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A few years ago my sister made me an authorized user of her AMEX so I could jumpstart my credit score. Lately she's been lagging a bit on her payments. I'm not worried she's going broke or anything like that, she's just busy and keeps forgetting to pay it on time and won't put them on autopay. Now that I have decent cards of my own, I'm thinking of just closing down the authorized card so I don't have to worry about it. Or I can just nag my sister to be on top of her payments. I'm just wondering if anyone knows what kind of impact this could have on my score. Right now the authorized card represents about half of my total limit but my utilization score never goes past 10% anyway (so about 20% after I close down the card).
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Jun 20, 2018 16:36
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| # ? May 17, 2024 22:22 |
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Sever. Just remove yourself from that situation. Also “won’t go on autopay” is pretty extreme BWM red flag. At least autopay the minimums.
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Jun 20, 2018 16:44
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I think this was just a card she didn't use much before I asked her to authorize me, but yeah, might as well just sever while it's not a problem.
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Jun 20, 2018 17:02
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DNK posted:Sever. Just remove yourself from that situation. UGF, get on her about this. And making a budget so she can auto pay statement balance. Paying interest is dumb.
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Jun 20, 2018 17:23
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HSA Questions 1) OptumBank HSA from my previous employer. It allows me to invest so long as I hold $2,100 in cash. (This number used to be $1,000, not sure why they raised it so much.) - I currently have $4k invested in VFIAX (Vanguard 500 index @ 0.04% expense ratio, unless I'm getting hosed over from hidden fees from OptumBank.) 2) CollectiveHealth HSA from my current employer. It allows me to invest so long as I hold $1,000 in cash, but charges me $2.50 monthly unless I hold $3,000 in cash. - I currently have $400 sitting there and want to contribute up to the annual limit. I don't know what investment options there are because it won't even let me see them until I deposit. I assume even the absolute worst plans will still have lower fees than the taxes involved in taxable accounts, right? I assume I should just contribute the max to my CollectiveHealth HSA, see if they have decent plans, and if not, transfer over to dump into the Vanguard 500 index @ my previous HSA. Or.. can I contribute directly to my old OptumBank HSA...? Can I even transfer CollectiveHealth deposits over to my old OptumBank HSA? Could I transfer both of these to an HSA that sucks less and start contributing to that, or does it have to be employee-sponsored?
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Jun 20, 2018 20:10
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Your employer probably has it setup through payroll contributions. If so, you can avoid FICA taxes on it going through them, which would probably be the best way to do it. That is unless you make over the cap.
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Jun 20, 2018 20:58
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Harry posted:Your employer has it setup through payroll contributions. If so, you can avoid FICA taxes on it going through them, which would probably be the best way to do it. That is unless you make over the cap.
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Jun 20, 2018 21:00
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Blinky2099 posted:Looks like I can start contributing $123 per pay period, so that'll get me ~$1400 for the remainder of the year, +$250 that was contributed by my employer earlier, so I'll still be able to deposit a couple thousand or so. My understanding is that I can deduct the taxes if I contribute directly out of my bank account but won't get the FICA taxes back as you mention but is this still the best course of action? I’d contact HR/Payroll and ask if you can contribute more to max it. I’m guessing they’ll say no, but maybe they'll surprise you.
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Jun 20, 2018 21:29
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Blinky2099 posted:HSA Questions According to their general fee schedule, Optum normally charges an extra 0.03% per month or 0.36% per year on your invested balance, so it's as if the expense ratio is 0.36% greater on all their funds. Your old employer may or may not have been paying this for you when you were still employed with them, but it's likely they stopped once you left them. You may want to check to make sure this investment fee does not apply to you, so you can have an accurate picture when making your comparisons.
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Jun 21, 2018 21:05
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Ok big dummy simple math question: If I’ve given a loan to a family member of $10,120 at a 1% interest rate and it’s being paid 7 months later in one lump sum, what should the total amount be? E- is it 10706.96? Sorry I suck at this stuff Snowy fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jun 23, 2018 |
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Jun 23, 2018 17:41
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Snowy posted:Ok big dummy simple math question:
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Jun 23, 2018 18:44
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Snowy posted:Ok big dummy simple math question: It entirely depends on what you mean by "1% interest rate." Are you compounding daily, weekly, monthly, annually, or are you talking about a 1% fee (which isn't really "interest" per se)?
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Jun 23, 2018 18:47
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Hoodwinker posted:Is it just 1% of the total value of the loan, regardless of when it's paid? Because if so that's $10,221.20. Ah poo poo I got it thank you, I was messing up the length of the loan.
