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Yeah, I wouldn't be applying for more credit at this point, though, I debated asking for an increase to my credit limit, though part of me feels like having a lower credit limit on the card probably enforces potentially better behavior on thinking about the credit cards.
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Apr 22, 2020 00:57
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Is there any downside that I'm not seeing to using an online-only savings account? Currently, I'm using Schwab for my investments, checking, and savings account. And while I've been very happy with their investment and checking services, the savings account only has an APY of 0.18%. I've been reading a lot of reviews for online savings accounts that give me as much as 1.7% APY (from Vio Bank, which is the one I'm leaning towards), I'm just wondering if there's any pitfalls that I'm missing here. Additionally, if anyone has any recommendations for a savings account that earns more than 1.7% I'd love to hear it!
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Apr 25, 2020 21:50
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Mine (Capital One) takes a few days to transfer money, so I keep an emergency fun at the local bank. I've taken money out of the Capital One account like one time since I set it up, so it's not really a daily issue, but something I'm aware of.
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Apr 25, 2020 21:57
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I've had my main banking at online banks for probably a decade now, zero regrets. I maintain a checking account with a brick and mortar bank just to get access to their ATMs for cash deposits (and teller services maybe once a year). It's even easier now that both the main banks I use support Zelle. After the first time I sent a non-trivial amount of money between the two, I can send right up to the daily limit either direction pretty much instantly. Even without that / before Zelle was a thing, moving money between banks is not hard. Just means you might need to plan it out a few work days in advance.
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Apr 25, 2020 22:24
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IOwnCalculus posted:I've had my main banking at online banks for probably a decade now, zero regrets. I maintain a checking account with a brick and mortar bank just to get access to their ATMs for cash deposits (and teller services maybe once a year). It's even easier now that both the main banks I use support Zelle. After the first time I sent a non-trivial amount of money between the two, I can send right up to the daily limit either direction pretty much instantly. Zelle is a loving nightmare if anything goes wrong, I would suggest avoiding it if feasible. It's all the hassle of something normally going wrong, but both banks point at Zelle and Zelle then flips you off. (Based on reading peoples experiences on reddit for example.) Great when it works, but the money is just gone while you fight through layers of stupid. OldSenileGuy posted:Is there any downside that I'm not seeing to using an online-only savings account? I'm just wondering if there's any pitfalls that I'm missing here. I have been "online only" for savings since like 2006, it's great. With mobile check deposit I go to the bank only to use my safe deposit box more or less. You leave a slightly larger buffer in your checking account because it's 1-3 days to move money through ACH (same as checks.) If your bank is at all normal, like Ally/CapitalOne, you can also get a "checking" account, which is just a different set of features and regulations, that gets you a ATM card. These can generally be used at "AllPoint" ATMs for free, and many banks offer fee reimbursements up to some limit per month. I leave a few hundred in there just for easy cash access at an ATM without exposing my main checking account to sketchy ATMs. I don't even carry my "main" checking account debit card, there is no use in doing so anymore. If I need more than $200 or whatever cash from an ATM I'm going to know about it before I leave the house. Schwab gets you most of these features as well, but now you can layer on that isolation if you like. I don't have any actual checks from my Ally checking account. I also have a dedicated savings account just for paypal (aka Venmo) transactions inside Ally. Call me paranoid, I'll wait.
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Apr 26, 2020 02:07
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H110Hawk posted:Zelle is a loving nightmare if anything goes wrong, I would suggest avoiding it if feasible. It's all the hassle of something normally going wrong, but both banks point at Zelle and Zelle then flips you off. (Based on reading peoples experiences on reddit for example.) Great when it works, but the money is just gone while you fight through layers of stupid. On one hand, I can see how that would be, on the other I have yet to have any issues of any sort. The vast, vast majority of the time I'm just using it to move my minimum safe direct deposit amount from my paycheck back to an account I actually use. H110Hawk posted:I don't even carry my "main" checking account debit card, there is no use in doing so anymore. If I need more than $200 or whatever cash from an ATM I'm going to know about it before I leave the house. I should probably get in this habit. I only use one of them to deposit cash / see a teller, the other to withdraw cash, and combined between all of that I might use either of them once in any given month. On the other hand I keep zero money in one and next to zero in the other. I also have a checking account that I literally only use to write checks in those rare, rare cases that's the only thing someone (i.e. a school) will take. Zero balance unless I have a check pending. I'm the same way with Paypal. Mostly because I'm too lazy to link it to a newer checking account, partly because I like having that air gap.
