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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:part of this is your risk tolerance but since you essentially describe your household as a single income household there's a lot more risk associated with job loss than for a dual income household Medullah posted:Yeah I'd do 6 months. An honest 6 months too, when you say "lean" 4 months I'm a wee bit concerned you're just counting things like the mortgage and auto payment. Lean just means, cutting back on spending money month to month, groceries a bit, and subscriptions. I track every cent in YNAB so have a good idea what we spend and where. GoGoGadgetChris posted:"Well I can put everything else on my credit card" That too.
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Jan 4, 2022 15:05
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uhh mate GGGC's post was sarcasm anyway you got two kids maybe a third on the way and if anything goes wrong while you are out of a job you are hosed so I'd get that up to a normal 6 months of expenses
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Jan 4, 2022 16:12
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:uhh mate GGGC's post was sarcasm One kid, planning on one more and done. I know this does come down to risk tolerance. 6 months just seems like a high number. Presumably if I lost my job I'd be able to get unemployment and stretch things out longer. Still I get what people are saying and 6 months seems like a safer number. Will start working towards that and THEN will finally get to start saving up for fun stuff.
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Jan 4, 2022 16:35
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I would fatten it out to 6 months. You already said that 4 lean months is making you nervous. Maybe pick up some ibonds for fattening out the budget a bit. Those take longer to cash out, but call it month(s) 6, 5, etc. I don't know your budget. You shouldn't be trimming your grocery budget unless that's like "we eat fine steak and we will switch to cheaper cuts of chicken" or whatever. The thing that your efund earns is peace of mind and fdic insurance. This prevents you from having to pay interest on emergencies which will in a single month eat any potential gains from putting the money into something more risky than 0.
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Jan 4, 2022 16:39
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BaseballPCHiker posted:One kid, planning on one more and done.
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Jan 4, 2022 16:45
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BaseballPCHiker posted:One kid, planning on one more and done. Take it from me dude. Don't bank on presumptions. You probably don't presume to lose your job at all, right? So why do you need ANY savings? Because you never know.
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Jan 4, 2022 16:49
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Yeah, think of March 2020, and think of how you would react if poo poo like that happens again (it certainly can) and how much you want as a safety net. I moved my emergency fund up 50% as a result. We were also lucky enough to both actually get better jobs later on in early 2021 which made it possible (plus less travel due to Covid), but yeah , that’s how you want to base it on: what backup do you want for when poo poo really hits the fan.
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Jan 5, 2022 14:39
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I went to school in 2014. Dropped out for personal reasons. I had to pay the grant money back that I received, but I totally forgot about it, and I had moved several times shortly after 2014 (including to a completely different state) so I may have missed notifications related to this debt. It finally popped up on my credit report as being owed to the Maryland Collection Unit in September 2020. It was something like $2500 and I paid it off over the next several months. I was told by whoever I spoke to originally that the MCU (lol) is not a collection agency, but the website leads me to believe that it is: https://dbm.maryland.gov/ccu/pages/ccuhome.aspx I have been pulling my credit report regularly and have recently noticed that this debt is no longer on my credit report. It only ever showed up on my TransUnion report, but now it has vanished. Is it because the debt originated in 2014 (reflected on my credit report) and we have hit that 7 year statute? If I had known, I wouldn't have paid it off at all. My stupid assumption was that it was seven years from when it hit my report -- 9/2020. I am hoping to buy a car at the end of the year once I get fully out of my credit card debt (hopefully by August! 🤞). I'm just looking ahead at what might trip me up. Other than a late payment in 2015, there's nothing negative to be found on my credit report (other than maybe this debt that I am asking about?)
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Jan 5, 2022 18:25
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Duckman2008 posted:Yeah, think of March 2020, and think of how you would react if poo poo like that happens again (it certainly can) and how much you want as a safety net. What do you mean by this? 50% of a year's expenses?
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Jan 5, 2022 23:15
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I read that as 150% of what it was.
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Jan 6, 2022 00:09
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ultrafilter posted:I read that as 150% of what it was. 50% additional as to what it was. I bumped from $10k to $15k emergency savings to be specific.