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Jun 23, 2018 18:52
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Snowy posted:Ok big dummy simple math question: I would take anything that is break even, loaning to family (hell anyone really) is usually just a bad idea. Good for you for being a nice person, but $10k isn’t chump change.
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Jun 25, 2018 18:25
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Duckman2008 posted:I would take anything that is break even, loaning to family (hell anyone really) is usually just a bad idea. Snowy posted:Ok big dummy simple math question: The correct answer is 0 because family members will take advantage of you.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:17
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Pulling out a calculator to add up family interest sounds super weird, but I also never loan money I couldn’t kiss goodbye without a grudge.
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Jun 26, 2018 01:23
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It was for someone who insisted on interest.  it worked out fine, thanks guys 
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Jun 26, 2018 01:43
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Also, the IRS insists you charge interest, although it's kind of moot when the amounts are under the gift exemption: http://www.businessinsider.com/charge-interest-on-loans-to-family-2016-11
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Jun 26, 2018 08:06
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Ally Savings just went up to 1.75%.
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Jun 30, 2018 14:08
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34 years old no dependents. 12 yrs Capital Bank 8 mos OTHER LOANS Summit Credit Union 3 mos Equifax/Transunion is now up to 711/705. Next step is to get the average credit line age up to five years (green light). Right now I'm looking at at four years / four months. All debt has been paid in completion and I have my share of the house paid off till October 2019. I basically live off my plasma donation money and then throw my paychecks into my amex savings online at 1.75% interest and I have my tax withholdings set with the purpose of getting the tax return at close to ZERO as possible. Beyond that I have no retirement/ work sponsored 401K/pension so I figure I should max out a vanguard roth ira and then do a line budget on the amex savings so that each year the first thing pulled out goes right into the roth ira max. "i assume 01/01 of the next year you can go ahead and kick in the max and be done with it". I guess my concern is on what do to next as I feel absolutely comfortable with having a huge credit limit ($50k) +. I need to make a choice between doing another credit line via a risk free overdraft protection on my new checking account, getting a five year old highly depreciated car via low apr loan (to replace my issue free 03' acura rsx with 150K miles), or actually getting a non-secure credit card (with cash back or rewards system) with the intent of raising the limit every year. havent heard a peep fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jun 30, 2018 |
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Jun 30, 2018 20:09
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Why would you buy another car if you're happy with your paid for reliable car? I have no input on the other items. AOA never impacted my score, and mine is well under 5yrs thanks to sign up bonuses (resulted in >120k combined limit and >800 score).
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Jun 30, 2018 21:25
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SiGmA_X posted:Why would you buy another car if you're happy with your paid for reliable car? Constant background fear I guess. I'm going to go your route then until told otherwise. I'll start monitoring slickdeals until told otherwise for the "best'ish" sign on bonuses and act accordingly once i accumulate another four paychecks.
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Jun 30, 2018 22:05
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Hey thread. If there is a better thread to post this in, let me know. I bought my house in 2004 during the peak of the housing boom, and just finally got myself in a good spot with a refinance a few years back. I'm a single guy and have over the last few years got myself a pretty reliable, well paying job, got my credit under control (750ish generally) with my only debts being the house ($112k) and car ($9k). I'm putting away about 20% of my check in a combination of 401k, Roth IRA and employee stock purchase. I've been watching house prices rise and rise, and I'm kicking around the idea of selling off my house and going to rent for a bit. I bought the best house I could for the mortgage I got in 2004, which wasn't much. It's only around 850 square feet, but is in a nice zip code (decent school district) and has a pretty big back yard for the area (on a 60x200' lot). I don't need the yard or the school district, and I'm in a position with my job that I could move anywhere and work remotely if I need to. The good news is that I recently got siding put on the house and a new water heater, the bad news is that the bathroom is a wreck and needs to likely be fully redone. The house being a 1 bathroom house means redoing it is tricky. Long story short - should I put some feelers out to see what kind of value the house is "really" worth (Zillow says $130, but isn't counting the siding or bathroom work) and potentially sell it as is with the bathroom work needing to be done still? With the house as small as it is and me not having much baggage, I could deal with an apartment or something else of similar size for a while, bump up my savings and hope for the market to turn back into a buyer's market in a couple years, getting a place that's more what I'm looking for (more city, less yard).