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Apr 26, 2020 02:31
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IOwnCalculus posted:On one hand, I can see how that would be, on the other I have yet to have any issues of any sort. The vast, vast majority of the time I'm just using it to move my minimum safe direct deposit amount from my paycheck back to an account I actually use. You should only use zelle to pay third parties, please just link the accounts to move the money. You don't want your paycheck to go into limbo because zelle had a bad day.
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Apr 26, 2020 02:49
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Yeah, keeping any money available to third parties unnecessarily is a bad idea. It's just fine until it really, really isn't.
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Apr 26, 2020 05:27
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H110Hawk posted:I have been "online only" for savings since like 2006, it's great. With mobile check deposit I go to the bank only to use my safe deposit box more or less. You leave a slightly larger buffer in your checking account because it's 1-3 days to move money through ACH (same as checks.) If your bank is at all normal, like Ally/CapitalOne, you can also get a "checking" account, which is just a different set of features and regulations, that gets you a ATM card. These can generally be used at "AllPoint" ATMs for free, and many banks offer fee reimbursements up to some limit per month. I leave a few hundred in there just for easy cash access at an ATM without exposing my main checking account to sketchy ATMs. I don't even carry my "main" checking account debit card, there is no use in doing so anymore. If I need more than $200 or whatever cash from an ATM I'm going to know about it before I leave the house. Not paranoid at all! I can totally relate, since I refuse to properly use Venmo since my PayPal was hacked in ~2007 and I temporarily lost like $800 because it was linked to my bank account. I ended up getting the cash back after a few weeks, but that was a tense few weeks because that was a time in my life when I really could not have afforded to suddenly lose $800. So now I only use PayPal with credit cards, and only use Venmo as a holding area for money (ie go out with friends and pick up the bill, have all the friends Venmo me, now I have $200 in my Venmo account to use when going out with friends for the next few weeks.) I guess the more I think about it, it's not really the "online only" part of these banks that gives me pause. I've been using Schwab for almost a decade, and for all intents and purposes they're an "online only" bank. I just never thought twice about signing up with Schwab because they're like a capital B BANK. Whereas these other banks like Vio or Varo or PurePoint Financial or First Foundation are websites that I've never heard of before and everything in my paranoid extremely-online brain screams "NO DON'T PUT YOUR FINANCIAL DETAILS ONTO THIS RANDOM WEBSITE." Just a mental hurdle I need to get over, I guess. Thanks for the info!
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Apr 26, 2020 19:21
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If they aren't FDIC insured then I see no problem with giving them the stinkeye and refusing to let them have access to your accounts. There's a lot of companies trying to make themselves sound like banks without having to put up with the regulations that banks have, because it's so much more profitable to operate that way, but it is substantially less safe for consumers.
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Apr 26, 2020 19:52
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Verify that the institution you are looking at has FDIC insurance. Go to the fdic website and look them up. If they do, you should be fine.TooMuchAbstraction posted:If they aren't FDIC insured then I see no problem with giving them the stinkeye and refusing to let them have access to your accounts. There's a lot of companies trying to make themselves sound like banks without having to put up with the regulations that banks have, because it's so much more profitable to operate that way, but it is substantially less safe for consumers. Literally how Elon Musk made his fortune.
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Apr 26, 2020 19:53
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:If they aren't FDIC insured then I see no problem with giving them the stinkeye and refusing to let them have access to your accounts. There's a lot of companies trying to make themselves sound like banks without having to put up with the regulations that banks have, because it's so much more profitable to operate that way, but it is substantially less safe for consumers. This is great advice, thanks! Is this the difference between institutions that are "member FDIC" themselves vs institutions that don't specifically say "member FDIC" but at the bottom in the fine print they say "your deposits are FDIC insured through BANKCORP" or something like that? It seems like if the company is "member FDIC" then you're actually doing business with the bank itself and your money is insured. If it's one of the other companies (like Varo or Chime), they are partnered with a bank that they are putting your money into but they themselves are not an FDIC insured bank? Is that right?
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Apr 26, 2020 20:17
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Been using online savings now for over a decade, it’s great. I still keep a checking account with my credit union for direct deposit and paying bills out of, but regularly shuffle the excess to my online savings. Don’t use Zelle between your own accounts (or really at all, if you can avoid it). If anything goes wrong you’re in for a world of hassle and finger pointing. There’s really no need to involve a third party for this stuff, especially one with as bad a rep as Zelle. Just use normal ACH and plan ahead 48 hours. It’s free, reliable, and traceable. If you’re just paying your buddy for beer and pizza then whatever, but don’t send thousands of dollars through them. It is admittedly dumb that in the year 2020 this poo poo isn’t instant between banks directly, but it’s the inconvenient reality.
