, the internet is pretty much impossible to beat.

Consider just not paying the medical bills. Yeah, it'll result in a credit hit, but again, it's not like you're buying a house anytime soon. And you can try to fight it, make it enough of a pain in the rear end for the collection agency, and you might get lucky and make it go away. Medical debt is generally a smaller credit hit than most other debt these days, too.

How long is your commute? Is there any reason you can't sell the newer car and buy a scooter or motorcycle? It will suck in lovely weather, but it's way cheaper than a car in pretty much every way (maintenance, gas, insurance), and you'll still have the one car for grocery store trips or whatever.

Sephiroth_IRA
Mar 31, 2010

null gallagher posted:

Hey thread, I'm making plans to stop being a goony goon and move out on my own (I know :negative:), and I'd love your advice.

Some details:

- I'm 25, make $65k/year.
- There's about $9k left on my student loans. I have two federal loans, both have about $4,500 balance, and 3-4% interest rates.
- No car or any related loans or anything; I live in NYC so no need for one.
- No credit card debt either.
- I have about $16K sitting in a Citibank account.

What's your budget now compared to what you think you'll be paying when you move out on your own?

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!
Any opinions on Buxfer for money tracking? I've been using YNAB up until now, but I'm really only using it as a kneecapped money tracker (doesn't have forecasting and tools like that). The available applications either look and handle like crap or are that monstrosity called Quicken. From the available web apps this one looks the most interesting currently.

SiGmA_X
May 3, 2004
SiGmA_X

Combat Pretzel posted:

Any opinions on Buxfer for money tracking? I've been using YNAB up until now, but I'm really only using it as a kneecapped money tracker (doesn't have forecasting and tools like that). The available applications either look and handle like crap or are that monstrosity called Quicken. From the available web apps this one looks the most interesting currently.
I rather like Quicken. I've used it myself for ~11yrs, and I use to update it for my folks back to the 90's. What's your complaint about it?

People also rather like Mint, but I found it rather limited back in the day. I have yet to try it because Quicken works so well. Buxfer does look rather interesting though.

Combat Pretzel
Jun 23, 2004

No, seriously... what kurds?!
Mint is not an option, with me being European and all that. They've been talking up expanding outside the US since 2010 (or somewhen) and their sign-up page still says "Coming Soon" whenever you chose something else than the US, but I won't hold my horses.

Quicken, eh, I suppose it'd work, but I value form, too, and it's in a dire need of a complete overhaul.

As far as Buxfer goes, it appears than the founder ran off to Facebook, intermittently there were complains that users suspected it dead in the water, just to come out with a complete redesign a few months ago. But there isn't sort of an interface in form of a forum, twitter account or whatever with the developers anymore, which is weird.

RogueLemming
Sep 11, 2006

Spinning or Deformed?

Thanatosian posted:

Whoever said "cancel the internet" is an idiot. Yeah, it sounds good at first, but most people will just end up spending more money on stupid poo poo if they cancel the internet because they're bored. It's human nature, people aren't loving robots. As far as entertainment/utility bang-for-your-buck goes, the internet is pretty much impossible to beat.

I was talking about his internet. He currently spends $60 a month on the internet. He said he could knock it down and save $35. This implies he would have a lower tier of service for 3-4 months (HINT: $60 - $35 is not $0). Canceling was never mentioned. Maybe you should cancel your internet and use that time to learn to read or do basic math.

Thanatosian posted:

Consider just not paying the medical bills. Yeah, it'll result in a credit hit, but again, it's not like you're buying a house anytime soon. And you can try to fight it, make it enough of a pain in the rear end for the collection agency, and you might get lucky and make it go away. Medical debt is generally a smaller credit hit than most other debt these days, too.

This is terrible advice for someone who can make a few more small changes and get back on top of their situation.

Ashcans
Jan 2, 2006

Let's do the space-time warp again!

'Just not paying' the medical debt is a bad idea, agreed.

My experience is that medical debts are much more flexible and negotiable in terms of payments than other debts. Unfortunately I have had to manage a good number of medical debts, and usually if you call up and say something like 'I fully intend to pay this, I want to make good on what I owe, but I just can't pay this bill right now - can we work something out over time' they will work with you. I have had medical bills on payment plans for almost two years before where there was no interest charged to the amount, and I have called up and re-negotiated payment plans down to a lower amount after paying them down for a couple months. So you can definitely try that, and will probably get further than you would trying to haggle with your credit card/loans.

caberham
Mar 18, 2009

by Smythe
Grimey Drawer
gently caress this poo poo,



gently caress you HSBC, your online banking sucks, your service sucks, your practices suck, and your ex-chairman of the board is a horrible person for justifying a lack of democracy because even black people in US took forever to vote

I'm still waiting for my 4 pillars of investing in the mail. In the mean time, I'm better off buying blue chips and using dividends (risky until stock wipe like 2008), or some sort of bonds right?

