Money Matters
tigerfighter
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Financial Goals
These are my financial goals for the next few years, trying to figure out the best course of actions:
1. Pay off debt: Current combined balance: $4261. goal paid off by September
2. Pay for school: roughly $3k a semester
3. Start saving for Retirement: BOA requires $5k min to open IRA (i believe)
4. Save a 1 year E fund (this will be broken down into smaller goals when this is the focus)
The bottom 3 are not a priority to me now until I pay off the debt and then I can throw all my money at those goals. What is the best way for me to be tackling everything? I plan on only using $850 a paycheck for monthly living expenses and all money over that will be used for goals and anything left at the end of the payperiod. I am turning 27 this year if that makes any difference and my work should be eventually giving us 401(k)s. The $850 is my paycheck minus health insurance expenses as I will soon be paying for those myself. (I had posted my budget a few weeks ago.)
Re: Financial Goals
What I would do: Figure out how much you have left after rent and essentials on a no-overtime paycheck. Give yourself a small amount of fun money, too. A small amount of what's left goes to the e-fund (even $50 or $25). A small amount goes to retirement-it's important to get started because there will always be a reason not to. For school, decide when you're going back. That's how long you have to save the money, so just divide your tuition by #of pay periods to figure out how much to save. The rest goes to debt, and any overtime pay goes to debt.
Re. the IRA, I'd really recommend an investment company like Fidelity or Vanguard over BOA. At Fidelity minimums are waived if you set up an automatic deposit from each paycheck.