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My girlfriend got a 2013 Versa, and it's great at what it is -- a light, efficient, inexpensive vehicle. The only thing I'd really knock on it is that it's got no soundproofing -- it's really hard to use the bluetooth for phone calls because you have to shout over the sound of the road when you're on the highway.
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Feb 20, 2015 18:35
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I've heard the Ford Fiesta is really great for the price. It's like a Honda without the prestige the name "Honda" carries. You're probably best off asking in the car thread, though.
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Feb 20, 2015 19:10
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I'm 33 and have no retirement savings whatsoever. I've just become a USAA member and would like to start an IRA fund, primarily in Vanguard ETFs. Is it better to make a Vanguard account for this or a USAA one?
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Feb 20, 2015 20:25
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Thanatosian posted:I've heard the Ford Fiesta is really great for the price. It's like a Honda without the prestige the name "Honda" carries. You're probably best off asking in the car thread, though. The Mazda2 is the pretty much the same car as the Ford Fiesta, just as an aside.
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Feb 20, 2015 20:58
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I have a Honda Fit and I love it to death. I'm not a short person, and I never feel cramped in the front or back seats. Definitely test drive before ruling it out, I was very against it based on looks and size until I took it out. It looks a bit like a shrunken mini van, but there are worse things I suppose. Price is right, and mine has been without any issues so far.
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Feb 20, 2015 21:19
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I have a Honda Fit and it's great. A lot bigger on the inside than it looks at first glance. Still cheap even if you get sportsiness and leather seats.
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Feb 20, 2015 21:27
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Awesome, I will take another look at the Fit. My wife and I are tall as balls so I passed on it due to its diminutive stature, but I guess I'll need a test drive before I decide.
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Feb 20, 2015 21:37
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I'm about 6' tall and my friend has a Honda Fit that is plenty roomy for me.
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Feb 20, 2015 21:47
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That Leaf not working out for you Radbot? 
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Feb 20, 2015 22:10
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Dead Pressed posted:That Leaf not working out for you Radbot? No, it's working out just fine. It's kind of a great car, in fact. I just got a big raise and I figured it'd be better to buy a cheaper car outright that will allow me to save 50-60% of my take home income. I've got about 10 months left to go on the Leaf lease.
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Feb 20, 2015 22:39
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Since this isn't AI, which is where you should go for actual car advice, the financial advise we collectively need to be giving you is to not spend money as soon as you get it. Or, more correctly, before you get it. You have a nearly brand new leaf lease, you like your wife's car, which is only ten years old. Why are you so hot to get a new one right now? What do you plan to do when your lease expires? Why not buy used? Dead Pressed fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 23:01
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Dead Pressed posted:Since this isn't AI, which is where you should go for actual car advice, the financial advise we collectively need to be giving you is to not spend money as soon as you get it. Or, more correctly, before you get it. You have a nearly brand new leaf lease, you like your wife's car, which is only ten years old. Why are you so hot to get a new one right now? What do you plan to do when your lease expires? Why not buy used? Thanks for your opinion, I got lots of other helpful advice from posters in this thread. The "only" 11 year old Corolla has 274,000 miles and I'm planning on getting this new car once the Leaf is turned in and we sell the Corolla, so we will then be a one car household. I get it, you don't think a couple earning $130k (edit: $145k after raise) with a total of $2,800 in debt (the remaining amount on the Leaf lease) and a $1,100 rent payment should drive a Fit or similar car when we're saving 50 percent of our income. I respectfully disagree.
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Feb 20, 2015 23:18
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Radbot posted:I get it, you don't think a couple earning $130k (edit: $145k after raise) with a total of $2,800 in debt (the remaining amount on the Leaf lease) and a $1,100 rent payment should drive a Fit or similar car when we're saving 50 percent of our income. I respectfully disagree. Ignore the noise from the peanut gallery, they tend to go overboard hating anything more extravagant than a 15 year old used Toyota. You're obviously doing quite well for yourselves and can comfortably afford to drive a new car that you want. Sometimes people get so onboard the BFC 101 bandwagon they start to assume everyone is low income and crushed by debt.