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Apr 26, 2020 20:21
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OldSenileGuy posted:This is great advice, thanks! Companies I trust to do FDIC sweep accounts ("in partnership") : Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard (you get the idea). People I demand be direct members? Everywhere else. Stop chasing tenths of a % with your literal ability to keep a roof on your head.
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Apr 26, 2020 20:25
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Guinness posted:Just use normal ACH and plan ahead 48 hours. It’s free, reliable, and traceable. I set up an account at a local credit union to see if they could replace my current brick and mortar bank. They wanted to charge me loving $8 to send an ACH transfer to my online bank.  So yeah I initiated the transfer the other way around for free, but who the gently caress thinks they can charge fees for that in 2020?
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Apr 26, 2020 20:26
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IOwnCalculus posted:I set up an account at a local credit union to see if they could replace my current brick and mortar bank. That's amazing. Also in the realm of rich person problems, make sure if you approach your fdic limits that you tell your brokerage not to sweep to the same bank you have your savings in. They will generally have a article on who they use and how to tell them to blacklist specific banks.
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Apr 26, 2020 20:34
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H110Hawk posted:That's amazing. This is smart, thank you.
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Apr 26, 2020 20:43
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Is there a way to set up ETF purchases on a regular basis in Vanguard? I can set it up for mutual funds but I can't seem to find it for ETFs. The UX is a nightmare though so it's possible I missed it. Thanks!
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Apr 29, 2020 18:09
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This should probably go in the BWM thread but I spent $1116 on food and booze in April. That is about $550 more than normal. Also was $2300 under budget though. We have upped our eating out to support the places that are open and drinking more beer since we haven't been going anywhere. Also supporting my partner who has been out of work for 6 weeks now. Feels good to do some of that, a bit bad to spend so much on food, but also nice to see my E-Fund get bigger as a just in case.
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May 1, 2020 15:58
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spwrozek posted:This should probably go in the BWM thread but I spent $1116 on food and booze in April. That is about $550 more than normal. Also was $2300 under budget though. We have upped our eating out to support the places that are open and drinking more beer since we haven't been going anywhere. Also supporting my partner who has been out of work for 6 weeks now. Feels good to do some of that, a bit bad to spend so much on food, but also nice to see my E-Fund get bigger as a just in case. Down to one income and went $2300 under budget? Sounds like gwm to me. Is that due to the trump bux or other savings? Or is your partner at like -$3000 for the month to offset this? (what happened to your household net budget?) H110Hawk fucked around with this message at 16:14 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 16:12
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H110Hawk posted:Down to one income and went $2300 under budget? Sounds like gwm to me. Is that due to the trump bux or other savings? Or is your partner at like -$3000 for the month to offset this? (what happened to your household net budget?) We both have a pretty high savings rate and emergency fund. She is still spending about $2K a month on required stuff (rent, disability insurance, student loans, etc). She hasn't seen a dime from unemployment yet and no trump bux have showed up for her. I don't get trump bux since I make too much money. She is probably negative. I told her if she needs to not split rent or whatever to let me know but so far it has been fine for her.
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May 1, 2020 16:50
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spwrozek posted:This should probably go in the BWM thread but I spent $1116 on food and booze in April. That is about $550 more than normal. Also was $2300 under budget though. We have upped our eating out to support the places that are open and drinking more beer since we haven't been going anywhere. Also supporting my partner who has been out of work for 6 weeks now. Feels good to do some of that, a bit bad to spend so much on food, but also nice to see my E-Fund get bigger as a just in case. We’ve been eating our more (via pickup/delivery of course) too for similar reasons plus it’s probably a stress relief. My small bwm: we had a trip to Hawaii planned in October, thankfully didn’t book tickets yet. We’ve talked it over and we’re already at 90% certainty we won’t go. I took out a rewards credit card to get a $500ish miles bonus for the flight. Said credit card emailed out 2 weeks ago that I could use said miles for restaurants. Queue def more restaurants for the next 2 weeks than normal. I plan on cancelling before the year mark (it was a first year no charge, then yearly charge card), so gently caress it, use it for something. I am also going to have so many t shirts I have been slowly buying from random restaurants , small Businesses, etc.