I'm based in Hong Kong, we don't have to pay capital gains tax and income tax is extremely low at 12%. There's a government mandated retirement fund kind of like the 401 (minus the taxes) but the management fees can be like 1.7% / year.

Banks do sell a whole list of mutual funds but they have like initial 3% sale charge and the average maintenance fees are like 1.7% HSBC loves calling me out when I'm at the teller, asking my time for financial assessments with a planner, I think they are shady as hell. So I switched to Citibank. Citibank does have a "promotion" of 0.9% for 3 months fixed deposit. So does that mean 1 year it's around 1.4% (0.9 * 0.9 *0.9 * 0.9)? I'm thinking of putting all my emergency money in there, it shouldn't be that bad right? 1.4% guaranteed returns doesn't look like an inflation stopper but for emergency money pool should be ok right?

There's Vanguard in Hong Kong, but they only work institutional investors and don't really do retail. They have released 4 kinds of ETF and I have bought 2 of them.

Overall, I don't feel too secure with my money and right now I'm just kind of gambling on the stock market with a few bluechips. I supposed I need to look into the bond market and Certificate of Deposits right?

Echo 3
Jun 2, 2006

I have a bad feeling about this...
You haven't really explained anything about yourself or what your goals are. Are you trying to save for retirement? For some goals 10-15 years into the future? For non-specific goals? How old are you? There is no "one size fits all" answer here. Bonds, CDs, and stocks are hugely different asset classes and we can't really say what is appropriate for you without knowing the answers to the above and more questions.

caberham
Mar 18, 2009

by Smythe
Grimey Drawer

Echo 3 posted:

You haven't really explained anything about yourself or what your goals are. Are you trying to save for retirement? For some goals 10-15 years into the future? For non-specific goals? How old are you? There is no "one size fits all" answer here. Bonds, CDs, and stocks are hugely different asset classes and we can't really say what is appropriate for you without knowing the answers to the above and more questions.

Right, here we go

Age: 32
Income: 54K USD
Rent : 0 (live with mom)
debt: 0
Taxes : 8k
Expenses: 15k (need to tone this down, I'm getting into budgeting)
Low risk invesment budget : 13k
High risk investment budget : 5k

Goals : Save money to start a family. Allocate 10% of my wealth gains to charity. Just general growth to beat inflation

Most of my money is not doing much sitting in a savings account accumulating 0.001%. So I have recently bought some blue chip stocks and looking into other investment options. I don't need to retire early.

caberham fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Nov 17, 2014

caberham
Mar 18, 2009

by Smythe
Grimey Drawer
Welp, put me into the people dumb with money thread. I should have entered stop losses, but the market dropped from 24300 points to 23800 in a few hours.



:suicide:

Chas McGill
Oct 29, 2010

loves Fat Philippe
Hope UK stuff is OK to ask about here:

Basic info -
-I have about £10k that I want to invest safely. I'm somewhat concerned about not having easy access to that money in the event of an emergency, which is why I've been wary of investing it until now. Edit: I would still have over £10k liquid after investing, which is why I'm thinking of putting some of my money to use rather than having it readily accessible, but earning me nothing or next to nothing.
-I'm able to save a decent amount of my wage most months and could probably save more if I spent less on eating out etc.
-I've paid 30% of a £100k mortgage and I'd like to move and rent the place out in the near future.

I have a basic cash ISA which has a hilariously bad rate of 0.5% and I've just opened another current account which gives 3%, but only for £5k total.

Regular savings accounts seem all-round terrible at the moment, so I'm considering an investment ISA, though I'm bewildered by the options and scared of headlines about another market crash. Would a UK equivalent of the lazy portfolio mentioned in the long term investing thread be good for me?

I'm already overpaying my mortgage by £250 p/m, which I figure is a kind of investment. I also have a matched work pension which has had about £150 added a month for the last 4yrs or so.

Chas McGill fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Nov 17, 2014

asur
Dec 28, 2012

Chas McGill posted:

-I have about £10k that I want to invest safely. I'm somewhat concerned about not having easy access to that money in the event of an emergency, which is why I've been wary of investing it until now.

I'm not going to comment on the rest because I don't know the UK, but this criteria doesn't make sense. The reason you get higher returns investing is because you're taking on risk. If you want to keep your money safe or for emergencies then you shouldn't be investing it.

asur fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Nov 17, 2014

Space Gopher
Jul 31, 2006

BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

caberham posted:

Welp, put me into the people dumb with money thread. I should have entered stop losses, but the market dropped from 24300 points to 23800 in a few hours.



