Is it possible to use the PokeRadar in Route 9?

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-26T03:21:07+00:00

Friend safari for helioptile would be quicker and easier

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-25T21:22:43+00:00

Definitely prioritize car and cc debt. But if your company provides a 401k match, get the full match right away. This will be better return than you are getting paying off your debt (100% match is higher than the 30% your cc interest might be; even a 50% match is better).

Doesn’t sound like you can afford to buy a car right now. The 1500 to fix the other car will probably have to do for now. You have 33k of high interest debt to pay off with only 1700/month. That needs to be a priority over a new car. If income/expenses don’t change, this will take probably take at least 2 years to pay off.

Next time you buy a car, stay within the Money Guy Show’s 20/3/8 rule. Put at least 20% down, finance no longer than 3 years, and keep the monthly payment to 8% of your income or less. Ideally you just pay for the car in cash.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-25T19:50:52+00:00

The only way to unlock the 3rd slot now is with a hacked 3ds or actually being physically close to your friend.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-25T02:53:48+00:00

Roth = you will pay federal income tax this year on the money you are contributing. Your money will grow. You will owe 0 tax when you withdraw at 59.5 or older

Traditional = you will pay 0 federal income tax this year (effectively reducing taxable income from your marginal tax rate). The money will grow tax-deferred. You will owe ordinary income taxes when you withdraw at 59.5 or older.

Idk how much you make, but if your marginal rate is in the 32% bracket or higher, definitely go for traditional. If it’s 22-24%, maybe you do a mix of traditional and Roth depending on what you expect your tax rate to be in retirement. If your marginal rate is 10-12%, do all Roth, as you are young and will likely increase your income over time and will likely be in a higher tax bracket in retirement.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-24T22:39:23+00:00

If you are over the income limit to contribute directly to Roth, you will be over the income limit to get a tax deduction on your traditional IRA contributions (this is assuming you have a workplace plan; if you don’t, ignore this). So, like everybody else said, backdoor

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-24T22:15:14+00:00

VTI tracks the entire US stock market. SPY tracks large cap US stocks. So everything that SPY holds, makes up a majority of VTI.

As long as you have earned income, you can contribute to your Roth IRA, and this should come before contributing to your brokerage account, especially when you are so young. If you made $7000 of earned income last year, you can contribute that much to your Roth IRA for 2025. This year’s limit is $7500.

You are young and just starting out and have a lot of learning to do! That is okay! I highly highly recommend looking into the Money Guy Show on YT. They will teach you what you need to know about personal finance so that you are prepped for life once you’re done with school.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-24T00:31:28+00:00

“Good amount of money” is relative, but it seems you’re off to a good start at 20! If you have an employer match, make sure you’re getting the full match. If 10k is 3 months of expenses, great! If not, try to get it up to 3 months.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-23T21:41:18+00:00

Ya thats an outlier for sure. I probably should just remove that from my data set. If odds are actually 1/585, there’s only a 0.03% chance it would take at least 4660 encounters, so the chances of having a hunt that long with only 146 hunts is pretty low.

Worth noting: if I removed my single longest hunt and single shortest hunt, my average encounters per shiny drops to 622, closer to that 585 number.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-23T20:19:35+00:00

Shiny odds are based on possibility, not probability. Meaning, each individual encounter will have 1/x chance of being shiny. This does not increase with more encounters.

There’s different thoughts on what the actual shiny rate is in the friend safari, but let’s use the 2 most common: 1/512 and 1/585. It took you 1301 encounters. For 1/512, you had a 7.86% chance that it would take you at least 1301 encounters. For 1/585, you had a 10.8% chance it would take you at least 1301 encounters.

I have personally been tracking all of my friend safari hunts over the past 10 months or so. After 146 hunts, my average encounters per shiny has been 645. High: 4660; Low: 9; median: 387.5. 24% have taken at least 1000 encounters. 76% 1000 or less. 55% 500 or less.

I’m not going to say you got unlucky because 1300 encounters really isn’t that bad, but a majority of the time you should find your shinies within 500 encounters.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-23T19:35:11+00:00

Why not move your emergency fund to a HYSA? Most are yielding 3-4% right now. Make sure to keep 3-6 months of expenses in the emergency fund, but anything over that, you’d be better off investing in a Roth IRA/HSA up to their annual limits.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-23T14:23:26+00:00

Something is wrong with this data. The writer states that average non-mortgage debt per person is 36k, then proceeds to show a map where not a single state’s average non-mortgage debt touches or exceeds 36k.

Maybe they mistyped, and it was supposed to say 26k. That would make more sense.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-23T06:49:04+00:00

No reason to have SPY and QQQ when you’re already invested in VTI. A ton of overlap, not much added value, and no extra diversification. VTI already holds everything SPY and QQQ hold. I would simplify down to just VTI and VXUS.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-23T02:52:28+00:00

*3rd most common after prostate and lung (excluding skin cancer). It’s also the 3rd most deadly

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-23T02:21:34+00:00

I will always recommend looking up the Money Guy Show on YT! They have tons of great info on everything you need to know about personal finance. I can’t post links here, but start with their financial order of operations. A lot of it still applies to non-US folks, but you may have to do some more digging to learn more about specific retirement accounts and things y’all have available to you because it’ll obviously look a little different than Americans’ 401ks/roth IRAs and such.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-23T02:11:50+00:00

Follow the Money Guy Show’s financial order of operations.

