Please send me Amazon gift cards to unlock investing secret tips.

Damn bro hol up you buried the lede here

>I pull in about 5,000 a month

>I have about 600 leftover every month

You need to sort that out first and foremost my friend, something in your budget is totally out of whack if that’s what you have left over before any savings at all

Regarding paying back your cousin: you need to find out why the ask is coming now. Is the cousin themselves in some tough finances and needs to collect? Did your parents agree to a set timeline they couldn’t meet? Are they asking now because they know you have some good money coming in? 

What I’m getting at is, what’s the rush. Why do you HAVE to right NOW come up with the $10k? With $600 leftover every month even without any adjustments to your budget such as moving to a cheaper places, it seems like if you and your parents were able to split it evenly it could be paid off in 10 months. So why the need for the Loan?

Also as general advice, and at this risk of straying into r/relationships territory: in my opinion any money you lend to friends and family you should consider charity and mentally write off. Collecting a debt on friends and family is an inherently awkward situation

You have $145,000 of your own debt, you are in absolutely no position to be taking on other’s debt.

Being real with you here, no harm or judgement intended. 

You haven’t ruined anything permanently… But this will take some (quite a bit) of time. 

Having 8 late payments in the last 90 days immediately should make you pause on any near term extra financial commitments. You are not ready for a mortgage/ insurance/ maintenance/ etc/ etc. that comes along with that home purchase.

Making 100k doesn’t mean you should/need to buy a home. That isn’t a switch that you just hit that qualifies you. 

-You need to make a budget 
-You need to start an emergency savings account
-You need to pay off your credit cards and then cancel most of them
-Once you have done that you can look into a secured credit card

You are 22 people make mistakes that they don’t acknowledge for their whole life, you are ahead of them in that you know you’ve fucked up. However, you don’t seem to be aware that you are still attempting to fuckup, again no disrespect. I can’t imagine anyone telling a 22 year old with 550 credit to buy a house, so whoever that is in your life stop listening to them as they likely have contributed to where you are financially. 

Buying a house isn’t about your W2 it’s about your entire financial picture and with only the pieces of info you provided you are not ready but that doesn’t mean you can’t head in the right direction.

You graduate in 2 months. Once you’ve graduated, go back to your job. 4,300 a month with 1700 in expenses leaves a lot to pay off your debt. You’ll need a car, but it sounds like you could have close to 2k/month to pay towards your debt. 

If you would prefer to work remotely or do something else, you can always apply - WHILE you are working and getting a secure income.

Also, take your bank up on freezing your cards. Don’t get another credit card. Maybe ever.

Hey OP, I just wanted to also offer some words of encouragement and advice. First off, congrats on making $100k a year and paying off your debt - that's a huge accomplishment! As for your credit score, it's great that you're looking for ways to improve it, but as others have already mentioned, it will take some time to get back on track.

Buying a house might not be the best idea right now.

Remember, you're only 22 and it's not at all uncommon to make financial mistakes at a young age. The important thing is that you're way ahead of the game by taking steps to correct them now. Keep moving in the right direction and you'll be in a much better position to buy a house (or pursue any other financial goals) in the future. A lot of people don't bounce back from this so quickly so you're doing awesome.

Good amount for a down payment on a loan. Interest rates are a little high for me right now, but you could argue that they’re only going to get higher. 90k is too much to have sitting and not invested though, so get a loan on a house you’ve researched, or throw it into the s&p 500 and forget about it for 20 years. That’s just what I would do, but there’s probably better advice you may find.

To calculate the return rate on a 5-year investment with a 50% gain, you can use the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) formula. CAGR is a useful measure of the annual growth rate of an investment over a specific period of time.  
  
Here's the CAGR formula:  
  
CAGR = (Ending Value / Starting Value) \^ (1 / Number of Years) - 1  
  
In your case, the investment has a 50% gain over 5 years. Let's assume the starting value is 100 (just to make the calculation easier).  
  
Calculate the ending value: 100 (starting value) + 50% of 100 = 100 + 50 = 150  
Plug the numbers into the CAGR formula:  
CAGR = (150 / 100) \^ (1 / 5) - 1  
  
Calculate the CAGR:  
CAGR = (1.5) \^ (0.2) - 1 ≈ 0.0845  
  
Convert the result to a percentage:  
CAGR ≈ 0.0845 \* 100 = 8.45%  
  
So, the return rate (CAGR) for a 5-year investment with a 50% gain is approximately 8.45% per year.

The big problem with contracting is you pay more in taxes and don't receive benefits from the client company so your goal salary would need to increase to compensate. You also need to get acquainted with the business side of things because you're essentially starting a one person company. You can also go with a contracting company but then they'll be taking their cut off the pie.

Turn on auto invest
Turn on auto-reinvest dividends
Set it and forget it

You got yourself into this situation twice now and you will get into it again unless you tackle your mindset. It's pretty much down to you NEED to get a job and keep. You truly need two jobs until you pay off the debt. There's no way to wave a wand and make it disappear otherwise. You need to make money to pay off your months/years of instant gratification. 