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May 2, 2020 15:22
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Hey all- have a bit of a financial situation. Any input is appreciated. My wife lost her job just before Covid, and currently qualifies under the CARES act since everything shut down the week she was expecting an offer letter for a new position. She is currently receiving unemployment benefits, and I thankfully have been able to maintain full-time employment with benefits during this time. If I understand correctly the CARES act waives the fee from withdrawing from an IRA/401k- we are making due as best we can, but we have been Bad With Money in the past and have outstanding high-interest credit card debt, on top of student loans. We had been working away with the debt snowball method, but until her industry(I won't go into the details but it has been dead in the water due to Covid) starts back up we are considering other options. We were weighing the idea cashing out at least part of the retirement fund, wiping away as much high-interest debt as we could and then pay it back to out retirements funds within two years to avoid it retroactively being taxed. The minimum payment and amount we are currently paying in interest are such that it seems like something to consider. Is this a Very Bad Idea? A concern that immediately springs to mind is if and how this would affect my wife's unemployment status- I looked around but most of what I was able to find was pre-Covid advice so i'm not sure how that applies with the CARES act. We are in Indiana. Thank you again.
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May 3, 2020 19:22
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mr. unhsib posted:Is there a way to set up ETF purchases on a regular basis in Vanguard? I can set it up for mutual funds but I can't seem to find it for ETFs. The UX is a nightmare though so it's possible I missed it. Thanks! In case anyone was curious, I checked with Vanguard and this is not possible. So if you're dollar cost averaging through Vanguard, you have to do it manually.
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May 3, 2020 21:01
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Just Offscreen posted:Hey all- have a bit of a financial situation. Any input is appreciated. Can you quantify what you're dealing with here? How much debt, what is your current repayment timeline when fully employed, and how awful are your 401k options? Have you truly turned your spending habits around as far as incurring new bad debt? Generally the answer is to also bold the underlined part. But maybe you're special.
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May 3, 2020 21:10
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Just Offscreen posted:her industry(I won't go into the details but it has been dead in the water due to Covid) starts back up we are considering other options. Is she like, a teacher? or is she like, a masseuse or a theater usher or a dave and busters manager? There's a lot of industries that you simply can't expect to come back this year if ever, and as unpleasant as that is to think bout you gotta factor it in when you're considering taking out a loan (even from yourself).
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May 3, 2020 22:54
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Thank you all for the responses- my household expected normal income is 100-120k. My wife's position is Sales Manager for a software company in a market that can be expected to return to something approaching normalcy after the country reopens. In the meantime she has also started her own consulting company in the meantime. We have a several Roth IRA/401k to the tune of 60k. The high interest credit card debt sits at roughly 50k. Our spending habits have substantially changed and we have been able to maintain this trajectory for well over six months.
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May 4, 2020 17:35
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jesus loving christ. what's your household's actual income right now without your wife working, and what are your expenses?
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May 4, 2020 18:08
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Don't be such a tease, what are the interest rates on that $50k?
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May 4, 2020 18:18
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i'm with moana here. the vultures are hungry. what DOES your apr/minimum payment look like here? 50k? this is a level 10 hit-every-panic-button-and-eat-ramen emergency. So, 50k debt, you make 100k combined. god willing, wife gets her job back at a normal salary very soon (pessimistic about this, but for the sake of argument) You're talking about spending 6 months of your combined salary on the black hole that is your debt (or your 401k loan). This is doable over five years, I don't think it's doable over two. You're talking about cutting all your spending by 25%. And things like rent and insurance and gas can't be cut like that, so you're really talking about slashing discretionary spending by a much larger amount. It's easy to say "we'll spend 25% less on fun/food" but what about 60%? I know you said you turned things around, but you also ostensibly also saw the credit cards hit 10k and then 20k and then 30k on their way to 50k. Not that it's tremendously relevant to the question you asked, but how much are the student loans? I know some are in forbearance at the moment but that'll only last until sallie mae or whoever wants blood again. Make sure you don't factor not paying those into your planning.
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May 4, 2020 21:08
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mr. unhsib posted:In case anyone was curious, I checked with Vanguard and this is not possible. So if you're dollar cost averaging through Vanguard, you have to do it manually. You can schedule the transfer from your bank account to the settlement fund at Vanguard. Then you just have to go in and manually do the purchase with the settlement funds. I do this every month for VOO in a taxable account.
