Quote:
Originally Posted by hometeam
I have been making 40-60 grand a year for about 12 years. I have no savings, no retirement (I started to build one at one point but cashed it in in an emergency)
About 20k in high interest debt, 30k in low interest debt, and owe about 78k on my house thats worth 85. (edit: recalculated, 22k in high interest, 17k in low interest with 12 of that at 0%)
Unfortunately at this new company I'm not vested for 6 years, but I will max. My 6 percent for the 3 they give.
I dunno really anything about any kind of IRA, no idea what a brokerage account is. I have kind of been living paycheck to paycheck and doing racecar shit :/
I am going to start researching investments as well, but I wont start investing until i get my 10k CC debt paid off, hopefully feb/march. My house is at 5.25 right now which is higher than I can get, but I wanted to finish the transition to the new job before I went in for a streamline refi at somewhere around 3.25.
|
It might help to simplify your choices to help you think through it. There are generally three things you can focus on:
1. Emergency fund
2. Debt reduction (2.5 refinancing, consolidation, etc.)
3. Investments (3.5 401ks, IRAs, brokerage accounts)
There's very little point in getting into #3 beyond doing enough for your company match until you've got #1 and #2 taken care of.
I'd probably split your first priority between building up a little emergency fund of a few grand and paying down the high-interest stuff. Once you get enough in an emergency fund that you can handle most normal emergencies (breaking an arm, car breaks down, etc.), focus exclusively on the high-interest debt until it's gone. (Obviously if you can find ways to get the interest rates down, great, but that's just a matter of doing the research and the math to see if it's worth it.) After that, build up your emergency fund to where it really should be.
THEN you can start thinking about how to prioritize the low-interest loans vs. investments.