You need to find a way to manage your expectations so you aren't quitting and going on insane sabbaticals every time you're upset at your job. I don't know if that's therapy while you're in school, because I think they have opportunities for some free/low cost services, or if you need some tough love with some soul searching (while you're working). It's okay to job hop if you hate your job. It's not worth sacrificing your mental and physical health for, but you need to generate consistent income even AFTER you pay off your debt. You have to work - it sucks but it's a fact of life.

Other people have given you some solid advice and only you know if it's worthwhile to not work these last two months. Employers, generally, don't give a shit about your GPA. They care if you've graduated. The only person who will ever know your GPA is you and your college. It is important, but in comparing things you need to worry about, that would be the least of my worries and IMO, I would get a little part time gig to start chipping away at it. There are remote positions. There are gig jobs you can do a couple hours at a time. There's task gigs that let you just work on one project at time, which could be good practice for stuff you're going to school for. 

I wish you luck! You can get out of it. It's not the worst I've ever seen. Everyone makes mistakes and when you're not financially literate and going into the world, this stuff can happen to anyone easily. You just need to take some steps to work on it and avoid self-sabotaging yourself.

I feel like bootcamps are such an (north) american thing? I'm in the EU and I don't know any bootcamps, anyone who has even talked about going to one, never seen ads for one (maybe online ones?), let alone someone who has gone to one. Especially because university here isn't as expensive as it is in the US. Why waste money on a bootcamp when going to school is literally free in some places you know? You get a degree to show for it and no debt.

You have $145,000 in student loan debt.

As much as you love your parents and want to help them, you are absolutely not in a place to take one more debt to help somebody else.   You’ve already got your work cut out for your foreseeable future paying off those loans.

I aggressively trimmed my decade long freelancing resume to a one page document with just the three most recent significant jobs listed separately, and a summary; no fewer than five recruiters yelled at me for it being too brief, so I partially expanded it out to seven pages of very tight job descriptions of almost everything I'd done and they were super jazzed about it. I dunno.

They likely don't care about non-STEM experience, but Analyst and Researcher seems likely to be relevant. I certainly don't list my prior Little Caesars and Albertsons experience. :P

Both me and the Mrs trimmed a decade of early work off our resumes and it seemed to help.

Leetcode and job hopping are the two skills and activities u need

You're young and not ready to buy with that credit score which is a good indicator of financial stability and responsibility. Rent modestly, get a budget, save up an emergency fund, build back your credit, and invest into 401k and index funds. It takes time and perseverance but you'll get there.

“Take this post for what you will.”
“Don’t need to take my word for it.”

Yet your title is “Let this be the final answer”, which comes off as kind of arrogant. 
Despite your disclaimers in the edit that try to walk it back a bit. 

You made several very strong, absolutist claims in the OP, using words like “never” and “always,” and are forced to soften and retract them in the comments after criticism. 

That’s the source of many of the downvotes, IMO.

You've started early and if you keep at it, your future self will thank you. Don't worry about how relatively small the gains look on a month to month basis now - you should have no intention of selling, so pay it no mind. Think of these purchases as heavily discounted compared to future index prices. Buying index stocks (buying the whole stock market) is ultimately the safest and most predictable way to invest long term, especially if you want to focus on things like your family / career / etc and not worry about trading around

That CC debt is going to balloon if you dont tackle it.

If you dont want to work more then I would consider selling your stocks to help pay off some of it.

At your salary traditional all the way. Open a Roth IRA and do backdoor Roth to contribute. But at your tax bracket the savings from traditional just too good to pass up.

Roth or traditional: https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/10qwnrx/why_you_should_almost_never_contribute_to_a_roth/

At your income, there is virtually no reason to contribute or convert to Roth, outside of backdoor Roth IRA.

Yup I do this, even for tech work.  I guess now I put my last 4 jobs so its maybe ~13 yoe.  

I figured it helps protect against age discrimination, and also no one is like to care that I got paid $18 an hour to do perl CGI’s in the early 2000s…

Last week, I had to implement some backend logic for one of our internal api's that takes an integer input and generates sequential numerical output.  The catch is that in order to maintain backwards compatibility with some of our legacy enterprise systems, we need to set every value that's divisible by three to match a key representing our "flexible and interoperable zero-downtime zero-data-loss" service or "Fizz" for short.  Any values divisible by five will be integrated with our "Backend Utility for Zero-downtime Zoning" service, so we represent them with the phrase "Buzz."  Values that are divisible by both 3 and 5 receive the designation, "FizzBuzz."  This task would normally take me all day, but I asked ChatGPT to create a python script that could produce the expected output and it did it instantly.  The code works flawlessly too.