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Feb 20, 2015 23:22
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Radbot posted:Thanks for your opinion, I got lots of other helpful advice from posters in this thread. The "only" 11 year old Corolla has 274,000 miles and I'm planning on getting this new car once the Leaf is turned in and we sell the Corolla, so we will then be a one car household. Where did I say any of that, or again more importantly, you say any of that? I just remember you going 100% against what literally everybody told you to do that last time you asked for help in either bfc or AI, and thinking you'd naturally come to a reasonable selection isn't my first instinct after the shitshow you exposed when you initially got the leaf you. My recommendation for a new car is the vw gulf tdi, if you're still looking for thoughts. Inexpensive, feature packed, roomy, car of year. Guinness posted:Ignore the noise from the peanut gallery, they tend to go overboard hating anything more extravagant than a 15 year old used Toyota. You're obviously doing quite well for yourselves and can comfortably afford to drive a new car that you want. Sometimes people get so onboard the BFC 101 bandwagon they start to assume everyone is low income and crushed by debt. Peanut gallery my rear end. He didn't post any income data initially. He has a track record of being a complete fuckwit in AI listening to the advice of literally no man, and asking why he all of a sudden wants to buy a brand spanking new car the second he gets a raise isn't an unreasonable question in the newbie finance thread. Asking what car to buy in the newbie finance thread doesn't scream "I know what I'm doing". Dead Pressed fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Feb 20, 2015 23:25
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You seem extremely angry, and I'm sorry if I've offended you. I posted my income data last time - just click the "?" by my name to see it. I don't think I've ever posted in AI, so I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about there. I'm going to skip your recommendation of a car that's far more expensive, less reliable, and consumes more expensive fuel (even considering the MPG differential of diesel). I really appreciate your help, though. I think the fact that I got a lot of awesome folks making solid recommendations kinda justifies the fact that I posted in this thread, but again, I realize this is your turf and I shouldn't have stepped on it.
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Feb 20, 2015 23:44
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mastershakeman posted:I'm 33 and have no retirement savings whatsoever. I've just become a USAA member and would like to start an IRA fund, primarily in Vanguard ETFs. Is it better to make a Vanguard account for this or a USAA one? I feel like this got lost in car chat noise, but USAA may be a great insurance company and good bank, but they're pretty terrible as an investment firm from what I recall of seeing the fees. If you want Vanguard funds, probably just open a Vanguard account.
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Feb 21, 2015 13:32
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Bloody Queef posted:I feel like this got lost in car chat noise, but USAA may be a great insurance company and good bank, but they're pretty terrible as an investment firm from what I recall of seeing the fees. If you want Vanguard funds, probably just open a Vanguard account. Yeah most banks from my experience tend to offer overpriced investment choices vs Vanguard. Vanguard is one the better options out there, I like their Aggressive Lifestrategy mutual fund for long term retirement savings. It's a 80-20 stock bond split mutual fund
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Feb 21, 2015 17:42
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I use USAA for banking and I recently moved the last of my investments from USAA to Vanguard because USAA's fund options are not great at all. Buying Vanguard funds or ETFs through USAA's brokerage at $5-$9 a pop would be ok if you managed the purchases carefully (i.e. make large and infrequent ones). But honestly, just open an account at Vanguard.
slap me silly fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 17:45
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slap me silly posted:I use USAA for banking and I recently moved the last of my investments from USAA to Vanguard because USAA's fund options are not great at all. Buying Vanguard funds or ETFs through USAA's brokerage at $5-$9 a pop would be ok if you managed the purchases carefully (i.e. make large and infrequent ones). But honestly, just open an account at Vanguard. For no load funds USAA charges $45 per trade.
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Feb 21, 2015 19:33
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Ha, I knew there was a reason I wasn't using it. . . the $9 seems to apply to ETFs though
slap me silly fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 19:36
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slap me silly posted:Ha, I knew there was a reason I wasn't using it. . . the $9 seems to apply to ETFs though Out of network mutual fund trading to tend have expensive trading costs overall, the nice thing about the ETF concept is it keeps trading costs fairly low even across multiple brokerages.
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Feb 21, 2015 20:03
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I need help finding a new financial institution. For the last 15 years I have kept everything (not much) in a credit union because that was where my dad took me to open my first bank account. The credit union I use owns except now I am moving across the state and they do not have any branches in the area I will be living. I have heard a lot of horror stories and had friends get screwed over by banks and specifically Bank of America so I am leery of keeping my money with a bank. One of the big things I like about my credit union is they have no fees for any type of accounts or overdraft issues and are very helpful when I have a questions about my money or accounts. I feel like I simply got lucky in this situation but now need to move on, any advice for finding a new credit union or something?