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Jan 6, 2022 13:05
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I just wanted to thank the goons in this thread (I'm pretty sure it was this thread) who talked me down from panicking about my credit score, because it led to me checking my report, finding $1k+ in mystery debt, and, finally, today my score shot up by 68 loving points due to everyone agreeing my mystery debt was indeed a mystery and I have never taken out a non-student loan and life is back to normal again 
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Jan 8, 2022 15:36
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Lieutenant Dan posted:I just wanted to thank the goons in this thread (I'm pretty sure it was this thread) who talked me down from panicking about my credit score, because it led to me checking my report, finding $1k+ in mystery debt, and, finally, today my score shot up by 68 loving points due to everyone agreeing my mystery debt was indeed a mystery and I have never taken out a non-student loan and life is back to normal again congrats, that must be a big relief!
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Jan 10, 2022 16:49
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Probably a stupid tax withholding question (US). I withhold an extra $75 per pay period so that I don't have to pay when I file in April or make quarterly payments. Since I now have a kid and pay for daycare, I get some new credits so I'll be getting a decent chunk of money back this year ($3k or so). Assuming that everything stays the same next year, would it be prudent to just "convert" my extra $75 in withholding to an extra $1,950 in contributions to my 401k? I already max out my Roth IRA so this would basically lower my taxable income a hair and wipe out the extra money I sent to the feds, lowering my refund for next year, right? I know that the expanded CTC complicates things, but my understanding is that since I did not opt out of my $300 monthly payment last year, that my refund this year is comparable to what a "normal" tax year would be, since it doesn't seem like it will be extended to this year. I have pretty boring taxes and take the standard deduction and don't have a taxable brokerage account or anything for capital gains.
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Jan 11, 2022 17:45
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E: whoops
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Jan 12, 2022 02:11
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boop the snoot posted:I went to school in 2014. Dropped out for personal reasons. I had to pay the grant money back that I received, but I totally forgot about it, and I had moved several times shortly after 2014 (including to a completely different state) so I may have missed notifications related to this debt. Some collectors will delete a negative account from your credit report when it’s paid off even if you don’t ask them to edit to add: and upon wondering why they would be so nice, it occurs to me that collection agencies’ interests are not served by you not being able to get new credit Dross fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Jan 13, 2022 |
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Jan 13, 2022 09:00
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I'm selling a house I inherited, and it should close within this month. When all is said and done I will have about $450k that I intend to use to buy a home for myself. My current plan is to rent an apartment until either the market cools off a bit, or the perfect home presents itself. My timeline is probably 3 months to a year. What is a good place to stash the money where it will make at least some interest with minimal risk but where I can pull it out within 30 days or so without a penalty that wipes out any advantage over a savings account?
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Jan 13, 2022 17:31
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Gangringo posted:I'm selling a house I inherited, and it should close within this month. When all is said and done I will have about $450k that I intend to use to buy a home for myself. My current plan is to rent an apartment until either the market cools off a bit, or the perfect home presents itself. My timeline is probably 3 months to a year. An online savings account like discover or Ally which will give you something around 0.4%. Since you only expect this money to be sitting around for 3 to 12 months the difference between inflation and interest rate is not going to matter much in terms of eroded spending power. Expect the market to remain stagnant for another three months, but once Spring and Summer roll around you should see a lot more inventory on the market and most likely prices going up as well. That will help you with your goal of waiting for the perfect house, but odds of prices going down in the next 3 to 12 months are low, I would say.
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Jan 13, 2022 18:06
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you should not put 450k in a single savings account, you should put it in two savings accounts at separate institutions because the FDIC only insures 250k per account. But yes, two online savings accounts.
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Jan 13, 2022 18:57
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If I'm reading it right it looks like T Mobile money has the best returns right now. Like, suspiciously twice as good as anything else yet it never shows up on websites rating high yield savings accounts. What am I missing?