This isn't the first time chatGPT solved a complex problem for me.  A few weeks ago, we had a P1 emergency when bad data from a botched sftp ticket messed up the data in our CRM system.  The nodes storing the customer interactions were in the wrong order and we needed to reverse them so the latest interactions were readily accessible.  It uses an unusual data structure to hold information, where each node contains a pointer to the next node and the only way to get to the end is to traverse the entire structure, so I asked chatGPT for code to reverse the data structure and it did it in seconds.

Finally, we're rolling out a fraudulent transaction detection system ahead of our next security audit.  The goal is to detect fraudulent transactions by looking for patterns and anomalies in financial data, particularly by looking for pairs of transactions that add up to a suspiciously large amount.  I asked chatGPT for a solution and it suggested we use a hash table to store the amounts of each transaction along with their unique identifiers (such as transaction IDs or customer IDs). Then we iterate through the transactions and check if the difference between the target amount (e.g., a large transaction threshold) and the current transaction amount is already in the hash table. If it is, then there exists a pair of transactions that add up to the target amount, and this could be flagged as a suspicious pattern.

Is anyone else freaking out right now at how good ChatGPT is at doing real-world software development!!??

I'm worried about AI taking our jobs

Hello and thanks for taking the time to read this post. First things first, Ive been terminated from my 6 month position as a field service engineer due to my work performance. It was my first job out of college and landed the position after 4 months of looking. Im turning 27 in a few months and here are my financial numbers: 

Checking: \~$19k   Savings: No accounts   401k: $400 ( due to no meeting company policy I got 0% vesting)   Collectibles: 5.5k worth 

1.4k in Credit card debt. 

13k in car payments (im not paying it but its under my name, its my mothers car although I try to pitch in when I can)

I currently live in a room with my mother and brother so rent is pretty inexpensive but were planning on moving out by late May as were getting kicked out. So im looking to spend at least 1k in bills monthly soon. 

I graduated with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering, but as mention Im currently unemployed. Ive updated my Resume and have posted it for criticism and revised it. Ive been applying to jobs ever since my termination and have not seen any kind of momentum , only couple rejections. Ive used all kinds of job websites such as LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed and even cragslist. I only eat out once a week and have my budget under strict restrictions. Im getting pretty desperate to the point where im just thinking nonstop about joining the Navy or Air-force. I have not applied to unemployment as I dont know if that is a good idea since im assuming there would be some tax information that I would need to input in tax season & would just rather avoid that. I hope that I land to one of these applications soon as Im extremely desperate to the point where Im starting to think about applying to minimum wage jobs. Any advice is much appreciated.

Terminated and feeling hopeless. Advice would be appreciated

The mid career years are so important for compounding.

In my first decade of career, I switched 3 jobs rather quickly (4.5 years the max time spent in one company). Combined starting salary of spouse and I was $150k, of which my salary was $75k. After 10 years, my salary reached $130k. Had just started at my 4th company, hoping for a hop after quick 2-3 years to climb the proverbial corporate ladder. 

Our combined net worth was ~ $250k.

Then, various life events overtook us and it became clear that climbing the ladder should no longer be my main focus. So, I just sort of gave up and started putting in some reasonable effort at work. But stopped trying to interview around, ask for promotions etc. Decided to just stay put as long as company kept paying me.

Fast forward: it’s been 12 years since then. I am still with the same company. This year my salary reached the milestone of $200k. It has risen about 50% in 12 years - I mostly get 3-4% annual raises. Spouse is likewise with same employer, and our combined salary is $380k.

I have not asked for a promotion and have not got one. I have moved around in different lateral roles as an individual contributor and hopefully earned some respect along the way from my colleagues.

During these 12 years, our combined net worth also steadily went up thanks to the magic of compounding- about 12x - to $3M today. $1.8M investment portfolio and $1.2M home equity.

So, guess moral of my story is: just go about your day-to-day work and things will sort of work out, financially at least …

Keep grinding away - compounding does work it’s magic!

Heya, I'm Jeff 👋 one of the founders of Paragon (an activewear brand). We're bootstrapped, 100% remote and have scaled from $0 to 7 figure revenue.  [Here's](https://i.imgur.com/DqlK2Fv.png) last90d sales as proof.

I'm posting today about lessons learned on **how to produce crazy results with the least amount of effort**. This is my approach to entrepreneurial productivity. I hope you can use this to level up your work on your own ventures.

For context, if there was a competetion between me today and me from 2017 to see who could accomplish the most in 6 months, **I would shit all over 2017 version of me**. It wouldn’t even be a contest. Mike Tyson vs. your grandma. 👵 Below are the principles & tools I learned/adopted between 2017 and now.

# Principles

1.**🙅‍♂️ Aim for “no day job”**

* I aim to not have a day job with my company. This doesn’t mean I don’t find high value projects to work on, it means I’m not required or involved much in the day-to-day activities of each department.
* You are the main person responsible for having trajectory-altering insights. Want to know when these *don't* happen? When you're in the weeds of a day job.
* This is key. You cannot be drowning in tasks daily. You need the blank space to *be able* to stumble into, and explore, a trajectory-altering opportunity.
* If you’re just starting out, this does not apply to you. You should focus on creating a *manual valuable process,* doing everything yourself, before getting out of the day-to-day. 