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May 5, 2020 21:43
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Hey everyone, I'm pretty lazy when it comes to managing money and I wanted to know if I'm doing things more or less okay. For background I'm 27 and I'm making an okay salary as a software engineer at a finance company, but it's nowhere near FAANG numbers. Live in NYC where my biggest expenses, apart from rent, were food and drink until COVID-19 hit. I have lingering student debt to the tune of ~$5k. It's on forbearance right now, but the interest rate isn't very high. My income is such that I can't contribute to the Roth IRA. I've heard of 'backdoor Roth', but do I need to spend more time doing tax stuff to set that up? Do I need to open a traditional IRA, put the money in, transfer, close the traditional IRA, rinse and repeat? I've maxed out my 401k for the past three years after I moved to my new company. I did contribute to my 401k for the two years previous at my old company, but all that money is still with my old company and I don't really know how to get it lol. When the amount in my checking account grows to feel too big, I transfer the money into some savings account. Currently I have $40k spread across three different savings account - Wealthfront, Betterment, and Marcus. For investing, I use a Fidelity robobroker (~17k) and a Betterment robobroker (~1k). I have those two robobrokers because for a long time my company didn't allow us to use Betterment at all, and when they lifted the restriction a coupla months ago I wanted to give it a try. Each of these robobrokers have ~$500 going into them on a monthly basis from my checking account. I also plan on feeding my Betterment savings into the Betterment robobroker, and eventually moving the Wealthfront savings back to Marcus because of the higher interest rate. My Roth IRA is also being robo-managed by Betterment. Is this more or less okay? Will I be losing a lot of money in the long run by using these robobrokers over doing it myself? I like being able to just put money in there and forget about it, and I don't enjoy the stress of checking the market and wondering how my investments are doing.
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May 23, 2020 14:07
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Some abbreviated advice: - The backdoor Roth is pretty easy and you should look into how to do it. Ask around here if you have more questions after reading up on it. - Transferring old 401ks is also pretty easy. You make a few calls and fill out some paperwork. It might not make sense if the new 401k has worse (read: more expensive) fund choices than the old one. - As long as your savings accounts all provide roughly the same interest rate, it doesn't matter, but consider consolidating into the one with the highest interest rate for simplicity. - Robobrokers will probably end up costing you money in the long run for a few reasons. Putting it all into a Fidelity non-robobroker and slamming it open palmed into the Fidelity total us stock market fund is literally as much work as you need to do. These adjustments won't require you to check the market constantly, they're just (in order): increasing the amount of money you put into tax advantaged space, consolidating your accounts for simplicity, and reducing the amount of fees you're paying. Once you've made these tweaks, you won't need to do them again (except for the backdoor Roth, which you'll end up doing every year).
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May 23, 2020 16:23
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Robobrokers do tax loss harvesting to pump their after tax returns without thought as to your actual tax situation, and it will come back to bite you later when you withdraw. I looked into them back when they were just starting out and they are definitely not worth the fee.
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May 23, 2020 20:09
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Can I ask about the PUA/Unemployment benefits here? If a couple (self employed) files their taxes jointly can they both apply for the PUA benefits or is it just one of them? I've looked all over online and can't find a clear answer on if a married couple are both supposed to apply for unemployment, er, self-unemployment.
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May 25, 2020 06:27
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Mu Zeta posted:Can I ask about the PUA/Unemployment benefits here? If a couple (self employed) files their taxes jointly can they both apply for the PUA benefits or is it just one of them? I've looked all over online and can't find a clear answer on if a married couple are both supposed to apply for unemployment, er, self-unemployment. That would probably depend on if both spouses were self-employed or if one was a non-working spouse of someone self-employed. If they were both working, I would expect benefits would be based off the income attributable to each spouse since that's something that should be known for the calculation of self-employment taxes anyway.
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May 25, 2020 15:33
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moana posted:Robobrokers do tax loss harvesting to pump their after tax returns without thought as to your actual tax situation, and it will come back to bite you later when you withdraw. I looked into them back when they were just starting out and they are definitely not worth the fee. I'm curious what you mean by "bite you later when you withdraw." Although this comment did make me go back and total up fees vs estimated taxes saved on TLH and I've definitely paid more in fees than I've earned in TLH (and the spread would be much much greater if I were looking in February instead of today), so I think it's time I move this money on out.
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May 25, 2020 15:46
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And just to add to the point, index / target date funds are simple and a great choice, just make sure the expense ratio is low (like under 0.2%, more ideal under 0.1%). My 401k fidelity , which has limited funds it can choose from, the target dates are all 0.6% , so I have them in index small cap, large cap, etc that are 0.1%. It sounds like this is your own 401k and not a company , so you should have access to better options than what a listed. Just good to know.
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May 25, 2020 16:08
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Czolgosz posted:I'm curious what you mean by "bite you later when you withdraw."
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May 25, 2020 16:48
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But if your deferment means you're in a lower tax bracket when you withdraw, you still benefit. People's situations are different and should be treated differently. Robo advisors don't do (or are really bad at doing) that.
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May 25, 2020 22:50
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