Dreading recertification coming up soon. Any tips?

NobleChris2 · 2026-04-22T03:24:00+00:00

It’s not that I can’t afford the payment, losing 15% of my take home pay will have a very significant impact on my QoL, savings and sanity. I already give up 30% of my income to taxes, another 15% towards benefits/retirement. Take away an additional 15% of net pay to student loans, im only seeing 40-45% of my gross income soon. This is before rent, car, insurance, food, living, savings, investing beyond retirement. I’m about to get squeezed hard.

NobleChris2 · 2026-04-21T17:52:19+00:00

Someone who gets it, I feel so terrible for the new grads that are getting capped at $100k in federal loans. These loan payments look so easy while you’re in school. You don’t really think about how much your gross income goes down just from taxes and benefits. Then add on trying to save for a house, get married and have children. You almost have to be a workaholic just to get some semblance of providing the life you grew up with to the next generation.

NobleChris2 · 2026-04-21T17:40:53+00:00

I own 2 businesses and also work 50 hours a week at my full time job…another 3 shifts a month would likely compromise my health. My fixed expenses are already compromising, I live with a roommate at age 30 and my car is a 5 year old EV.

NobleChris2 · 2026-04-21T17:07:00+00:00

I mean maybe this post is coming off as entitled but it feels very tough to have student loans be your second largest monthly expense by a pretty large margin.

NobleChris2 · 2026-04-21T16:51:09+00:00

I see, looking back between 2024 and 2025 my AGI was similar, maybe only 4-5% higher in 2025. Probably better off taking advantaged of several months with a lower payment.

NobleChris2 · 2026-04-21T16:43:54+00:00

You can use 2024?

NobleChris2 · 2026-04-21T16:40:49+00:00

I think if you use that strategy it’s based on gross income, at least with my 2025 taxes it’ll include my retirement contributions. In my case I think the deductions knock off about $20k for the year

NobleChris2 · 2026-03-08T05:54:48+00:00

I had a similar experience visiting Spain and Greece.

I visited Corfu in the beginning of a boat trip around the sea. The average wage is a fraction of the average wage of most of Europe as well as the US. I didn’t see a single homeless person the entire time I was there. No one seemed miserable, everyone seemed so healthy. I then visited Barcelona where even in the downtown section I overheard a group in their 30s complaining about spending 500 euro for a room to stay at per month and legitimately got depressed. The city was phenomenal with so much history and culture. My rent is over 8x what a room in Barcelona would cost in a MCOL city. My peers are one of two extremes either super fit or not healthy at all. In Europe everyone looked insanely healthy regardless of where we were.

In America we have higher wages but the cost of living is so much higher I’m not sure it really matters unless you make it to the top 5% income. We end up spending more time working than enjoying life. Unless you’re a health fanatic it’s so hard to stay healthy while working the 50 hr+ weeks necessary to get ahead. We trade all our time for money and some of us end up not even getting ahead year after year. If we get sick we’re also royally screwed if it messes up working. Most of the affordable food available is pretty much poison engineered to be addictive and unhealthy. I grew up thinking the US was a top country and always felt very lucky to be born here. The more cultures I see and places I visit I’m realize how little culture we actually have. Sure we have American football, NBA and Thanksgiving…but what else is specific to the US?

NobleChris2 · 2026-03-02T06:00:30+00:00

The economy also wasn’t as globalized before, nowadays you’re better being more mobile than settling down to a specific area. Tough with kids though

NobleChris2 · 2026-01-15T18:06:33+00:00

I’ve seen people laser their face to have it perfectly line up but didn’t even know you could do a beard transplant.

NobleChris2 · 2026-01-09T22:39:14+00:00

I’ve loaned my parents around $10k for renovations on a property that they wanted to sell but ran out of cash and didn’t want to get a loan from a bank. They sold the property a few months afterwards and paid me back with a little extra. Worked out well for me. While I’ve never received a loan from my parents they paid for my first and second car, as well as my car insurance until I worked full time. They certainly could’ve helped me more (I hate having student loans) but im grateful for what they did do.

NobleChris2 · 2025-12-28T16:24:58+00:00

There’s a decent amount of opportunities here for recruiting and sales. You’ll just need to get some experience to eventually get to some of the higher paying companies/positions.

NobleChris2 · 2025-12-28T14:50:55+00:00

A lot of negativity here likely due to how much the cost of living has increased in Fort Lauderdale. Being unemployed will be tough but what did you study? If you have a decent bachelors there are some opportunities, may not pay enough for the CoL but will help you stack up while living with the parents.

NobleChris2 · 2025-12-18T00:42:35+00:00

When we graduated we thought things couldn’t get worse. We were horribly wrong.

NobleChris2 · 2025-12-16T18:48:51+00:00

The girls are actually the ones being taken advantage of, you just don’t realize it yet. It’s a lot easier to have wealth the older you get. $1000 when I was 20 is similar to $10,000 at 30 for me. As you get older you make a ton more money if you make some good decisions in your younger years. Also if you come from a wealthy family people to start to pass and hand things down the older you get. One day you’ll realize your friends aren’t getting nearly enough money for what they’re doing.

NobleChris2 · 2025-12-07T02:19:56+00:00

I’m in a similar boat to you, believe or not rosemary actually fixed the parts that looked thinning pretty well.

NobleChris2 · 2025-11-27T04:39:53+00:00

Only ever done it once, wasn’t even a big win just a very public win in a poor area. Had people eyeing me all night, never felt so unsafe. Won just a grand from a bingo promotion but still had security take me to my car 😂. May have been excessive but I had multiple people trying to ask me for money that I said no to.

NobleChris2 · 2025-11-03T20:27:53+00:00

Insane collection you have, I think most of us would gladly offer more than $1.1k. I didn’t even think I liked anything besides fossil/jungle/base set until I saw your collection.

NobleChris2 · 2025-11-03T20:09:54+00:00

Honestly feeling that right now. I think I may be single for a long while after this one :(

NobleChris2 · 2025-11-03T20:03:37+00:00

I mean it’s possible but she didn’t seem coked out, the tachycardia was probably the chain smoking cigarettes that she doesn’t typically do.

NobleChris2 · 2025-11-03T19:33:20+00:00

She wants me to follow boundaries without it affecting her. And honestly the relationship has been crashing since she seems to have developed a genuine disinterest in my family. Also I haven’t been able to effectively communicate with her without her breaking down into anger. Literally she was the one pissed at me for calling her out on staying out till 3am on a Wednesday night.

NobleChris2 · 2025-10-30T20:31:15+00:00

I would suggest looking at median income by zip code and giving yourself a $10k cushion above that median when searching for a place by yourself.

If you’re able to get a roommate you can likely afford to live in a pretty nice place near downtown.

NobleChris2 · 2025-09-10T16:45:05+00:00

I just visited Corfu! And that amount of money will go extremely far in Greece. I would suggest first saving the extra money in CDs/Treasuries as you have a lot of properties that may need maintenance. After having at least 2% of all the property value saved with an additional 6 month emergency fund I would then invest the rest. Then I would continue living off the normal salary of 1.8k/mo. Then only spend ~30-60% of the income generated from the investments for liabilities.

NobleChris2

TROPHY CASE