‍

2.**🔧 Create leverage**

* [Build systems](https://www.jeffserini.com/blog/building-yourself-out-systems-thinking-for-entrepreneurs), then automate or hire.
* Use money to make something that’s working happen at a bigger scale, or happen faster (e.g. scaling purchase order size of a best seller, scaling marketing spend on a profitable return).
* Know the [best points of leverage](https://www.jeffserini.com/blog/layered-winbacks-increase-your-profit-20-in-3h) and apply force accordingly.‍

&#x200B;

3.**🧪 Minimum viable** ***everything***

* Whenever I want to do something, I ask myself “What is the simplest, fastest way I can try to get the desired result?”
* Your earning power as an entrepreneur is directly proportional to your ability to come up with simple & cheap experiments that test ideas ⏩ *fast.*
* Get to the “live testing” phase of any project as soon as possible, and let real world feedback guide you.

&#x200B;

4.**🔋 My formula for getting energy from work:**

* 1️⃣ Know where you want to be & have a Believable plan to get there.
   * By Believable, I mean you’ve got some pretty solid real-world proof (not just hunches) that your plan will work, and you understand why.
   * If you don’t have a Believable plan, your job is to make one. This is the #1 job of a leader.
* 2️⃣ Be decisive - most decisions don’t matter much. Being decisive builds a sense of momentum.
* 3️⃣ Use leverage - delegate, spend money, or use technology in order to make things happen without you, happen faster.

&#x200B;

5.**✋ Don’t do work:**

* Below your hourly rate
* That you really don’t like
* That someone else could do much better

&#x200B;

6.**🏃Sprint model**

* The forty hour week was invented for the industrial age. It does not work for knowledge workers. It is a relic. Forget about it.
* If you try to do 8h straight on task of knowledge work, what happens? Your quality of work degrades rapidly or you take breaks anyways (e.g. find yourself staring out the window). A big opportunity is to be more strategic about your break use. You’ll get more done AND have more free time.
* I do 1 hour or 30min work sprints. I use a timer (described below). No distractions. I go deep. Sprints are followed by short or long breaks depending on how many I’ve done.
* I don’t do anything too indulgent on my breaks, like start a movie or play video games. I don't do anything that would be hard to stop. Usually I go for a walk, eat, meditate, talk to someone, or read for a few.

&#x200B;

7.**🌟 You get 3 to 4 peak quality hours per day**

* I used to not believe this, but have found it to be true when comparing the clarity and speed of my thinking at different times of the day. For me, an hour of work at 330pm is not the same as an hour of work at 800am.
* Know when your peak hours are and build your work day around them. Mine are first thing in the morning, approximately one hour after waking, so I front load the day & do my most important work first thing in the AM. 

&#x200B;

8.**👔 Work like a Professional**

* I’m a Professional (head nod Steven Pressfield), which means my butt is in seat at my scheduled times, whether I feel like it or not
* This is especially true on days where I slept 3h or something. I double down on getting time in early, knowing I’ll be mentally impaired later.

‍

9.**🗄️ Concept:** [Eisenhower Matrix](https://www.spica.com/sites/5d683cbd24d35f11477fed0f/assets/613863d624d35f7457c21533/The_Eisenhower_matrix_Illustration.png)

* A great way to categorize the types of work that come your way.
* Ruthlessly delete/decline/indefinitely shelf work.
* *Understand that work which is important but not urgent is where great gains can be either achieved or missed*.

‍

10.**🔬 Limit your focus**

* Narrow focus to one or two major projects at a time if they’re going to require heavy lifting. E.g. if you’re building something you’ve never done before. Don’t try to learn 3 new marketing channels at once. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, prioritize and narrow.
* Focus on delivering excellent quality work for those one or two major projects, then snoozing or terminating them once complete. This keeps mental RAM clear & improves work satisfaction.

‍

11.**🚫 Restrict your hours**

* Periodically, I like to work [restricted hours](https://www.jeffserini.com/blog/limited-hours-time-management-for-entrepreneurs). It keeps my "hour to value output" ratio high, and encourages me to think in these terms. The game is not about hours, it is about value. The world rewards you for value created, not hours worked. This is an amazingly liberating fact.
* Restricting hours is also about setting boundaries - e.g. I will not work after 400pm. This has been key for keeping energy high.

‍

12.**🚀 Decisions follow a power law**

* Most don’t matter, but a few great decisions per year can be chiefly responsible for your success (head nod Peter Thiel). Another very exciting fact.
* A few of the right things in place can be the difference between $1m and $20m.

‍

13.**🧮 80/20**

* Another pointer to non-normal distribution of inputs and outputs. A majority results come from minority efforts. Identify those critical few and focus on them.
* I use this all the time. E.g. the majority of your email revenue will come from a minority of your automations.
* It’s about the idea, not the specific ratio.

