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As a general rule don't let your financial institutions know you'll be living abroad. There's a whole bunch of regulations involving non-US residents and FIs basically don't want to deal with it so they'll close down your accounts.
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Jul 15, 2019 17:09
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Is there a service like Mint but with less or (ideally) no advertising poo poo? I don't mind paying monthly for such a service.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:02
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My friend just had a kid, and wants to start saving money for him for life milestones. Right now he's putting it in a basic savings account. He wants to maintain control of the money, so he can withdraw money for things like a car and college. I expect he won't be touching it for 10 years, but will be depositing twice a month when he gets paid. What's the best option for him? I thought at least an online bank with higher yield interest rates.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:07
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The March Hare posted:Is there a service like Mint but with less or (ideally) no advertising poo poo? I don't mind paying monthly for such a service. YNAB? It's a different sort of budgeting philosophy in that it expects you to assign a use to every dollar you have, but you can definitely ignore that and just have it pull your transactions and assign a category to them, and then just use it to see where your money is going.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:08
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Ur Getting Fatter posted:YNAB? It's a different sort of budgeting philosophy in that it expects you to assign a use to every dollar you have, but you can definitely ignore that and just have it pull your transactions and assign a category to them, and then just use it to see where your money is going. I didn't really like YNAB when I last looked at it (years ago). I'm sort of less interested in budgeting and more interested in Stats, mostly just want a dashboard that shows me where I'm at and where I'm going. I'm a reasonably disciplined spender, so I don't really like dealing with the effort of scrutinizing my purchases as long as I'm hitting my student loan/savings goals each month.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:21
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The March Hare posted:I didn't really like YNAB when I last looked at it (years ago). I'm sort of less interested in budgeting and more interested in Stats, mostly just want a dashboard that shows me where I'm at and where I'm going. I'm a reasonably disciplined spender, so I don't really like dealing with the effort of scrutinizing my purchases as long as I'm hitting my student loan/savings goals each month. I mean, Mint is essentially the free version of Quicken. You could probably purchase that and get rid of the ads.
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Jul 15, 2019 18:27
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Medullah posted:My friend just had a kid, and wants to start saving money for him for life milestones. Right now he's putting it in a basic savings account. He wants to maintain control of the money, so he can withdraw money for things like a car and college. I expect he won't be touching it for 10 years, but will be depositing twice a month when he gets paid. What's the best option for him? I thought at least an online bank with higher yield interest rates. If he won't be touching it for ten or more years, then an index fund would be my choice.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:31
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:If he won't be touching it for ten or more years, then an index fund would be my choice. Yep. In a UGMA/UTMA brokerage account.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:36
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Motronic posted:Yep. In a UGMA/UTMA brokerage account. What's the trade-off here between that and a 529 account. Just the flexibility of being able to spend it on non-educational stuff?
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Jul 16, 2019 17:39
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Adhemar posted:What's the trade-off here between that and a 529 account. Just the flexibility of being able to spend it on non-educational stuff? A lot more than non-educational. You can open a UGMA/UTMA at any brokerage and have access to their funds like any other taxable account. 529s are state plans with varying quality of investment choices. Whether the tax savings makes sense for you depends a lot on what state you are in as well as your income, and if you're using your state's plan or that of another state.
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Jul 16, 2019 17:56
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Adhemar posted:What's the trade-off here between that and a 529 account. Just the flexibility of being able to spend it on non-educational stuff? My understanding is that a UGMA/UTMA can be used for pretty much anything, but while the first bit of earnings is taxed at the kid's marginal rate, anything in excess of a certain amount it's taxed at the parent's marginal rate. A 529 however is tax-free when used for qualified educational expenses, and some states will actually provide a tax deduction for the contributions as well. Downside is that if it's used for non-qualified expenses you'll also be hit with a 10% penalty on the earnings (edit: that penalty is on top of taxes). So a 529 is way better if you KNOW that the kid is going to college, but if it's questionable then the UGMA/UTMA might be better. DaveSauce fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jul 16, 2019 |
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Jul 16, 2019 18:01
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DaveSauce posted:My understanding is that a UGMA/UTMA can be used for pretty much anything, but while the first bit of earnings is taxed at the kid's marginal rate, anything in excess of a certain amount it's taxed at the parent's marginal rate. You can also use a 529 as a qualified disbursement to buy real estate where the kid decides to go to college.
