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Orange_Lazarus posted:Can this still be the monthly, "I stuck to/was under my budget What's the wiggle room in your budget? Some of your other posts make it sound like you went on a financial crash-diet - which is about as successful as a food crash-diet.
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Jun 5, 2013 18:28
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" or the "I on a spending spree and went way over budget 
" thread? I really enjoyed seeing other people's budgets and whether or not they stuck to them.
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PhantomOfTheCopier posted:Here is it, my January 2013 budget that shall be going away with the large student loan very soon now: Are you saving for retirement, or is this out of take-home pay only?
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Jul 6, 2013 00:13
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PF, are you at least only contributing to the trad IRA right now? Paying into a Roth with that salary means you expect tax rates to increase and have a ton of income in retirement, since SSI is partially exempted even for high earners. What are you saving for in your non-tax-advantaged savings? If you pay off your student loans from your investment money, you can easily afford a $400/mo car payment. Beefing up your emergency fund to ~11k, you have 6k of 'investment' money plus whatever you can get for your current beater to work with for downpayment. From your comments about your 401k, it sounds like you've only been in the new job for a couple of months. I'd wait a few more before committing to a large car payment, particularly since you went from 30k to 100k with your last job hop.
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Jul 8, 2013 18:19
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Orange_Lazarus posted:Our take home pay has shrunk somewhat since we are putting more of my wife's paycheck (50%) into her 401k for the rest of the year. I'll probably do the same thing next year because I want to see how low I can get the taxes. Based on 2013 numbers maxing a 401k and two IRAs along with our other deductions (standard/PEs) should get us down to an effective 1.5% federal and 3-3.5% state. Insane. The savings are about $4,500 Why would you try to defer tax with a trad IRA when you're already in a low tax bracket? Roth it and watch out for your contribution limits.
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Jul 11, 2013 15:02
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Orange_Lazarus posted:I live in North Carolina, second highest tax bracket in the nation. I think the IRA/401k deductions affect both state and federal income. If I'm wrong I really need to drop the IRA and go back to a ROTH. Okay - this makes almost no sense. From your first numbers, you're only in the 15% federal tax bracket, so even paying the full 7.75% in state taxes that only pushes your margin to 22.75%. If you retire in the great state of Washington (no state income tax) you'd come out better putting money in your Roth unless you plan to not go over the 25% bracket in retirement (around 85k/yr with the standard deduction for 2014). You're taking money off your top margin now in the anticipation of your top margin later - since the difference in NC is only 0.75-1%, you don't gain that much by gaming the system. E: You save 0.75% on your marginal taxes by dropping your income below the magic 60k threshold. You run the risk of +10% federal if you end up with more income in retirement (plus whatever state taxes). I would go for the Roth. Engineer Lenk fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 18:29
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Orange_Lazarus posted:The thing is I currently live on $30k with my wife which includes my $12,000 mortgage and I'm quite happy. So I don't see why I need to take more than an inflation adjusted $30k a year when I retire without a mortgage. So I doubt taxes would be an issue. There are required minimum distributions from a 401k and trad IRA when you hit 70.5 (but not from a Roth until after you die). If you keep socking away money at this rate you'll almost certainly end up paying more taxes in the end. Engineer Lenk fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 22:54
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Orange_Lazarus posted:Ah OK I never really thought about the minimum distributions before but that's definitely something to keep in mind. My plan was to eventually reduce (not eliminate) my tax free contributions in favor of Roths/Taxable accounts because I want to retire or semi-retire early. All the more reason to take advantage of your low tax rate now - it's likely that your income will go up over the next few years unless you plan to change careers or drop to part-time immediately. You'll need to save quite a bit outside of an IRA/401k if 'early' means 'before 55'.
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Jul 12, 2013 07:19
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UnhealthyJoe posted:Hello, I really am in some desperate need to figure things out. I know I posted a while ago but never really followed up, which is my fault. Is a loan forgiveness program an option? Something like this: http://www.hrsa.gov/loanscholarships/repayment/nursing/ Having your loans cut by 60-70% would help out considerably.
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Oct 4, 2013 08:10
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Lblitzer posted:I've been able to throw a bit into my savings account, usually close to what I have left but I'm wondering if I should be a bit more aggressive towards the CC. I was thinking of doing $50 for the loan and $240 for the credit card. Focus on the CC first (extra $290/month); it probably has a higher interest rate.
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Jul 18, 2014 22:50
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HonorableTB posted:1. Yes it is a 6 year car loan Pay the minimum on USDAA, pay whatever's leftover from the $200 on the Walmart card.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:00
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HonorableTB posted:1. My car situation is actually a lot better than it used to be. My old car had severe engine problems (was struggling to make it up moderately big hills), the tires were completely shot, was coming up on 185,000 miles, and a whole host of other problems. The repairs were more expensive than the car. So I did a dumb thing and traded it in, got $3000, put a $1500 lien on the new(er) car (2013 Corolla) and the Toyota dealership slapped me with a $13,000 loan at 24% INTEREST. I called USAA, they took over the loan for me, and negotiated a 4.5% interest loan but Toyota wouldn't let go of it unless they paid the entire amount + expected interest at once so that's how I ended up with a $19,000 car loan. I was stupid and got bent over on account of it. Just curious, why did you continue with the refi once you knew you had to pay the interest on the first note no matter what? All you've done now is add 4.5% on top of the original interest.
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Jul 22, 2014 18:27
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 01:51 |
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Neo, it sounds like you get stuck pretty easily in feast-or-famine mode. You need to do some deep thinking about where your money goes right now - the budget you posted is up $471 with 'worst-case-scenario' modeling of your wife's income, which makes me think it isn't realistic. Do you have cell phones? How about other transportation costs? There's also planning for the life cycle of items that may wear out or break - your electronics, clothing, furniture. If your job has you on your feet a lot you need to budget for new shoes; if you're on call for a job you need to have a backup plan for your phone. When you get into financial crash diet mentality, you end up drowning in one-time 'exceptions' that shouldn't be a big deal because on paper in the worst-case scenario you're saving almost $500 per month. Budgeting money towards things, whether via an envelope system or a series of bank accounts, encourages forethought and reinforces the concept of saving up to buy something.
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Oct 27, 2014 20:11
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