‍

# Tools

Principles are more powerful than tools. **You can build a multi-million dollar business with just a handful of personal tools.** The stuff I use below is pretty basic, but they're all I need. Again, this is geared more towards productivity as an entrepreneur than domain-specific work tools. I.e. I'm not going to talk about the app I use for returns or Facebook ads here.

**📝 Time Tracker Sheet**

* I’ve been tracking my time for about 1.5 years. It takes me a few minutes to do and goes well with the sprint model of work. If you’ve only got 3 or 4 peak quality hours per day, it’s a good idea to know where they’re going.
* I created this sheet to help me track it easily. **➡️ Download the worksheet** [**here**](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17yK22T-neAdE809MUADSSyYHe5kPmkkC_GJoQd0FF6I/edit?usp=sharing)**.**
   * Then select File —> Make a copy.
* How to use it is a pretty self explanatory with the examples populated in the sample sheet, but here’s a couple of important pointers:
   * 1️⃣ Create a list of what you want to *accomplish* for the day (*not what you want to do*).
      * Don't write: Work on setting up A/B tests-
      * Write: Get A/B tests live by the end of the day- This is a subtle but very important distinction. It prevents [Parkinson’s Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law), keeps you focused on real milestones rather than hours worked. 
   * 2️⃣ Eat that frog 🐸 — don’t start with emails or light shit, start with a needle mover. Why? Builds in a win for the day, no total losses. Prevents a situation where you look back on the last month and feel you haven't actually done anything important.
   * 3️⃣ During your peak hours, do not do work as it comes to you. E.g. when you get a Slack notification or whatever. Stick to your original plan unless you consciously decide to reprioritize. 

‍

**⏲️ Timer RH**

* I use [this](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/timer-rh/id929960914?mt=12) for my sprints. I usually float it on top so that it serves as a reminder to stay focused.
* When timer runs out, you take a break.
* In general, try to stop working & take a short break when the timer goes off. I’ve found my quality of work is reliably better even after 10min of stepping away. It’s a great way to avoid rabbit holes and zoom back out.

‍

**📒 Apple Notes & Stickies**

* I use Apple Notes because it’s free, works great and syncs readily across devices. I think I have 3,500+ notes. I break them up into folders by category (e.g. Paid Social, Influencers, Media) etc. I use this app & folders for personal shit too (Cooking, House, Training etc)‍

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**📥 Things**

* The [app](https://culturedcode.com/things/) I use for my [simplified GTD method](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G6T__ua26ST7MZWaDrH-OZ49B7Cak5uEEMKLAuCbwFE/edit). The main reason I like it is because it does a great job with the small set of features you really need, is highly intuitive & not bloated with shit I don’t care about.

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That's my pile of hard-earned gold nuggets! I personally guarantee that it will make you one billion dollars this year if you use them (two if you share what works for you).

Lessons from $0 to 7 figure revenue -- 13 principles to level up as an entrepreneur

So guys I have a family member who passed away currently and we have to set up a GoFundMe to pay off the funeral costs. How do I prepare myself to not have this happen to me and my mother who is getting up there in age (60)? Any help is appreciated

How to prepare for a death?

A couple of months ago the rate was forecasted to be adjusted down to ~3.5% in May for I-Bonds. But we can see that inflation is not going anywhere, especially with the fed printing money for the bank (not) bailouts. If you had nice amount of capital and looking for some short to medium term gains, would you be maxing out I-Bonds still or just throw it in a CD?

I-Bonds: still a good buy when compared to CD rates?

After 2 years of trying fire I am still at a zero net worth.

I’m 31, have been poor my whole life. 2 years ago I still had 17k of student loan debt that I finally finished paying last month (started with 45k) and had about 3500$ credit card debt (paid of 6 month ago). I don’t have any car loan (car is paid as of a year ago) and no other debt. I am not a home owner but I have a very low rent (787$ a month I a large city where the average is about 1100$ a month).

Yet, my net worth is basically zero as of today. I don’t know how people do it. I am careful with everything. I don’t splurge on anything, I coupon, I buy in bulk, I make sure to never overspend on anything but I am still nowhere near freedom. And I am tired. I understand that I am paying for my own youth, that education cost money and I never had any help from my parents (they didn’t have money so I had to take car of myself), but I a exhausted.

How do you guys do it? How do you manage to be so conscientious and calm in the hard times?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Best,
A person in need of wisdom.

I’m tired

Here's my situation - would value any input!

I'm a small business owner with a solid net worth. Already fully maxed out on all retirement vehicles & have a diversified stock portfolio. 

The mortgage balance on my home is about $425,000. My interest rate is 4.125%.

I just received a large annual payment from a client. I am thinking about taking that amount and paying off my mortgage.

I know the traditional advice is, I shouldn't do this and should instead invest in an instrument that would on average yield more than 4.125%.