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Jul 16, 2019 18:22
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:You can also use a 529 as a qualified disbursement to buy real estate where the kid decides to go to college. My understanding of this is that you can only use the money up to the school's room/board rate. So you can't buy a house with the funds, but you can put the money towards a mortgage payment.
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Jul 16, 2019 18:47
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I have a fico 8 of 759 and my wife has very similar We're looking at buying a house. Preapproval in August or September. Between three accounts I have a credit limit of ~$21K which I'm guessing is probably low for the area we live in by half or more I ran the credit simulator and it said if I get a new credit card with a 10k limit my score would go up by +2 Would this help/hurt/neutral me if we go to get preapproved in ~45 days Also sort of related, looking at the amex platinum card primarily because they have centurion lounges in the three airports I fly through the most (only fly through?), also it looks like you get 5 points per dollar spent, vs 1 point per dollar normally spent on travel? Yes I'm aware of the high annual fee, the global entry/uber/airline incidentals would cover most/all of that... thoughts? My wife super hates spending time in the airport and my coworker was saying the centurion lounge has a fully open bar and we travel probably once a month. I've never had a "Real" travel CC before though so I don't know if those points are really that good.
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Jul 17, 2019 05:02
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Worrying about +2 points on your credit is not necessary. You'll get pre-approved for a mortgage that's double what you should use anyway. As long as you have your down payment you're fine
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Jul 17, 2019 10:51
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Hadlock posted:I have a fico 8 of 759 and my wife has very similar Lenders look at more than just the FICO score. The underwriters will actually review what's on your report in order to make a decision. Going through all that effort just to gain 2 points is probably not worth it.
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Jul 17, 2019 12:25
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Medullah posted:Worrying about +2 points on your credit is not necessary. You'll get pre-approved for a mortgage that's double what you should use anyway. As long as you have your down payment you're fine I was approved for a 350k mortgage when I made 45k a year, and was buying a house for 86k. The banking system is stupid.
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Jul 17, 2019 15:40
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Hadlock posted:Also sort of related, looking at the amex platinum card primarily because they have centurion lounges in the three airports I fly through the most (only fly through?), also it looks like you get 5 points per dollar spent, vs 1 point per dollar normally spent on travel? Yes I'm aware of the high annual fee, the global entry/uber/airline incidentals would cover most/all of that... thoughts? My wife super hates spending time in the airport and my coworker was saying the centurion lounge has a fully open bar and we travel probably once a month. I've never had a "Real" travel CC before though so I don't know if those points are really that good. You can look around and see what people think about Membership Rewards (the points you earn from Amex). The hard part is 1% back from everything else. I feel like you get the Plat Amex for all of the extra perks: Amex Centurion lounges, car rental status, Priority Pass (gets you into other lounges and if you fly Delta the Platinum gets you into Sky Lounges), OK-ish travel insurance, etc. If you are flying once a month and can hit a Centurion lounge there and back I think it's worth it. It largely comes down to what you do at an airport. Are you a running onto the plane at the last minute or buying a Diet Coke at a Hudson and reading your phone? Probably not. Heading to a bar and dropping $50 drinking/eating at the airport? Most definitely. You can try poking through the CC thread or just Google. It's one of the most popular cards. The only crap part is an additional card is $125. Worth it the first year to get Global Entry but if you travel together a lot probably only worth having one card. My spouse is the one who travels all the time and I only travel with them so we only have one Plat Amex card.