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Feb 22, 2015 02:10
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Brotein_Shake posted:I need help finding a new financial institution. For the last 15 years I have kept everything (not much) in a credit union because that was where my dad took me to open my first bank account. The credit union I use owns except now I am moving across the state and they do not have any branches in the area I will be living. I have heard a lot of horror stories and had friends get screwed over by banks and specifically Bank of America so I am leery of keeping my money with a bank. One of the big things I like about my credit union is they have no fees for any type of accounts or overdraft issues and are very helpful when I have a questions about my money or accounts. You might be able to stay there and just use local credit union branches as your home bank. Check here.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:14
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Google your new city + credit union. The only requirement for my current CU was that I live in a particular county. They have a free checking account that's partnered with Kasasa which gets me like 3% APY on balances up to 10K which is apparently really good?quote:For Kasasa Cash, if qualifications are met each monthly qualification cycle: (1) Domestic ATM fees incurred during qualification cycle will be reimbursed and credited to account on the last day of monthly statement cycle; (2) balances up to $10,000 receive APY of 3.00%; and (3) balances over $10,000 earn 0.25% dividend rate on the portion of the balance over $10,000, resulting in 3.00% – 0.53% APY depending on the balance.
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Feb 22, 2015 03:18
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My friend's dad signed him (he's ~30 now) up for a Boeing Credit Union account when he was 7 up in Seattle, Washington, they have co-op shared branching agreements all over the place. When he moved on to a sailboat in Houston/Galveston (Texas), about 2,000 miles and two time zones away, he was able to use normal branch services through the local Johnson Space Center credit union about three miles from his marina/boat. He was kind of lucky that Boeing supports a lot of the manned spaceflight stuff for NASA, and NASA's global manned spaceflight mission control/training etc is headquartered at the same inland port that his boat is tied up at. But it proves the point that co-op shared branching is fantastic and you should take advantage of it.
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Feb 22, 2015 04:26
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What is the Credit Union equivalent of FDIC? I remember it was mentioned here a long time ago, but I forget the name to look for
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Feb 22, 2015 16:11
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So kind of a strange question, but what is the credit impact of opening a checking account and then closing it again real soon? I ask because I'm trying to get the hell away from Navient, so I'm going to apply with Wells Fargo for student loan consolidation. Here is their wording: quote:Discount eligible at time of application: You may qualify for an interest rate discount if you or your cosigner has any of the following Wells Fargo products prior to your Final Loan Disclosure being issued: So if I have a checking account, I get a 0.25% discount for the life of the loan. It says nothing about having to keep that account open. And the reason I'm concerned about a potential credit impact is that within the next year we're going to be looking at buying a house, so I get very nervous about anything that might have even a slight impact on my credit score. I have no need or want for a Wells Fargo checking account...had one, switched to a credit union, couldn't be happier.
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Feb 22, 2015 16:23
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EugeneJ posted:What is the Credit Union equivalent of FDIC? I remember it was mentioned here a long time ago, but I forget the name to look for The NCUA: http://www.ncua.gov/Pages/default.aspx
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Feb 22, 2015 16:25
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EugeneJ posted:What is the Credit Union equivalent of FDIC? I remember it was mentioned here a long time ago, but I forget the name to look for The NCUA Edit: beaten like an actively-managed mutual fund by the S&P 500
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Feb 22, 2015 16:25
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I'm trying to clean up my credit, and my negatives are: * Two Revolving Accounts which were charged off in 2009. * A Collections account for the second revolving account which shows "Date Assigned" as 2012. * A 5k Vehicle loan which was charged off in 2009 and where I negotiated to pay less to have the debt removed back in 2013. * 1 Public record for a State Tax Lien. I've called the state's department of revenue, and they said it was for 2009 (Can you tell that 2009 was a bad year for me?) which I had thought I paid years ago, turns out I sent the wrong amount and I still owe them ~$20 but the lien shows the full amount I owed since they said they don't update it. So I'll be sending in the remaining $20 to try and get that taken off, or at least shown as paid. I don't believe there is anything that can be done about the vehicle loan except wait for it to fall off. Is that correct? What is the right thing to do about the collection agency? The DOLA on the original debt is Aug/Oct of 2009. I live in Pennsylvania and from what I can tell the statue of limitations is generally 4 years to collect a debt (http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/42/00.055.025.000..HTM). If that's correct than they can no longer legally sue me for that money correct? It's only ~$400 that they say I owe, but there's a good year and a half left on the 7.5 years till it falls off the credit report. Is it smarter to just wait out the last year and a half or should I attempt to pay it? The one revolving account was reported as a charge off in 2009 and has had no activity since then. This is the account which the collection agency is for. I believe that, like the vehicle loan, nothing can be done here except wait for it to fall off. Is that correct? The other revolving account was reported as a charge off in 2009, and then again every single month for as far back as myFico will show me (early 2013). It still says the DOLA was in 2009 but it also says that I have 60+ "Late 90 Plus Day" statuses. Is this affecting my credit more than the first revolving credit? Is there something that I should do about this? Essentially I'm trying to repair my credit as well as I can because I'm looking to hopefully take out a mortgage in the near future and trying to figure out what I can do to minimize the impact of what I did to myself in 2009.