:suicide:

Stop losses are bad with money. Either you're gambling on an asset which can actually have massive swings in value over a very short period, or you're so unconfident in your valuation (and so uncommitted for the long haul) that you'd sell at a fire-sale price just to follow meaningless short-term noise.

totalnewbie
Nov 13, 2005

I was born and raised in China, lived in Japan, and now hold a US passport.

I am wrong in every way, all the damn time.

Ask me about my tattoos.

asur posted:

I'm not going to comment on the rest because I don't know the UK, but this criteria doesn't make sense. The reason you get higher returns investing is because you're taking on risk. If you want to keep your money safe or for emergencies then you shouldn't be investing it.

Seconding this.

Emergency fund is for emergencies. The price you're paying for liquidity is low returns (whatever you get in a checking account, basically). When you invest, you're trading liquidity/risk for returns.

Do not invest your emergency fund. Do not use your investments for emergencies (unless you really, really have to. Life can throw all sorts of things at you, yea? But don't do it.) Your emergency fund should be large enough to absorb anything that may happen to you.

Chas McGill
Oct 29, 2010

loves Fat Philippe

asur posted:

I'm not going to comment on the rest because I don't know the UK, but this criteria doesn't make sense. The reason you get higher returns investing is because you're taking on risk. If you want to keep your money safe or for emergencies then you shouldn't be investing it.

totalnewbie posted:

Seconding this.

Emergency fund is for emergencies. The price you're paying for liquidity is low returns (whatever you get in a checking account, basically). When you invest, you're trading liquidity/risk for returns.

Do not invest your emergency fund. Do not use your investments for emergencies (unless you really, really have to. Life can throw all sorts of things at you, yea? But don't do it.) Your emergency fund should be large enough to absorb anything that may happen to you.

Sorry, I phrased my post poorly. I've got £25k+ liquid at the moment. I think I can invest about £10k of that with the rest of it being easily accessible in current accounts/cash ISAs. I've probably been overly cautious in terms of having cash readily accessible in the past. I feel like I'm now in a better position to make long term investments with a portion of my money.

Basically, I'm clueless about this stuff.

Chas McGill fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Nov 17, 2014

lament.cfg
Dec 28, 2006

we have such posts
to show you




totalnewbie posted:

Seconding this.

Emergency fund is for emergencies. The price you're paying for liquidity is low returns (whatever you get in a checking account, basically). When you invest, you're trading liquidity/risk for returns.

Do not invest your emergency fund. Do not use your investments for emergencies (unless you really, really have to. Life can throw all sorts of things at you, yea? But don't do it.) Your emergency fund should be large enough to absorb anything that may happen to you.

What's the saying? Wanting your Emergency Fund to have high returns is like wanting your Seatbelts to make your car go faster?

spincube
Jan 31, 2006

I spent :10bux: so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
Grimey Drawer

Chas McGill posted:

Sorry, I phrased my post poorly. I've got £25k+ liquid at the moment. I think I can invest about £10k of that with the rest of it being easily accessible in current accounts/cash ISAs. I've probably been overly cautious in terms of having cash readily accessible in the past. I feel like I'm now in a better position to make long term investments with a portion of my money.

Basically, I'm clueless about this stuff.

If you're after a 'set it and forget it' plan, you might want to try Nutmeg. They're discretionary, so the idea is for each fund you set up with them you tell them your timeframe (i.e. how soon you'll likely want your money back) and what your risk tolerance is ('how suicidal would you be if you were to lose money over a period of x months').

At 1% their fees are a little higher than if you were to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself, but I suppose such is the price of convenience: their portfolios' performance is right there to look at, and you can play around building a fund with targets and timescales and so on, before actually giving them your money.

Dakha
Feb 18, 2002

Fun Shoe
If you can be bothered setting up some direct debits and at least £500 in a month, set up a Santander 123 account for 3% interest up to £20,000.

Best UK investing website I've found is https://www.monevator.com

I think you'd be better off copying his lazy portfolio somewhere cheap like Charles Stanley Direct, than paying Nutmeg.

Chas McGill
Oct 29, 2010

loves Fat Philippe

spincube posted:

If you're after a 'set it and forget it' plan, you might want to try Nutmeg. They're discretionary, so the idea is for each fund you set up with them you tell them your timeframe (i.e. how soon you'll likely want your money back) and what your risk tolerance is ('how suicidal would you be if you were to lose money over a period of x months').