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Jul 17, 2019 15:49
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:I was approved for a 350k mortgage when I made 45k a year, and was buying a house for 86k. The banking system is stupid. Yup I bought a new house last year and was pre-approved for 700k, bought a 250k which was higher than I felt comfortable with but I loved the house
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Jul 17, 2019 16:23
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I tried a pre-approval from BoA and Sofi to see what they would approve me for, and the answer from both with zero debt and $200K+ income was "insufficient income, rejected." In fairness, $200K actually is too low to buy even a condo in the SF bay area, but it blew my mind that they didn't even bother with a number. It was just like "Ha, you think you can get a house with that paltry income. gently caress you, not worth our time." Mortgages and housing markets are weeiiiiiird. 
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Jul 17, 2019 19:15
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Median home value in SF being $1.63M means that an 80% mortgage at 30 years would be $5,498 (3%) to $6,225 (4%) Take home pay at $200k income is ~$10,700 a month I would expect them to offer you SOMETHING, but they're probably just not interested in loaning to yet another minnow looking for a $999,999 house
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Jul 17, 2019 19:20
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:I would expect them to offer you SOMETHING, but they're probably just not interested in loaning to yet another minnow looking for a $999,999 house Yeah, that was the funny part to me. Literally not a dime, not even "well, here's pre-approval for $600K enjoy your commute from Fresno" sort of thing. I'm not planning on buying anyway since any market where you can win a million dollar lottery jackpot and still need a mortgage for a 2BR condo is horseshit, but I was surprised that the answer was 'gently caress you.'
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Jul 17, 2019 19:28
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After having spent my entire life just earning money and spending my money I decided to start collecting receipts and summarized each month. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1al4OV1_wBral6wVQ8pFQd3X27FJDzkcw0ePcXvTVHIg/edit#gid=0 This is not the US but I converted to dollars for simplicity's sake. After tax I earn about $2700 a month. Somehow I spend an average of $3200 a month and probably have been for years. To clarify Food is used to includes everything from food to soap, toilet paper and deodorant etc. Food in June was me being lazy when splitting the receipts to separate candy stuff Entertainment went up simply because I started adding more things that weren't there before. Like google drive $6 a month, Discord $5 and so on. The numbers are about 98% accurate. Not every tiny digital purchase gets in there. Something something candles starving family.
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Aug 6, 2019 04:27
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Ignoring the elephant in the room, do you think you can get your loan payments back down to $900 before your heat bill comes back?
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Aug 6, 2019 04:46
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Katt posted:After having spent my entire life just earning money and spending my money I decided to start collecting receipts and summarized each month. What are the nature of your loans? And what is the difference between "home" and "house?" You should probably start your own thread.
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Aug 6, 2019 05:47
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Katt posted:Candy: $156 
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Aug 6, 2019 13:59
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Tag yourself I'm $156 to candy, $156 to dentist. Help me my family is dying.
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Aug 6, 2019 15:47
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Yes yes yes. Been waiting for something new.
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Aug 6, 2019 16:48
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How are you spending a negative amount on fuel? Is there some kind of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" fuel scam going on where you buy barrels of fuel and resell it later at a profit?
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Aug 6, 2019 16:48
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DJCobol posted:How are you spending a negative amount on fuel? Is there some kind of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" fuel scam going on where you buy barrels of fuel and resell it later at a profit? Prefer the Cheech and Chong bit with the garage cans.
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Aug 6, 2019 16:56
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Hope this isn't too long. I'm bad at self editing I've been having an E/N kinda life that I only started earnestly recovering from in the last couple years. This left me in a relatively small amount of medical and student loan debt, no credit card debt though. Don't know how I dodged that. Anyway my paychecks have stabilized and I'm making more than I spend to survive. I have a good union and more job security than a lot of people my age. Most of the medical debt is from late 2015. I was fortunate enough to find out that my dad is going to give me an interest-free loan to pay off my medical debt in lump sum amounts. It's around 10k total but it is spread around between multiple practitioners, who in turn sent it to different collection agencies when I did not pay, which then split into even more collection agencies over time. Despite my e/n bullshit I at least kept most of the letters I got. So I have a big stack of several debt collectors asking for various amounts, plus a judgment against me that they tried to garnish wages for but I had been laid off by my employer. This is all background for my main question - how would a responsible person go about recording everything they owe different agencies for the last few years, so I can make calls to negotiate the debt down before I pay it off? Some of these agencies haven't sent me anything since 2017. My ultimate goal is to feel secure knowing that I have tied up every loose end and won't have a process server at my door again.