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Feb 22, 2015 22:17
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Thanks for the advice, I will call my CU on Monday and ask about co-op branches in my area since I can't seem to find anything online.
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Feb 22, 2015 23:08
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Steampunk Hitler posted:I'm trying to clean up my credit, and my negatives are: Looks like you will be waiting a year and a half to take out that mortgage. More time to build a down payment!
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Feb 22, 2015 23:10
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Steampunk Hitler posted:I'm trying to clean up my credit, and my negatives are: You will not be getting a mortgage in the near future, just to establish that. But pretty much the only thing you can do is to pay your bad debts off and time will heal your credit. The first thing I would do is to catch up on any past due accounts on accounts that are still open and active, and get that $20 tax lien out of the way. Then save up $1000 for a starter emergency fund. Once you do that, then you will need to figure out who owns what debt and pay it off. Don't allow them electronic access to your checking account. Get in writing the specific amount that will settle the debt in full, and don't send any money until you have agreed to an amount. Then overnight certified funds and save a copy of the check, their offer letter, and the letter they send you saying it is paid for the rest of your life. You can never lose this letter. The penalty for losing the letter is paying it again when it pops back on your credit and you can't prove you paid it. Once you have paid your bad debt off, you can then go out and get a secured credit card. You can never be late with it ever. Even though it is a secured card you will still need to manually make payments and keep it current. You can't do anything about the settlement for the car loan. You settled, that is about the least bad thing on your credit and time will heal that too. With these other credit cards, if they are smallish and you can save up the money in a reasonable time, like months, you should pay them in full, but if they are huge and it will take you a really long time to pay them in full, you can get settlements on them too. Settlements are not as good as a paid account, but they are light years ahead of an unpaid account. A settlement that is a couple years old when all the recent reporting is good is a minor hit. Either way, don't do a payment plan with these collection accounts. They won't show up as paid until you have made the last payment, so a payment plan does zero to build your credit faster. I don't know Pennsylvania law, but even if they can't sue you, you still legally owe the money and they can still report it as a bad debt. I would not wait it out for it to fall off your credit.
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Feb 22, 2015 23:23
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Zeta Taskforce posted:You will not be getting a mortgage in the near future, just to establish that. To be clear those negative items were not the only things on my Credit Report, they were just the only *negative* things. I've (stupidly) put off dealing with them. My current 10,000 foot view is: * Roughly ~15k in checkings. * Max out my IRA and 401k each year * Several credit cards (unsecured and secured) in my name with account ages ranging from 2012 on the secured and 2013/2014 on the unsecured. * Never missed a payment before 2009 and haven't missed a payment after 2009. I have every card I have setup to pay of the full balance every month automatically. * Other than the ~$400 and ~$1000 I owe on the other credit cards from 2009, and the $20 tax lien I have no debt other than what gets paid off automatically (does that even count as debt if it's never carried? It's only a few hundred bucks either way). * My DTI is (practically speaking) 0%. * I make $140k base salary with a ~$21k bonus that changes based on the company's (as a whole) performance (and have for just over a year, previously made $110k for a year and a half before that, and then $60k before that going back to 2010). * I have no housing cost (Currently living with family), no major vehicle cost (Both cars fully paid off, Drive < 5k miles a year so gas is minimal), the most expensive thing in my life is the cellphone bill for myself, wife and daughter and groceries. * According to myFico my credit score for the 3 CRAs is 611, 619, and 608. Is it really unreasonable to expect to get something in the near future? The federal requirements for FHA are a minimum of 500, where 500-579 require 10% down and 579+ requires 3.5%. Obviously those are just the minimum guidelines and may not be reflected by what you can actually get a loan for. LendingTree has the following breakdown (from 2013): * 720+ 29.90% * 680-719 26.01% * 620-679 41.56% * 580-619 2.07% * 500-579 0.17% I currently fall right below 620, which means I'm in the "2.07%" approved bracket, but I'm not particularly far away (I don't think? is 1-12 points a lot?) from the bracket which has 41.56% of the approved FHA loans.
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Feb 23, 2015 02:31
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Steampunk Hitler posted:
Where is all this income going if your costs are so low?