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Jan 13, 2022 20:21
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Gangringo posted:If I'm reading it right it looks like T Mobile money has the best returns right now. Like, suspiciously twice as good as anything else yet it never shows up on websites rating high yield savings accounts. What am I missing? Check for something like "2% interest.... On up to $3,000 of balance, and then 0.03% for remaining balance"
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Jan 13, 2022 20:32
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Check for something like "2% interest.... On up to $3,000 of balance, and then 0.03% for remaining balance" It's 4% on up to 3k with a lot of strings, then 1% on everything else. No strings on the 1%.
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Jan 13, 2022 20:35
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hmbradley is putting a bunch of restrictions on the 3% interest starting next month (need credit card, 2500 in direct deposit to the deposit account, & $100 spent on the card a month) but it'll still be 1% at the max tier without meeting those.
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Jan 14, 2022 00:04
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Gangringo posted:If I'm reading it right it looks like T Mobile money has the best returns right now. Like, suspiciously twice as good as anything else yet it never shows up on websites rating high yield savings accounts. What am I missing? You (I am assuming) have to be a T-Mobile customer. Edit: yeah, the 4% on that first $3000 , you have to have phone service for that.
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Jan 14, 2022 14:14
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Yes, but even without that you still get 1%. Which is double what I'm getting at Ally.
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Jan 14, 2022 15:04
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Gangringo posted:I'm selling a house I inherited, and it should close within this month. When all is said and done I will have about $450k that I intend to use to buy a home for myself. My current plan is to rent an apartment until either the market cools off a bit, or the perfect home presents itself. My timeline is probably 3 months to a year.
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Jan 14, 2022 19:47
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dexter6 posted:My recommendation is to figure out how much of the $450k you would want for a down payment Plus closing costs. Which are significant.
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Jan 14, 2022 20:06
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dexter6 posted:My recommendation is to figure out how much of the $450k you would want for a down payment, and put that in HYSA (like Ally, etc.) [or two, for FDIC reasons] and put the rest into investments and be richer at the end of your mortgage. This is where I'm currently undecided. I'm on the fence between two neighborhoods and I have to figure out how much being in my preferred neighborhood is worth to me. I'm fortunate enough to have an actual pension at my job so retirement savings are less important. That's the only reason I'm even considering blowing the whole wad (minus an emergency fund) on the purchase. The purchase price difference is astounding for only being a mile or two away, but it's hard to put a price on being in a place you love.
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Jan 14, 2022 23:54
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Is there a correct way to cancel or close a credit card account? I'm moving banks and I'm worried that if someone auto-charges something to that closed card and doesn't get paid they'll eventually do some sketchy debt-collection nonsense to me. I think I remember some scuttlebutt about how closing accounts is "bad" for your credit, so is it worth it to just leave this old card as a zombie account? Checking on it every or month or so to make sure nothing strange pops up on it?
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Jan 16, 2022 17:27
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I don't know if it's "right" but I'm keeping my OG credit card around and use it only for Netflix with autopay. I basically have every single alert on it turned on, so I get an email and text if there's anything like a charge over $25 or a balance over $50 or what not. I feel pretty comfortable ignoring it beyond that.
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Jan 16, 2022 17:44
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Roumba posted:Is there a correct way to cancel or close a credit card account? I'm moving banks and I'm worried that if someone auto-charges something to that closed card and doesn't get paid they'll eventually do some sketchy debt-collection nonsense to me. You don't want to close your oldest free line of credit. Turn back on paper bills. In fact, turn them on for all your accounts where they haven't started adding a gently caress you fee to get the bill. I suggest the single monthly charge like the other poster. I use them for monthly/quarterly charitable giving. It is very nice to have a backup card if your primary one gets disabled for some reason. Otherwise if it's not your oldest free line of credit then just call them up and say you would like to close your card. They will do it and that's it. You're not liable for any charge they approve past that phone call. Email yourself the date, time, and name of the person you spoke to when you closed it. The call is recorded.
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Jan 16, 2022 23:44
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H110Hawk posted:Turn back on paper bills. In fact, turn them on for all your accounts where they haven't started adding a gently caress you fee to get the bill. Why should people turn on paper bills?
