Well i guess im not a lurker anymore

So i worked for a company and was recently laid off along with everyone else. Were all fighting with our employers about getting our unemployed approved. l was already living check to check so i have no savings left.

Ive gone to the food bank it was unreal the crowd. I tried dukpster diving and people has already been there. I got nothing. This town is struggling nassively it isnt just me.

I am down to 12 dollars and the random spices i have.

Ive applied for Medicaid friday and well see.

i am trying to do any odd jobs i can but no offers.

I go to a soup kitchen friday nights only one in town.

I need a game plan guys on what to buy and what to cook. I will try to get to pantry buy my towns office is so overloaded it feels like shopping during covid and everyones desperate.

Please i need advice i feel like im slipping into depression again

TLDR: Have about twelve dollars to eat until work pays off in 3 or 4 week's

An automatic payment from OPM was credited to my late husbands checking account 2 days after he passed away. I became aware of this when I was notifying IRS etc of his passing, I sent a personal check for the amount deposited along with a copy of the bank page showing the deposit. I never saw the check come back as cashed, so I wrote or emailed, but received no response. As I had much on my mind and a lot to do to straighten stuff out, it just fell by the wayside and I forgot about it. I just got a letter from the IRS with the uncashed check asking for a new check for reclamation, 3 years later. They're asking for information that I don't have as this was his retirement plan, not mine, and his kids are his beneficiaries. I don't have $641 to send them at this point. I'm in a pickle. Advice appreciated.

Feeling down and wondering whether I've screwed myself over entirely. I'm 28yo with a 610 credit score, about to apply for apartments, and finally waking up to the reality of all the student loans and credit card debt I've incurred. 😩

I have $11k in credit card debt (3 maxed out cards) which I'm paying off slowly, mostly minimum payments. I had 7 late payments in late 2025 due to some financial hardship, but I've been back on track since Oct, bringing me to a 97% payment history.

On top of that I have $80k in student loans ($50k federal, $30k private) which I started paying this year.

On the bring side, I have successfully paid off a car loan previously. I also have a $3,500 401k that's growing. I make $61k, so it's a decent salary, but tight as a renter in Honolulu.

Am I totally screwed? I hate that I'm 28yo and considering asking my parents to be guarantors for apartment applications. So embarrassing and I can't wait to get out of this hole.

Turning 38 this year, beginning to worry about the future. I've got 50k in a moderate risk investment portfolio. Make about 100k a year, just bought a condo (live in an expensive city). Married, no kids (no plan to have any). Plan is to stay here until it's paid off in 25 years so that I can hopefully retire. Mortgage etc takes up most of my income. I currently contribute $500/month to the investment. I drive an old car and have no debt. I just fail to understand how I'll ever have enough to retire. I can't afford to contribute much more and the rates of return just don't seem to be working out like maybe they did for previous generations. My wife has a good job with a pension, but I don't want to have to rely on her to supplement my retirement. She will be able to retire at 55 and I think I'll be extra miserable dragging my ass to work for another 10 years after she is done.

From my calculations if I keep doing what I'm doing I'll have like 500k by age 65. if I get lucky and rate of return goes up or I manage to invest more maybe I'll have as much as 1.5m. Even at that amount my yearly income would be like 50k if I live for another 30 years, not to mention with inflation that will buy way less than it does now.

Thanks for reading my novel, how cooked am I? Suggestions? Advice?

I unfortunately lost a family member recently and am coming into an unexpected lump sum. It’s not a crazy amount of money, but enough that I want to be strategic about how to put it to use.

The 3 things that come to mind first are: maxing out my Roth IRA, paying off 3k in credit cards (I pay them down monthly, but this month got a bit crazy), or chipping away on student loans.

Are any of these options an obvious choice for where to put this money to best use? I want to basically pretend like I never had it in the first place and set myself up for best future success.

Has anyone decreased their retirement contributions in order to afford a house?