The issue is, I really - really - value the peace of mind associated with owning my home free and clear. I am also paranoid about some terrible circumstance eating up my nest egg followed by me regretting not paying off my home. I grew up fairly poor and I've always had this fear of "the bottom falling out" - so the idea of at least having a paid off home is very attractive to me.

Would it be insane to pay off my mortgage rather than invest this money? Would love any thoughts.

Should I pay off my mortgage? Details below.

Saturday night question, to keep it spicy.

Because this sub seems overindexed on Big Tech, BigLaw, Medicine, and Finance folks (nothing wrong with that, FWIW)…

I’m curious about one thing:

Is anyone else on here trying to make it FatFIRE in entertainment? 

Not tangential careers like working in engineering / on tech stacks for streamers. 

I mean actual dyed-in-the-wool Hollywood. 

Take my meeting at WeHo SoHo house; F*** you, call my agent types. 

Mid-level studio & network execs. Agents (Big 3, IYKYK). ProdCo creative execs. Director/Writer types. 

Insiders. 

And lest you think I’m LARP’ing, I’m repped at a Big 3 Agency. Stuff I’ve written has been seen by more than 20M viewers worldwide. And I’m part of a union (yeah, I said it) that’s statistically harder to get into than the MLB. So I got that going for me.

Hollywood

Hi all, 

Over the next few months I'll be permanently moving from Australia to Florida.
I work as a tech consultant for a Big 4 company, and while there are many pros to working in tech in the US, the main worry I have is the PTO reputation. While I'm well aware of the expectation of 2-3 weeks PTO per year it's a little daunting, especially with young children and a mindset focused more on work-life balance.

Where I currently work, as well as many other salaried positions within Australia, they offer a sort of 'salary sacrifice' for additional PTO.. essentially lowering your salary for the equivalent of up to 12 additional weeks per year.

The advice I'm looking for is insight into any companies that may offer this benefit, since I am mire than happy to sacrifice money to gain time.

Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks!

Salary Sacrifice for Additional PTO in the US?

24F, I’ll be transparent and admit I’m not the best with money. I was in debt before and got myself out of it within a year. And now I’m back. I feel so bad and ashamed about it, I can’t breath sometimes nowadays. I don’t know how I let this happen again!  I will say that most of it was centered around my not knowing what I wanted to do, so I took time for granted. I graduated college about 3 years ago and was pre-med. Realized I wasn’t going to apply to med school and took some time off to soul search (how i accrued debt the first time). I didn’t have a care in the world with regards to money back then. I traveled, I ate out, I bought things etc. After about a year of doing this, I freaked out  and realized I may have been self-sabotaging. I got hired at Amazon and began tackling my debt. Fast forward to last summer (August ‘22), something similar happened to me. I realized I disliked my role and my plan to climb the corporate latter shattered pretty quickly after that. While I learned a ton about business/data analysis (I studied the opposite so that was nice) and developed a lot of soft skills (first job out of college), working for them was kind of a nightmare. It was very extractive and demeaning work to me, I didn’t connect with the goal at large and the work became dull. I went on another sabbatical in August and have been on leave since August of last year. In this time, I’ve had even more clarity on what it is I want to put my time and focus into. My biggest internal struggle was whether or not I dive into my passion (researching systems at large/writing/ theorizing) or work and save up and manage to still work on my passion on the side. I decided I was being naive and downplaying the importance of money. I cant work on what I love if I’m struggling financially 🙃 Now today, I’m pivoting into tech for a higher paying position. I’m currently studying software engineering and graduate end of May. 


However, between now and when I land my next role I really don’t know how I will SURVIVE. I’m 30k in debt, no income since I’m in school right now, and using my savings to pay for rent/groceries. I even got rid of my car to minimize expenses. I started cutting my own hair and blow drying at home, I do my own mani/pedi now, I rarely eat out, etc. my expenses are very minimal right now. I cant afford to do more than minimum payment on my cards since I don’t have income. The interest is coming fast. I don’t know what to do! I feel like I can’t breath sometimes. I’m putting all this pressure on myself to land a role by the summer and start paying this off asap, but I don’t think I’ll make it with what I have left (4 months tops of rent and groceries money). My monthly expenses now come out to be ~$1700 (rent groceries and minimum payments). Getting a part time is not realistic for me until end of May (when I graduate). After then I have the option to return to work (im still employed just on leave) and start making my full salary (~$4300 per month), or stick it out a little longer and focus on landing a development role. Going back to work would mean having to get a car again or spending money on Ubers (im calculating ~160-240 per week), sticking it out would mean applying aggressively and look for a remote job maybe even work on the side since I won’t have school or my current job hanging over me.

Again I have no income and can’t put any of my savings towards debt right now. I have ~3k in 401k, and about 8.5k in stocks. I didn’t want to touch any of those since the market isn’t that great right now. How can i pay off this debt in the least amount of time to reduce interest rates? I really don’t want to apply for bankruptcy. I already called my banks to see if we can negotiate the accrued interest thus far. The most they could do is lower apr and then freeze my cards. I feel like debt collection might hurt my record as well. What is my best option? I am on my knees.