At 1% their fees are a little higher than if you were to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself, but I suppose such is the price of convenience: their portfolios' performance is right there to look at, and you can play around building a fund with targets and timescales and so on, before actually giving them your money.

Dakha posted:

If you can be bothered setting up some direct debits and at least £500 in a month, set up a Santander 123 account for 3% interest up to £20,000.

Best UK investing website I've found is https://www.monevator.com

I think you'd be better off copying his lazy portfolio somewhere cheap like Charles Stanley Direct, than paying Nutmeg.
Thanks for these. I've been reading Monevator all morning.

Clavietika
Dec 18, 2005


I went to a financial planning seminar at work and asked a couple questions on credit card debt. For background I have about $2180 worth of credit card debt and I had asked what kinds of consolidation/payment tricks there are for paying debts totaling under $5000. The facilitator told me that I could apply for a $5000 loan and, for example if I had $3000 worth of debt I could pay that off and put the remainder of the loan into a savings account to collect interest while I paid off the loan. Does this sound like a reasonable thing to do, and is this something banks even go for?


Edit: the interest rate on my credit card is 19.99%.

Edit 2: Vvvv AAAAAAH, Thank you. See, I KNEW that it was sending red flags up for me for some reason.

Clavietika fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Nov 19, 2014

EugeneJ
Feb 5, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Clavietika posted:

I went to a financial planning seminar at work and asked a couple questions on credit card debt. For background I have about $2180 worth of credit card debt and I had asked what kinds of consolidation/payment tricks there are for paying debts totaling under $5000. The facilitator told me that I could apply for a $5000 loan and, for example if I had $3000 worth of debt I could pay that off and put the remainder of the loan into a savings account to collect interest while I paid off the loan. Does this sound like a reasonable thing to do, and is this something banks even go for?

...what the gently caress, no

Transfer the balance to a 0% interest card and pay it off during the introductory period (usually 12-18 months)

fuzzy_logic
May 2, 2009

unfortunately hideous and irreverislbe

I'm looking to move my savings from a big national bank to a smaller credit union, but I'm not closing my old accounts because it seems like a good idea to have a foot in a bigger bank for the possibility of needing to transfer emergency funds or something like that. Right now I have checking/savings/Visa in the big bank - what's the ideal spread between the two? Should I open checking at the credit union just to have it? I was thinking of putting my entire e-savings in the credit union because their %ages are so much better, and leaving a little bit of slush/backup money in the big bank one (where it'll lose money against inflation, yay interest rates, but will be more quickly accessible). What's the pro/con of moving all my checking over to the credit union, and/or my direct deposit?

Edit: my big bank accounts don't have any fees associated with minimum balances or anything like that. I can zero them out without any penalty I'm pretty sure but I can double check. I assume they wouldn't be thrilled about it.

fuzzy_logic fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Nov 19, 2014

DNK
Sep 18, 2004

fuzzy_logic posted:

I'm looking to move my savings from a big national bank to a smaller credit union...

Why? That's the most important thing.

Regardless, it's nice having some token money in large banks because of their ATM footprint. ATMs charge two fees: money out and transaction fees. Most smaller banks do not charge for money out of your accounts from other institutions, but they still allow that institution to charge you for the transaction. Some unions reimburse that expense.

Otherwise, it doesn't matter where your money is. ACH transfers usually take less than 3 days and -- with some credit -- liquidity is a non-issue. After that point, it's comparing interest rates and/or financial products.

Xun
Apr 25, 2010

So I read the last 5 pages of the thread so I'm sorry if this is answered somewhere else!

I'm currently a student and I keep hearing that I should get a credit card to build better credit/chargebacks/etc. Problem is, last time I went to Chase bank the banker pulled out a big sheet of around 7-8 different cards and I had no idea what any of the crap meant so I backed out. What should I be looking for?

Currently I mostly manage by depositing into my savings and keeping my food and entertainment budget in checking. When I use my debit card I can easily check how much I've spent out of that with the bank app. I'm also a little worried about keeping track of money with a credit card and going overbudget. Manually inputting into an app or spreadsheet seems like just the thing I'd forget to do.

Inverse Icarus
Dec 4, 2003

I run SyncRPG, and produce original, digital content for the Pathfinder RPG, designed from the ground up to be played online.
Every card should have a website/app where you can pull up the balance and transactions on demand, so that really shouldn't be an issue. Additionally, if you'd like to see all your accounts in one place, you could set up an account with mint.com and see your checking and credit balances in a single app.

As for rewards or specific cards, I'm sure others here will give detailed analyses with better cards for your situation, but as for me I'm pretty happy with my Amazon Visa from Chase. It's a cash-back card, but the cash-back comes in as Amazon credit. 3% back on anything I buy at Amazon, 2% on gas/restaurants, and 1% on everything else.