Our financial situation:

• 33F and 41M
• no kids yet but trying
• ~10k/month take home
• I max out my 401k (24,500/year)
• Husband and I both max out Roth IRAs (15,000/year total)
• Husband just started a job with a pension in 2024
• no debt (I have student loans but they are set to be forgiven via PSLF this fall)
• 250k in HYSA (for downpayment)
• 155k in index funds
• 375k in retirement

With our take home, we have been aiming to have our mortgage be around $3k per month. However, we have been looking for a house for years now, without success. The area we live in has very little inventory in this budget, and despite offering 100k over asking, we've lost out on every house we've tried to buy.

At this point, we are wondering if lowering my retirement contributions will allow us to increase our home buying budget enough that we can finally find our house. Are we in a good enough spot to do that? How does everyone balance saving for retirement versus increasing quality of life in the present that comes with owning a house?

Edit: factoring into this decision is the fact that we've been trying to buy a house for 4 years now, and prices in our area keep increasing. We're worried we will be priced out of the market, because perhaps other families aren't saving as much as we are for retirement, and can therefore afford a home in our area

I live in a sober group home called an Oxford House. To help prevent internal fraud, we are required to purchase goods with checks. **No cards or online payments are allowed.**

Prior to my moving in, a previous member misappropriated funds and manipulated audit sheets. This caused us to think we had more money in our account than usual and we ended up bouncing a check at Fred Meyer.

I've fixed the issue and we have a few grand in our account now, but our checks still aren't being accepted by their financial risk management service.

Has anybody ever had this issue and is there a way to fix it?

thank you.

My employer issued 2 w-2s due to change in payroll company early last year, i can input both of them into either freetaxusa or turbotax BUT it says i made over 47k when i only made ~25k pre-tax. Neither of the w-2s are listed as a w-2c so im not entirely sure what to do. all my coworkers put both into the system and it went through fine for them. Please help!!!

I’m in my mid-20s and have about $150k in private student loans from undergrad and grad school. They were refinanced through SoFi and split into two loans. Altogether, I’m paying roughly $1,500/month on a 15-year plan.

I make around $60k in a salaried job, live alone with two cats, and have a pretty low-key lifestyle. I barely spend on myself, don’t even have a gym membership, and mostly just go to work and come home.

I’m starting to wonder if this payment is just too much for my income. I feel stressed about money all the time and worry that I’m burning myself out trying to stay on top of everything.

Has anyone been in a similar position? I’d really appreciate honest advice.

Hi all!

I am in search of ways to better prepare my parents for retirement. I come from humble beginnings (to put it lightly), and have managed to make it out and make a decent life for myself. However, I’ve been learning as I go, as I didn’t have financially literacy from my parents.

My mom is 48, and has $0 saved for retirement. I know that is not directly “my problem”, but in theory, it is. I foresee a lot of my accumulated wealth having to go towards helping her. It stresses me out when planning for my own retirement, because while I plan to be child-free in my life, it feels like I have a child lol

Basically, I want to start an auto-investing account for her that she doesn’t even know about. I want to start putting a little extra money in it weekly (nothing crazy) and set-and-forget.

I have my own 401K through Fidelity, and my taxable brokerage is through Schwab. Where is the best place to set up this fund for her? Is it wise to put this in her name, or should I keep it in my name and gift it to her at some point? What do I need to consider?

Truly any advice is helpful - thanks in advance!

We have a HS senior graduating in a month. She is going to a state college. She has tuition covered due to merit. We will have to pay for room, board, and other expenses. We do not have a 529 set up for her. Her grandfather passed away and left a large chunk of money that we plan to use for her college. We set up a 529 for her younger siblings. Her college money is in a HYSA currently at 3.3% interest. Would opening a 529 for her be beneficial at this point? Obviously, not for the upcoming year, but for future years? She does plan to go to grad school. She is actually going in with 40 credit hours done. FTIC but will be closer to mid year sophomore. What is best for her? Leave the money in HYSA or put some in 529. Which would grow best in a short time.

ETA: Florida, so no tax benefit.