TL;DR: I’m just now starting to understand how money works, and would appreciate constructive advice on best way to get out of this 30k in debt. The interest is coming too fast. I’ve heard of line of credit, stop paying all together and negotiate with collections, 0% balance transfer credit cards, tackling the debt myself, etc. Thank you to everyone thats been offering best practices 🙏

About $30k in CC debt. Currently in the middle of pivoting careers so I won’t be able to fully pay off with income anytime soon. What do I do?!

I'll be quick to my point, also sorry if this is the wrong subreddit for this question. 

Let's say I have a index fund that the past 5 years has increased with 50% if I want to calculate the average annual return by back testing how do I do that. How do I get the correct return rate?

How do I calculat the average return rate?

I don't know if this is enough or where I could start. Any ideas?

I have around $90,000...anything I can do?

You can do a boot camp and get a job. If you have a good boot camp that can place you in a role right after graduating the boot camp. Even then it can be hard.

That being said, it is very very very hard to land a job if you don’t have a 4 year degree. You pretty much have to get lucky to get in.

If you do a boot camp, not having a degree will always haunt you. You will never get the same pay as someone with a degree and it will forever limit you in the amount of interviews you get.

If you can, get a 4 year degree. I know it’s not what most want to hear, but you have to understand. There is no quick way to do this. Boot camps come close but way to many people lose $10’s of thousands on boot camps with nothing to show for. No worth it in my opinion. With a degree you have that forever and it opens so many doors for you.

TLDR; get a 4 year degree, it will make your life easier in more ways then you know. Boot camps work for some, but many lose a lot of money and don’t get into the industry.

EDIT:
Wanted to add that degrees matter more when you don’t have one.

EDIT 2:
You guys are really nitpicking at this post. I don’t think the overall point of this post is incorrect but I know how Reddit is and people love to downvote and be offended at the smallest of things. Anyway, take this post for what you will. I stand by what I said above and I know for a fact there are A LOT of people that do agree with it and even go through it. Either way, don’t need to take my word for it, do your own research and make your own conclusions. But I can tell you a degree will get much farther in life than a boot camp. Again, if you don’t believe do your own research and decide for yourself.

Seeing a lot of posts about boot camps. Let this be the final answer to you all wondering about 4 year degree vs. 6 month boot camp.

Hi everyone,

My mother had to borrow 10000 from my cousin a while back to pay for her medical bills as she recently went through treatment for her cancer. A couple days ago, she had asked if I could help out with repaying my cousin as her and my father are struggling a bit financially.

I would do anything for my parents, so I want to make sure I know all of my options. Any bit of help would be greatly appreciated!

I'm currently 23 working in software and I pull in about 5000 a month after taxes and health insurance. I have 145k in student loan debt which I'm planning to start paying off whenever the final decision regarding that comes out. After the student loans, rent, car payments, food, gas, and utilities, I have around 600 left over per month.

Rent is currently the biggest expense coming in at 1500 a month. I'm planning to move within the next couple months to give myself more breathing room.

Is a personal loan the best option for me?

EDIT: I figured it would be best if I shared my monthly budget

Rent: 1515
Student loan payments: 1300
Food: 600
Car: 400
Gas: 150
Car insurance: 200
Utilities: 160
Misc fees: 50

Need $10000, should I take out a personal loan?

I've got 2 YOE working in software engineering and during that time really got Python. I could pick up more higher level languages (eg. Java, GoLang) and need to do that, and get them on my CV.

Before this work I was not in engineering / tech. In the last decade there's some Analyst work, some Research positions. Before that there's success in maybe 1 sales job and some other research work.

So I'll generalize the question.

Should you truncate your CV on applications after about a decade of positions? (Unless it's actually tech work, and even then I kinda wonder)

a) for ease of readability b) for time, since people have less of it today c) help recruiting not judge

In Interviewing conversations for new engineering jobs I sort of get a vibe all that matters is the 2YOE in tech I've got. The past hasn't hurt so far, but I'm hoping to tick up the response rate for applications I send out. edit: a couple letter typos

Should you truncate your work history after a decade for applications?

I'm a Canadian CS grad with two years of work experience: one year during a break in my bachelor's degree, and another year since last April at my current remote job at a big bank, making $85k. My specialty is front-end development, specifically Angular. I'm early in my career but driven, and my goal is a $100k base salary by the end of this year, eventually transitioning to a $200-300k contracting business. My relative, who runs a successful contracting firm, suggests I dive into contracting now ($80-120/hour), as stability isn't a significant concern for me at this stage: being young with little responsibilities (not married, no real big debts aside from 0% interest minimum student debt). I'm in agreement with his general sentiment.