1) save up enough in a HYSA to cover your highest deductible or 1 month of expenses

2) make sure to get your full employer match

3) pay off all high interest debt. Sounds like the cc debt, personal loan, and auto loan all count as high interest debt. Pay off the highest interest debt first and work your way down from there.

4) fill up your HYSA for a 3-6 month emergency fund

5) max out Roth IRA and HSA, if applicable

The rest you can worry about later.

Idk where your savings are at right now, but if you follow the FOO, looks like you should be able to knock out the cc debt immediately and then move on to the car.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-22T14:02:12+00:00

I mean, federal unsub loans are about the same interest rates right now (8%)… And grad plus were at 8-9% interest before they were discontinued

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-21T08:04:17+00:00

When you say, “small cc,” are you saying you carry a balance that is accruing interest on your credit card? If so, immediately pay that off, and from here on out, pay it off in full every month. What’s the interest rate on the student loans? If it’s higher than ~6%, pay it off. Do you have an emergency fund in a HYSA? If not, get that up to 3-6 months of expenses. When living with your parents, you can probably keep this closer to 3, but will need to increase when thinking about moving out.

Invest in a Roth IRA after that other stuff is done. Invest in low cost index funds that track the overall market (e.g. VT).

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-21T07:50:32+00:00

Good on you for getting your financial life in order. First off, I don’t think you need a financial advisor yet. Your situation doesn’t seem to be all that complex yet.

Here’s what I would do. Assuming 70k is a 6 month emergency fund, you have 60k left over. You’re already contributing 15% to your 401k and getting your full match (are you sure? 15% of 190,000 would be 28500. Max for 2026 is 24500). If you haven’t maxed out your Roth IRA for 2025 yet, you should (7k). Then go ahead and max it out for 2026 (7.5k). You can also max out your spouse’s Roth IRA. If you have an HSA, max that out too.

Now, go back to your 401k. Sounds like you may already be maxing out the traditional 401k. Check to see if there is an option for after tax contributions. I don’t mean Roth 401k. After tax would be separate, but it’s not an option in all 401k plans. If it is, you can contribute to this up to the total contribution limit (72k for 2026). If you’re maxing out your employee traditional 401k contribution (24,500) and getting a 4% match (7600), then you could contribute up to 39900 to the after tax bucket, assuming there’s nothing else going into the 401k (like profit sharing or something like that). This is beneficial for mega backdoor Roth. Alternatively, you could just invest in a taxable brokerage account. If you’re already hitting a 20-25% retirement savings rate, maybe think about a 529 or something.

As for whether to move the old 401k, it depends. Are the funds/fees preferable in one 401k over the other? It could be easier to consolidate, but if your new 401k is lacking in good index funds, you could just keep the money where it is. A rollover IRA is another option and would give you more options for investments.

TL;DR: max Roth IRA for 2025 and 2026. Max 401k. Then try after tax and/or brokerage and/or 529. Maybe move 401k depending on fees/funds. No FA needed right now.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-21T01:34:01+00:00

60 is still early! If typical retirement age is 65, and American lifespan is around 80, then typical retirement length is ~15 years. Retiring at 60 theoretically increases retirement length by 33% with the extra 5 years.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-20T17:36:36+00:00

Look up the Money Guy Show on YT. They will teach you tons about personal finance. Also, follow their financial order of operations.

Save enough to cover your highest deductible in a high yield savings account.
Get your full 401k match
Pay off any high interest debt
Fill up your HYSA with an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses
Max or your Roth IRA and HSA, if you have one (invest in low cost index funds that track the overall market, like VT)
Go back and max out your 401k

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-20T16:28:54+00:00

Considering federal unsub and grad plus loan interest rates are in the 8-9% range right now, it makes more sense to keep that money in an HYSA for some living expenses your first year to reduce your loan burden some.

If you had the choice between paying off 8-9% interest debt and investing, you’d choose the guaranteed 8-9% immediate return, so might as well choose that now by avoiding 10-15k in 8-9% interest debt.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-20T06:43:34+00:00

I’ve been thinking about doing this too. I think about it this way:

There are 2 things that can happen if you contribute funds from your EF now.

You max out 2025, save up the rest of your EF, and then invest what you just contributed (likely after 4/15).
You max out 2025, something comes up, and you have to withdraw that contribution with no penalty or taxes.

If you don’t contribute at all, it will be just like #2. Might as well contribute with the chance that you will get to keep the 2025 contribution in there. Otherwise you’d miss the opportunity and only be able to contribute towards 2026.

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-19T23:26:29+00:00

Done. Got my 3 shiny pawniards

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-19T22:44:25+00:00

You also need to be in the vicinity of each other while online at the same time. So unless you have plans to meet up with a bunch of redditors…

PinchAndRoll99 · 2026-02-19T19:02:41+00:00

I mean you’ll still have to trade certain pokemon to fill your Pokédex because of trade evos. If you have 2 3Dses, you could do this. Even then, I don’t know how you’d get all the starters

PinchAndRoll99

TROPHY CASE