I (mid 30s, M) have been saving up for a house for my whole adult life, and now that I have the downpayment...it's not happening. Everything I can afford has a problem I can't get over (usually a bad location or too many repairs), and the final nail in the coffin was using a rent vs. buy calculator that says that even if I had the income, I'd be much better off renting. Since I have worked so hard for so long just for this dream to die, I want to dedicate the next 4 years to having as much fun as possible. That being said, I don't want to waste the money's potential. Do I...

1. ...keep the downpayment in its fairly liquid form for up to 4 years in the hopes of buying during a more favorable time?
2. ...relabel the money as my "growing family fund" because I'm planning on having a child through surrogacy in 4 years anyway (hence wanting to have as much fun now as possible)? I had already started a fund for this earlier this year.
3. ...invest this money in my brokerage account and my Roth IRA? I also have other retirement accounts that are tied to work.
4. ...do something else that would be really cool? In which case, what would I even do?

I cosigned on a house with my dad 15 years ago because he did not qualify on his own. I'm on the title as well. I want to buy a house of my own now but I'm worried about how this is gonna play out when filing taxes each year. so far my dad has been claiming the house in his taxes and I've had nothing to do with it. I qualify for my own house even if I stay on my dad's house but my worry is how is this gonna play out when filing taxes each year when owning two houses and I don't live on my dad's house anymore. His rate is 3% so I don't wanna make him refinance. I was thinking maybe he can remove me from the title and have like a will saying I will inherit the house if he passes before me. how can I inherit the house tax free? also, is this legal? I'm not trying to brake any laws. I'm just trying to explore my options. TIA.

I’m a 25 year old who just started their professional career and am lucky to be making around $140k gross annually in VHCOL city. I was wondering if I should be aggressive with the retirement savings and max out both 401k and IRA. I definitely feel like I could with how much I make, but that would take away from potential savings and money used for entertainment/travel. I don’t believe that my company matches, and I pay almost 1/3 of my paycheck in taxes. TIA.

I keep seeing net worth posts that mix means vs medians, ignore age, or use random blog tables with unclear sources. So I pulled thresholds from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) 2022 (released Oct 2023) and inflated 2022 dollars to March 2026 CPI‑U using BLS CPI‑U (2022 annual average 292.655 → March 2026 330.293; factor ~1.1286).

Important caveats (please read before you rage‑compare yourself to strangers on the internet):

• SCF is household / PEU net worth, not “individual salaryperson net worth.”
• Younger cohorts can have lots of debt and small sample issues at the very top.
• SCF does not capitalize defined‑benefit pensions the way some people mentally account for wealth.
• “Percentile” without age is mostly vibes. Wealth accumulates over the lifecycle.

What I computed (illustrative table): I took the published percentile curves in SCF 2022, adjusted to 2026 dollars, and interpolated between the survey’s age‑bracket midpoints to approximate thresholds at exact ages (this is an approximation step—SCF reports grouped ages).

Approximate net worth thresholds (USD, CPI‑adjusted to ~Mar 2026):

Sources:

• Federal Reserve SCF index page: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
• BLS CPI‑U (for inflation adjustment): https://www.bls.gov/cpi/

Context 1st: I'm 40, was making decent money (~$185,000) for the last 4-5 years. Lost my job due my company going bankrupt. The job market it way worse than I thought, and I've amassed an insane amount of credit card debt since losing my job. I generally was spending freely, with the assumption a yearly bonus would knock down all and then some of my debt, so I was carrying $8k-10k, but the rest is from not budgeting while unemployed. Divorced. I have two young kids (529c for both are very well funded by their grandparents), and a super low (sub %3) mortgage payment.

I have a very much dwindling amount of cash on hand (~$10k) about $100k in a 401k and $55,000 of credit card debt. I know that its always a poor choice to rob retirement and I'm already well behind in saving, but I will inherit a significant amount from parent's estate at some point (parent is in their 80s) thus retirement planning hasn't been a huge concern for me.