The pay, flexibility, and project diversity of contracting appeal to me. **I'm seeking input on the following:**

- Is contracting a viable option for someone early in their career? (I work in CANADA right now, and already have a Canadian Corporation under my name)

- What specific actions should I take and new skills (backend, more diverse on frontend, etc) should I learn to accelerate my growth and justify higher salaries?

Open to alternative paths as well. All suggestions are appreciated.


Edit: Added clarification about the idea of contracting in Canada specifically, as I live here right now. Not opposed to the US. Also have a Canadian corporation already, worked with a single client during that 1 year off.

Early-career front-end dev at $85k aiming for $150k salary in 1-2 years: Is contracting viable and what skills should I learn?

I started my investment journey once I turned 18 and was told by many people that that safe bet would be to consistently invest monthly into an sp500 etf. I decided to go with VOO, the vanguard etf. I was wondering if it is that simple. I put about 400 a month in but do I have to do anything else? It's in a roth ira if that makes any difference. I only know it's beneficial with taxes way down the road. I keep hearing people talk about dividends and all that. Is there anything else I need to do or do I just keep investing money. I started a couple months ago and have $900 of my own contribution and it is only at $904. Am I doing something wrong or is this how it usually is? Thanks for any help

Question about investing in sp500

First I'll give a short background. I'm 26 and graduated from law school in 2021, so I've only been in the workforce a short while and am pretty inexperienced with finances. Right now my salary is $225k/year plus bonus. Last year the salary was $215k plus a $20k bonus. Last year I maxed out my traditional 401(k) at $20,500. Currently I have $29k in my 401(k).

After reading up on it I'm thinking it might be better to convert it to a Roth 401(k) (my firm has the option to convert). I just need some advice as to whether that's really correct. I've read a ton on this specific issue but I'm still a bit confused. I understand the difference between Roth and Traditional and the general benefits of each (a Roth is taxed money and withdrawals are not taxed and a traditional is pre-tax money that is taxed at withdrawal). The general rule I've read is that you choose a Traditional if you believe your income (and thus taxes) at retirement will be lower than they are currently, and you choose a Roth for the reverse. 

I anticipate maxing out my 401(k) every year and retiring in 40 years. As for salary I expect it to raise every year at a pretty linear rate and by the time I retire I would expect my salary to be no more than $400k, and probably a lot less if I move into a more work-life balance firm, which I likely would. So lets say for the next 40 years my salary is static at $250k and I max out the 401(k) every year. Assuming a rate of return of 5% and my tax bracket being identical at retirement and currently (and even when I set it to less than it is currently), every single calculator I've used, for example from Schwab, all advise me to use a Roth and seemed to indicate I would have a considerable income during retirement. I just can't wrap my head around making so much money in taxable income at retirement. At retirement I assume I'll have considerable savings in the form of index fund and bond investments, which I would pull from alongside the 401(k), but my intuition says that the tax benefits of the traditional now would outweigh the tax costs at retirement, but the math shows it's the opposite. I guess the question I have for y'all comes down to how much of a tax benefit am I actually getting with a Traditional 401(k) now? I just did my taxes for 2022 and it honestly doesn't seem like much, which would point to a Roth being better.

So what are y'all's thoughts, traditional or Roth? I'm pretty confident at this point that a Roth would be better, but I wanted to make sure I'm not misunderstanding. I would really appreciate any thoughts or advice on this, and feel free to ask any clarifying questions.

Traditional vs Roth 401(k)

Hello I’m 22 and I ruined my credit. When I was 18-20. 

Now I make $100k a year and paid all my debt but I want to buy a house this year. My credit score is 550. 

Can I get an FHA loan ? Should I dispute all my late payments ? I have 8 late payments past 90 days. 

Fraud also happened on my bank accounts where I had a lot of account closures and couldn’t pay the debts. I have many papers that include, disputes, affadvits and proof of  identity theft but I’m concerned I can’t get them off. I really do not want to wait 7 years

Ruined my credit. 550. 22 years old.

Has your shrinking retirement portfolio left you considering part-time work to ease your anxiety? Inspired by a blog post from Go Curry Cracker, we discuss BaristaFIRE, time freedom, what it means to be "unemployable", and what work we might consider post-retirement. Be sure to see the links below for the show notes and to the blog post referenced in the video.   Show notes: https://twosidesoffi.com/failing GCC post: https://www.gocurrycracker.com/failing-at-early-retirement/

Has your shrinking retirement portfolio left you considering part-time work to ease your anxiety? Inspired by a blog post from Go Curry Cracker, we discuss BaristaFIRE, time freedom, what it means to be &#34;unemployable&#34;, and what work we might consider post-retirement. Be sure to see the links below for the show notes and to the blog post referenced in the video.   Show notes: <a href="https://twosidesoffi.com/failing" rel="nofollow">https://twosidesoffi.com/failing</a> GCC post: <a href="https://www.gocurrycracker.com/failing-at-early-retirement/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gocurrycracker.com/failing-at-early-retirement/</a>

Am I Failing at Early Retirement?

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