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Jan 16, 2022 23:58
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Ham Equity posted:Why should people turn on paper bills? So you get bills in the mail when you have charges. Especially important for unused cards. Email is a far less reliable method of communication than postal mail, plus you can't see the details of charges in an email. I get all paper bills except for ATT who charge like $10/month to receive one, and SoCalGas who won't let you setup autopay.
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Jan 17, 2022 00:29
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H110Hawk posted:Email is a far less reliable method of communication than postal mail
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Jan 17, 2022 02:59
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I log into all my accounts pretty regularly, definitely don't rely on email. Personally I'd prefer to not have financial documents sent to the house.
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Jan 17, 2022 03:04
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H110Hawk posted:So you get bills in the mail when you have charges. Especially important for unused cards. Email is a far less reliable method of communication than postal mail, plus you can't see the details of charges in an email. I get all paper bills except for ATT who charge like $10/month to receive one, and SoCalGas who won't let you setup autopay. If you're getting physical statements, you're not going to know you got a statements until several days after the statement goes, versus usually a day or two turnaround for digital statements (both the sending out of the digital statements and the time it takes to arrive are much quicker, because printing statements takes way longer than digitizing them). Barring issues with production, you're going to get your estatement on the same day every month, or very close to it; paper statements can get deleted by all sorts of poo poo, so a week later than usual you're not going to know whether there was no statement, the statement was lost, or the statement is just delayed. Ham Equity fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 21:55
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Ham Equity posted:It is way easier to intercept physical mail than it is to intercept email, statements getting sent to your email are a lot harder to steal your personal information from (unless your email is hacked, at which point it doesn't really matter, anyway). They email you the exact same loving statement that they send you physically, it's just in a PDF (source: I used to send out statements for an FI every month). You can't steal an entire apartment building's identity by randomly breaking into emails, but you sure can by popping the communal mailbox if people are getting paper statements. In my experience a detailed pdf emailed to me is the extreme exception. Care to itemize which companies do this? I think I get 1 of them, and it's from my local city. Any company I've asked has told me the most they can do is email me a balance and a link to their website where I have to login. I understand the postal mail is easy to intercept, but it's also a major federal crime. Maybe my choice will come back to haunt me. My email account is likely more secure than most as I'm able to use TOTP 2fa. I'm never going to notice timing on statements to know if something is lost/delayed by a single day regardless. 
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Jan 18, 2022 22:53
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H110Hawk posted:In my experience a detailed pdf emailed to me is the extreme exception. Care to itemize which companies do this? I think I get 1 of them, and it's from my local city. Any company I've asked has told me the most they can do is email me a balance and a link to their website where I have to login. I understand the postal mail is easy to intercept, but it's also a major federal crime. Maybe my choice will come back to haunt me. My email account is likely more secure than most as I'm able to use TOTP 2fa. We were talking credit cards, so I was referring to banking statements. But as far as bills go, I guess I don't see much of a functional difference between having to login to a website to see your statement and receiving the statement itself in an email?
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Jan 18, 2022 22:59
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Ham Equity posted:We were talking credit cards, so I was referring to banking statements. But as far as bills go, I guess I don't see much of a functional difference between having to login to a website to see your statement and receiving the statement itself in an email? Well, which bank(s) do it? I am at a big goose egg between the 6 different banks / fi's I deal with. Dealing with 20 different websites, all of whom are slow and tedious in different ways. Some of which make you really work for your statement, or are my wife's and so I would need her logins as well. Frontier springs to mind, as does citi. I walk by my mailbox daily, grab it, tear it open, and have generally read the entire thing by the time I make it to the trashcan. Then I put it all in a shred box and shred it after a year. The only one that takes longer is the dumping ground credit card where everything else goes.
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Jan 18, 2022 23:10
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Ham Equity posted:We were talking credit cards, so I was referring to banking statements. But as far as bills go, I guess I don't see much of a functional difference between having to login to a website to see your statement and receiving the statement itself in an email? Really? One of them is a thing I have that can not be edited (paper or PDF), the other relies on my continued relationship with the company, their retention policy, etc, etc. I don't get emailed PDFs at all. Where I can get them I have to log in and generate them.
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Jan 18, 2022 23:11
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