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Aug 6, 2019 17:34
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Pull your free credit report from the official website That ought to give you a list of everyone who currently has a claim against you Put that in a spreadsheet like Google sheets with phone numbers If your family is going to loan you money, call up the creditors who you owe and offer to pay 50% for a forgiveness of debt and a letter saying you're paid in full (so they can't sell the balance of your debt to someone else) Often the doctor will sell your debt to a debt collection agency and then the doctor has nothing to do with it at that point as you've been written off as a loss on their taxes and now you're just dealing with the debt collector directly. Medical debt might be different than credit card debt though.
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Aug 6, 2019 21:28
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Can I safely assume that anything off the credit report is not going to be a problem? Or should I contact the agencies that aren't on there and verify I don't have balances? I pulled my CBR and there are several balances that don't show up on it, even if they only total a few hundred. How should I handle payment to make sure they don't screw me over somehow? Ask for a written agreement and then cashier's check? Pay on the phone and hope they send me that stuff? I'm worried they might act shady.
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Aug 6, 2019 21:35
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big cummers ONLY posted:Can I safely assume that anything off the credit report is not going to be a problem? Or should I contact the agencies that aren't on there and verify I don't have balances? Some of your billing might have fallen through the cracks and hasen't been reported yet. There's no hard and fast rules about how fast they have to report. Like, a doctor might have forgotten to report the overdue balance last year, and next year might find it under a pile of papers and report it then. Might be worth calling that doctor, might be worth not calling them and hoping it just falls off the radar forever. Sounds like you want to be totally clean and free though.
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Aug 6, 2019 21:43
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big cummers ONLY posted:Can I safely assume that anything off the credit report is not going to be a problem? Or should I contact the agencies that aren't on there and verify I don't have balances? I pulled my CBR and there are several balances that don't show up on it, even if they only total a few hundred.
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Aug 6, 2019 21:43
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Ok that'll be my plan then. How should I handle payment to make sure they hold up their end of the deal? Do I need to pay first and then trust they send me the forgiveness/paid in full letter? Or ask them to send me a written agreement and then pay by cashier's check or something? Thanks for holding my hand, I'm still really new to taking the reins like this
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Aug 7, 2019 13:22
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I would talk to a lawyer.
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Aug 7, 2019 13:47
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Generally don't send money until a written agreement is in place, otherwise they'll just take your money and say "we never agreed to that" But yeah consider talking to a lawyer if you want to be absolutely sure
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Aug 7, 2019 14:06
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For my public student loans, I talked to the debt collector until we agreed on a settlement. They didn't send an offer letter, this was just done over the phone. However, I definitely recorded all our phone calls and I was very clear about making them confirm that the agreed-upon payment would completely settle my debt. Per our agreement, I had my bank send a cashiers' check to the DoE. The DoE confirmed to the collector that I'd paid, and issued a "paid in full" letter to me. Note I did have to pay taxes on the amount forgiven. This fucks a lot of people, so plan ahead. They report it to the IRS. Also, you might be able to get a free consultation with a lawyer, but paying for a lawyer to handle the whole thing themselves is $$$$ and may not be worthwhile. To get as much as you can from a consultation, go in with all your ducks in a row -- all the info you can get plus a list of specific questions to ask.
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Aug 7, 2019 15:55
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i like nice words
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How crazy would it be to refinance my mortgage 10 months into buying the house? I was a bit tentative about being able to make the payments I'd need to in order to do a 20 year so I did a 30 year I'm easily able to make them (been making the 30 year payment plus extra principal to match what the 20 would have been), so I'm wondering if the long term gains of dropping down to a 20 would outweigh the short term cost of refinancing.
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Aug 8, 2019 18:11
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