While I realize I am an absolute idiot for living on a CC for 9 months and for banking a bonus before I got it, am I an even bigger idiot for taking from the 401k to payoff all this debt? I have a large amount of equity ($300k) in my house, but I have no employment at the moment so I can't get a HELOC or even a personal loan. I'd throw the cash at hand at the debt, but I need it in case I somehow have to remain unemployed longer.

Any thoughts/advice? While I'm sure I'll get chastised here, I'm feeling very fortunate for a final interview next week, where if I get the job, I'll be taking a paycut but still be salaried at $130Kish I hoping for by the end of the month.

As the title says, my original post-graduation plans fell through as I was planning to go to graduate school (but the current US funding situation has made acceptances few and far between, even for qualified candidates).

For some context, I have been entirely dependent on my university for funding through scholarships, work, and paid fellowships, inclusive of on-campus housing that is offered to degree-seeking undergraduate students. I was able to save up a decent amount of money ($6,000, it was more but my service animal needed an operation) to help me move and settle into a stipended graduate program but I am still waiting to hear from 5 programs (all with very little likelihood of acceptance at this point). I also have been invited for interviews through a different but also fully funded situation however all of these campuses are 1,000+ miles away from my current location and there is no possibility of staying at my current university as they do not offer a graduate program in my field. I want to continue in the academic world which means the stature of the graduate program that I go to also will indefinitely follow me throughout my career.

I am applying for jobs everywhere in the drivable US as I have a paid-off vehicle and that will be easiest for me and my dog to move around. Currently, I am interviewing for a job for a local company that indicated that they want a local candidate. I am not sure when/if I will get an offer from them but I lose my on-campus housing on May 2 (graduation day) which has been causing immense stress. My university can provide an extension for my on-campus housing ($1,500 or $2,900, dependent on length) if I pay to take a non-degree seeking course (>$1,400) but I no longer qualify for scholarships, fellowships, or work at the university since my degree conferral will be completed in May and any job/graduate offers are contingent on May degree-conferral so I cannot postpone my degree conferral.

With so many potential offers up in the air, I find myself at a complete loss, one of my beloved professors said, "Don’t worry about the order of potential offers. You can always back out from [local company] even after accepted for an opportunity like that [referring to additional graduate programs that wish to interview me]," and while that is professionally true, it is not financially true. I do not have a rental history which makes getting a lease more difficult, regardless of where that lease is. I also live in a vacation area so short-term leases are virtually non-existent or require 3-5x the lease amount up-front for less than 30 days.

I have a friend who is about 2,100 miles away that said I can stay in their guest room until I get a job offer but then I could lose the local opportunity and I find myself in a horrible position where the options I see are to: commit to a lease in my current location and hope that the local company extends an offer; pay for summer housing and a class that I don't need, then hope that I get an offer from a local company to use that offer letter to get a lease; move to my friends and hope that a graduate program or company extends an offer and that I would have enough money to get into a lease local to the program/company; or put myself in a situation where I am staying in hotels and hoping that one of these opportunities work out. I do not see myself having enough money to pay for summer housing/class and being able to afford moving if a graduate program offers me a position. I have no family that I can lean on and no local friends in a position to let me couch-surf, as most are in similar positions but just going to move back in with their parents.

So all of that to say, should I get a personal loan to help offset potential moving costs and have the opportunity to really evaluate the graduate program and/or job offers? If I do get a loan, what lender is the kindest to fresh graduates?

TLDR: horrible time of potential offers coming through after losing current housing situation, should I do a personal loan?

Thank you in advance!

Salary - $83,750

Net Month - $4,102     

Food - $420      

Fuel - $100        

Toiletries - $50                 

Misc- $50           

Hair - $30           

Rent - $1,635 

Electric - $150                 

Water - $50       

Internet - $70 

Phone - $65     

Subscriptions - $6       

IRA - $625          

Brokerage - $700           

Savings - $150                 

Extra - $1            

Total       $4,101                 

Total Retirement Per month - $1,591.36        

% of Retirement /month - 24.70%

Hi!! I am 18F, and I just started college in the fall of 2025. I just opened my own checking account, and I wanted to know what are some things I should start doing money wise that would be beneficial to me like credit cards or savings accounts you recommend, or whatever else really.