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Jun 30, 2018 22:53
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havent heard a peep posted:Constant background fear I guess. I'm going to go your route then until told otherwise. I'll start monitoring slickdeals until told otherwise for the "best'ish" sign on bonuses and act accordingly once i accumulate another four paychecks. I *would* of course keep an emergency fund on hand, not but especially because of the car. Just because its the smart thing to do for every person period. If something happens to your car, you get it fixed and move on. You picked a good reliable car (unless there is something I don't know about that model - I am not a Honda person, but I know their general reliability standards, and have friends with various 90s-00s models that run for a drat long time, at a very low cost. Make sure to keep up on maintenance of course, like with ALL cars, even brand new. Also, retirement wise, you may need to invest in taxable investment accounts in addition to Roth IRA being you don't have access to a 401k. You need to save >15% of your gross income, and the Roth IRA will be maxxed at ~36k/yr. If you're a contractor, you should be able to open a SEP IRA or Individual 401k. If you work for a small biz, I would bug them about opening a SEP IRA. SiGmA_X fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jul 1, 2018 |
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Jul 1, 2018 00:18
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Is there a health insurance questions thread? I was hospitalized for a few days and have had a battery of tests trying to find out why. I should be hitting my out of pocket maximum for my plan. Do i need to confirm this with my provider and what happens now?
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Jul 1, 2018 20:58
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Ask me about insurance is the catch all thread for all lines of coverage https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3488763&pagenumber=53&perpage=40
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Jul 1, 2018 21:16
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A basic question about getting married: My fiancee and I want to simplify paying for rent/utilities/our upcoming October wedding. I bank with Schwab. Is the best path moving forward to create a joint checking account to deposit our monthly expenses/wedding money in to? I figure we'll keep this arrangement until we're married, at which point it will become our primary checking account, however is there any reason to keep my individual account open? Checking account age doesn't impact credit score, does it?
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Jul 2, 2018 13:47
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My wife and I have joint accounts, but we had our individual accounts for awhile after we were married until we closed the individual. We slowly moved over payment info to the joint, and once that was done we closed the individual. No harm in keeping individual open for any period of time.
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Jul 2, 2018 13:59
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Residency Evil posted:A basic question about getting married:
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Jul 2, 2018 14:16
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My wife and I got married a month and a half ago and are in the process of liquidating all of our individual accounts except IRAs and moving them to joint. It's a pain.
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Jul 2, 2018 14:32
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Residency Evil posted:A basic question about getting married: When I had been married, we both used the same bank (Chase) and went in to create a joint checking account. They told us we could do that, but we could also just add each other to our existing checking and savings. We went with the second option. That worked well for us, I paid mortgage, utilities, and my CC out of mine and she paid her CC and checks out of hers and we didn't have to worry about one of us overdrafting the other. We ended up moving all the savings into one account, since we didn't see benefit to two savings.
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Jul 2, 2018 15:15
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Thanks guys. Just opened a joint checking through Schwab. We'll just use it to pay for apartments/utilities/wedding stuff until we get married, after which we'll transfer the other stuff over. Retirement is a whole other bag of hurt. My job is pretty boring and won't allow us to do a mega-backdoor Roth IRA, while her job may allow us to get more creative, but I'm going to hold off on thinking about that until after we get married.
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Jul 2, 2018 15:45
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Residency Evil posted:Retirement is a whole other bag of hurt. My job is pretty boring and won't allow us to do a mega-backdoor Roth IRA, while her job may allow us to get more creative, but I'm going to hold off on thinking about that until after we get married. If you can find some sort of 1099 income getting a solo 401k is your best bet. 55k tax deferred can’t be beat
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Jul 2, 2018 16:13
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howdoesishotweb posted:If you can find some sort of 1099 income getting a solo 401k is your best bet. 55k tax deferred can’t be beat I'd have to earn at least 55k, right? I can't set up a 1099, earn a few k, and then magically put 55k in to it, right? There's also the fact that I'm not sure what kind of work my employer allows me to do outside of my job.
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Jul 2, 2018 16:36
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:My wife and I got married a month and a half ago and are in the process of liquidating all of our individual accounts except IRAs and moving them to joint. It's a pain. Do you have multiple accounts? Isn’t it just close out account, deposit check or transfer balance to account you’re keeping open? I agree that it’s really a couple by couple thing on joint vs separate. We have joint everything, dual income is the same to us whether we “split” bills or not, so after we got engaged we just merged and I take care of most bills now. But it def wasn’t hard to merge accounts in my experience.
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Jul 2, 2018 19:19
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Sure and then set up all of your various direct deposits and automatic movements of money and automatic bill pay. We have a bunch of accounts open because we want to make sure the direct deposit changes actually went through correctly before closing accounts. Setting up new accounts is not that much fun either.