I have Amazon Prime, and I buy pretty much everything I can there: toiletries, dog food, batteries, even spices for cooking. It adds up quickly.

3% back on those two monthly 30 lb bags of dog food shipped to my front door is pretty sweet.

Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.
The main thing to look for is no annual fee. I wouldn't worry too much about minmaxing the rewards for your first card (although if one does have some reward that's fine), having a low APR is better than a high one but if you never carry a balance it doesn't matter. Also keep in mind that Visa/MasterCard are accepted more widely than Amex or Discover.

THF13
Sep 26, 2007

Keep an adversary in the dark about what you're capable of, and he has to assume the worst.

Xun posted:

So I read the last 5 pages of the thread so I'm sorry if this is answered somewhere else!

I'm currently a student and I keep hearing that I should get a credit card to build better credit/chargebacks/etc. Problem is, last time I went to Chase bank the banker pulled out a big sheet of around 7-8 different cards and I had no idea what any of the crap meant so I backed out. What should I be looking for?

Currently I mostly manage by depositing into my savings and keeping my food and entertainment budget in checking. When I use my debit card I can easily check how much I've spent out of that with the bank app. I'm also a little worried about keeping track of money with a credit card and going overbudget. Manually inputting into an app or spreadsheet seems like just the thing I'd forget to do.

You don't necessarily need to open a credit card with your current bank, but Chase is offering a $200 signup bonus on the Chase Freedom if you spend $500 in 3 months. It has no annual fee and has rotating 5% cash back categories, and 1% cash back on everything else. The only catch is you need to remember to login and enable to rotating categories each quarter. It also is a pretty easy card to qualify for.

If you get denied for the Chase Freedom I would look into the Discover It student card. It has rotating categories like the Freedom, but if you don't qualify for the regular version of the card they will offer you a secured version. The secured version gets rewards and has no annual fee, and after a year it converts automatically into the regular version of the card. Get the regular Discover It, not the chrome version.

For budgeting you really should save up a buffer in your checking account. Figure out a number to use as your spending and make sure your credit card balance is lower than it, and your checking account balance is higher than it. Pay off the full statement balance every month before the due date, always and with no exceptions.

Bisty Q.
Jul 22, 2008

THF13 posted:

You don't necessarily need to open a credit card with your current bank, but Chase is offering a $200 signup bonus on the Chase Freedom if you spend $500 in 3 months. It has no annual fee and has rotating 5% cash back categories, and 1% cash back on everything else. The only catch is you need to remember to login and enable to rotating categories each quarter. It also is a pretty easy card to qualify for.

You only really need to login once, just enable text alerts while you're there, and they'll text you every quarter and you can just respond with 'Y' to turn them on.

Cacafuego
Jul 22, 2007

I don't understand financial stuff at all, so forgive my ignorance...

I took out a personal consolidation loan through penfed a couple months ago to close and pay off all my old joint credit cards for $10,000 at 9.99% for 5 years. There's $8816 left to pay. The other day, I got "superchecks" from Wells Fargo where I do my checking. They're offering 15mo 0% APR for up to my credit limit of $9000 with a balance transfer fee of 4% ($352 on $8816).

So, I could do it one of two ways. I can be strict and pay it off within 15 months with penfed, by paying about $586/month, but there's no rush, no penalties and if an emergency comes up, I can divert funds to pay for that.

Or, I could transfer to WF and pay it off in the same amount of time, but I have to pay it within 15mo or get hit by whatever penalties there are (idk, do they charge interest on the full amount transferred, or just what is left - I'd have to ask/read into it more). I'm reasonably sure I can designate ~$600/mo for 15mo to get it paid off, but not entirely sure.

Would I save enough by going through WF to offset the 4% balance transfer fee? Again, apologies for the question, but I'm not good with this stuff and tia for any help.

Harry
Jun 13, 2003

I do solemnly swear that in the year 2015 I will theorycraft my wallet as well as my WoW
If you're going that route, I would go for the Chase Slate card which should be 0% fee and pay it off over 15 months.

https://creditcards.chase.com/slate-credit-card/

I would say the balance is high enough to make it worth it.

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Cacafuego
Jul 22, 2007

Harry posted:

If you're going that route, I would go for the Chase Slate card which should be 0% fee and pay it off over 15 months.

https://creditcards.chase.com/slate-credit-card/

I would say the balance is high enough to make it worth it.

Wow, looks like a pretty good deal. I'll look into it a little more, but I think you're right, that may be even better. Thanks!

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