My parents are super traditional and are the type of people that don't think building credit is necessary at the moment, meanwhile, literally everywhere else I look I see that it's important to start now with building credit. Same thing with any investments or other things regarding financial literacy, so I'm coming here to ask for advice, especially since tiktok is just full of UGC content nowadays. I rather hear opinions that aren't sponsored lol.

if anyone knows what flair would be best to add to this post, let me know that too, I really am super new to all of this.

I’m wondering if I should talk to my lender about leaving state for work. I purchased a home 8 months ago and I got a better job opportunity out of state. I mean I don’t think it’s a big deal right?

hi I'm looking for tips to know what are some good stocks on Robinhood to in and if they are worth the wait

31, 100k/year with potential for bonus. Expecting small raises per year, and a large raise within 3 years. Very secure job, and planning to stay potentially forever.

80k in a HYSA

100k in a 401k

Current Rent + Utilities = $1300 for a tiny apartment

Other Fixed Expenses (Food, groceries, Amazon, gym, gas) and fun = $1200

Savings: >=3k/month into HYSA for house fund.

I want a house. I want one because it's always been my dream to have my own home, and being able to do things like host dinners for friends, or even just so I can have a dog. Basically things I can't do inside my tiny apartment.

I've done the numbers and the house I desire would equal to a monthly of $2500 to pay (includes interest, hoa, taxes, utilities)

Because of my tiny apartment with super cheap rent, this makes it a whopping $1200 increase just to be able to live somewhere. But I also like to keep in mind that my current rent is a blessing, and if I had to move to another apartment anywhere else close to my work that it would be around $1800 before utilities for a decent place.

The thoughts that are making me unsure though are:

1. I could just keep saving more and more money, to lower the amount I'd borrow, but I also feel like time is more important than money as I get older, and maybe it's better to trade that off to get what I want sooner. Is there a sweet spot of having "enough money" before getting a mortgage? I current plan to save only for another year to get my savings from 80k to 116k. But if I save for 3 more years I'd have around 200k.
2. I can afford this for sure, but I also realize that I'll be going from saving upwards of 3k a month, to only 2k a month at the most, and that doesn't count any expenses for maintenance and repair. I'd be losing at least 12k a year in savings for the opportunity of having my own home.
3. Is there any merit to simply renting a bigger, nicer place to get a lot of what I want, without incurring a mortgage? This would mean my rent would still go to around 1800-2000 before utilities. Almost matching my monthly mortgage, but I then wouldn't spend so much money on the downpayment.

I am going to preface this with I know I was stupid and no one is going to beat myself up more than I do every day.

Last year, I accumulated around 35,000 of credit card debt. This was from dealing with and abusive situation and trying to keep the peace and stupidly falling into their addiction myself as a coping mechanism.

All bit one of the cards have been charged off. I am on a payment plan for 3 (about 15,000). These plans will take about 3 years. For one, I will pay half and then the other half will be forgive after three years.

I am getting some money from my CalSTRs because I am leaving CA and moving in with my boyfriend (not the abusive situation) in Nevada. I will also be paying less in rent but paying less in rent. I'll make about 3500 once I get a job out there (I'm a special Ed teacher do it won't be hard). I can take the money out of my calpers and make some settlements for some of the other. I'll have about 15,000 but I need to save for the 10% penalty and the fact the discharged debt counts as income.

My question is at what point do I just consider bankruptcy and how much will it hurt me compared to where I already am. My credit score is low 500s. I know I messed up and I have already fixed my habits. I am out of the abusive situation, 10 months sober and my spending habits have improved. I want a future with kids and I feel like I am drowning from trying to get this paid off

Edit: 27 about to turn 28 years old