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Feb 23, 2015 02:54
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Steampunk Hitler posted:To be clear those negative items were not the only things on my Credit Report, they were just the only *negative* things. I've (stupidly) put off dealing with them. You make a lot of money. That's really awesome. But I'm sort of confused. If you have no housing expense, no vehicle expense, how are you not saving $50,000 per year. Or are you? I get that you pay taxes and your income is on an upward trend. But just pay the stupid things off already. And save money. In about 18 months you will probably have a 680 score at least. This might slow down the savings, and "living with family" is vague and can mean anything, but if I was married with a wife (or my case a husband) and kid, I would want to be living in my own apartment at least. Or have a plan where in the next 6 months I would bank a huge amount and then move out with a huge cushion.
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Feb 23, 2015 03:01
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turevidar posted:Where is all this income going if your costs are so low? Zeta Taskforce posted:You make a lot of money. That's really awesome. But I'm sort of confused. If you have no housing expense, no vehicle expense, how are you not saving $50,000 per year. Or are you? I get that you pay taxes and your income is on an upward trend. But just pay the stupid things off already. And save money. In about 18 months you will probably have a 680 score at least. This might slow down the savings, and "living with family" is vague and can mean anything, but if I was married with a wife (or my case a husband) and kid, I would want to be living in my own apartment at least. Or have a plan where in the next 6 months I would bank a huge amount and then move out with a huge cushion. The answer to "where is that money going" is mostly: * Debts from the 2008-2009 era that I incurred and didn't stop paying on or get late, those are all gone now. * Fines for stupid poo poo that I was avoiding dealing with (common theme with me, trying to avoid problems and then things getting worse. I'm doing better with this now though). * Spending too much money going out to eat. * Spending too much money trying to find reasons to not be inside the house. The last two are basically symptoms of why we want to move, the current living situation is miserable (not to get too E/N here) and we look for excuses to not be in the house. We don't particularly want an apartment, but that's our fallback plan if we need to wait the ~1.5 years or so for the negatives from 2009 to fall off. Which brings us back to the original questions of if the only real options are to just wait out the 1.5 years, and if at this point it makes sense to pay what's owed. In reading online a lot of places seem to advise not to actually pay things that are close to falling off because paying them can re-age the account and reset the clock and take another 7 years to fall off. I'm unsure if that advice is actually accurate or if that's just some sort of snake oil. The online advice seems to be rampant with stupid "tricks" that I'm not really interested in. I'm just attempting to sort out whether it's reasonable to expect to be able to have the credit required to get a mortgage in the near future (~6-8 months) and what the actual right thing to do with the ~1500 or so I still owe. If the answer is "pay them you knob" then that's easy enough to get done ASAP, I just want to avoid making a mistake that's going to extend the time horizon from 1.5 years to 7 years.
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Feb 23, 2015 03:49
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Steampunk Hitler posted:"pay them you knob" You can get as E/N as you want. Honestly there is no distinction between our personal lives and our financial lives and if your personal life is off balance then your financial life will be too. You present a false choice. Buy a house or stay in a toxic situation. Except you can't buy a house because of your credit, and you are tripping over yourself to temporarily physically remove yourself from the situation. And you are thinking about stupid credit tricks to bump the date up by a few months when you can buy. Just rent an apartment already. You can easily afford it. Don't go high end, but you don't need to live in the hood to save money either. It probably won't even be much more expensive once you relearn how to cook and spending an evening home is spent relaxing and not something to dread. Heck, your relatives are probably resentful due to you still being there while making 6 figures. Also, even if you could get a mortgage, it will be a high rate and you will purchase dumb because you will have all these toxic emotions going through you. You will end up regretting the house you do buy. So take whatever you need out of checking, pay it already, take more out of your checking to pay for first, last and security somewhere. Your credit is good enough to rent. This isn't forever and over the next couple years your credit will heal and more important, you will heal.
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Feb 23, 2015 04:16
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Yup when you have credit red flags there's no magic trick to improve your score besides paying bills on time for a few years and also opening up 1 to 2 secured cards if you are not eligible for better cards. credit red flags such as late payment or liens stay on your record for 7 years. However good credit activity stays in your record forever: http://blog.equifax.com/credit/faq-how-long-does-information-stay-on-my-credit-report/ etalian fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 05:03
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 17:45 |
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Quick reminder that renting is not throwing money away.* You make plenty of money, I don't see why you're so hung up on waiting til you own a house if you hate your current living situation. *This may not be true if you live in the Bay Area.
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Feb 23, 2015 05:06
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