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Jul 2, 2018 19:44
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Residency Evil posted:I'd have to earn at least 55k, right? I can't set up a 1099, earn a few k, and then magically put 55k in to it, right? Yeah, I'm also curious about that. I make computer toucher money as a W2 employee, partner makes not much money all 1099 w/ their LLC. Last year we maxed my 401k + both our roth IRAs. Can my partner open a solo 401k and dump 'our' money in it? Edit: looks like you can only contribute lesser of (18500 or 100% of compensation) + up to 25% comp from 'employer' Mao Zedong Thot fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 19:59
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Residency Evil posted:Retirement is a whole other bag of hurt. My job is pretty boring and won't allow us to do a mega-backdoor Roth IRA, while her job may allow us to get more creative, but I'm going to hold off on thinking about that until after we get married. Make sure you update beneficiaries on all your retirement accounts. Having beneficiaries listed makes it much easier if you pass, the money doesn't get forced through probate like other assets.
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Jul 2, 2018 21:17
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Hey guys, I've been slaving over this decision for a few months now, wondering if I could get some feedback: After a six month "vacation" (unemployment) my credit cards are almost maxed out, I've got a 500 limit at $350, another 500 limit at $490, and a 3200 limit at around $2500, all of those having the minimum payments made. The latter two are not accruing interest yet (introductory offers) but before long I'll have to start making payments larger than the minimum to avoid it. My big card, the daily use one, is at about 7800 of a $9000 limit, but that one I pay off thousands a month. Last month's payment was $2500. (I use it for daily expenses and bills and then just pay off as much as possible every month). I got a job a couple months ago, I'm making probably $2500 a month or so, and we're in the slow season, that amount will only go up. My monthly expenses are around $1400 not counting food/entertainment, and as I will list later, they will go down to about $1000 a month soon. Also as far as long-term financials go, let's just say I have a personal business to grow and financially I'm not worried at all about my future. These bills are peanuts compared to what I expect to be making in a decade or so, so this isn't a "help me, I'm drowning in debt and have no options" situation, this is more of a, "what makes the most financial sense" question. My question is about my car; on a 32,000 dollar auto loan, I have about $1,200 left. My credit score is a modest 650. Should I, after getting the title from having paid off the car (and doing so today would be an option, I could pay off the whole thing anytime) get a secured personal loan from somewhere like OneMain Financial, using the car as collateral, for debt consolidation? My monthly payment for the vehicle loan is $450, and I can't tell whether I would be better served taking that extra 500 and working my cards down, or taking on a $500-ish monthly payment for a 10-12,000 dollar loan. Some numbers: The cards range from 19-24% APR, the "big one" is at 24. I have reason to believe the APR on a secured loan would be around 16-20%, based on my credit and similar situations reported online. I may have plans to move within the next few months, and a "credit calculator" predicts clearing off the cards would add around 80 points to my credit. I obviously make more than I spend by a pretty significant amount, so it's not like I would take on the loan payments, and immediately charge my cards back up. Essentially I would no longer be making the CC payments, (around $80 for the minimums, and as I said, all the remainder towards the Big Boy). My main concern is the car will go from something building my credit via the loan to basically doing nothing unless I use it as collateral. It feels like a wasted opportunity. Also, taking out the new loan will build my credit even more, won't it? Thanks for reading, guys.
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Jul 2, 2018 23:12
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| # ? May 17, 2024 22:22 |
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Stop obsessing over your credit score and get your debt under control. If you use debt responsibly, you don't need to game your credit score. It will take care of itself. If you use debt irresponsibly, like you're doing now, your credit score will be crap because you're not a good risk. The system isn't perfect, but right now, it's working as intended. Put as much as you can towards your highest-interest debt, and pay the minimums on everything else. This probably means leaving the car until last. Don't get a title loan for debt consolidation. The interest rate isn't that much better, and it turns your worst case scenario from "bankruptcy" to "bankruptcy, and also they take my car, which I probably need to get to work." Your car is not "basically doing nothing" if you don't have a loan against it. It's doing its job of getting you around. It shouldn't be normal to constantly have a car payment. Finally, don't plan out your budget for today based on what you think you're going to make a decade from now. We're in the middle of what's looking more and more like an overheated economy, and you're already overextended to hell and back. Even one little hiccup could put you in a place where you can't pass a credit background check for a job or rental home, or get financing for your small business. If you need to take measured risks to succeed, that's one thing, but just throwing a bunch of personal spending on credit cards is not the way to do it.
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Jul 2, 2018 23:41
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