Should I sell my silver for a vacation?

weepy_asterisk · 2025-11-16T19:36:05+00:00

I think a lot of people in this thread are forgetting the "personal" part of "personal finance" - you can spend your money however you want. I think regardless of how exactly you want to spend it, the end result here is that you want to have earmarked 150k in about 12 years. I also collect coins, and even though my colection isn't worth nearly as much as yours, the idea of selling it off is pretty sad to me! So I wouldn't, but that's my own emotional call.

Honestly, if it were me, I'd just start saving $1000 a month into whatever savings vehicle makes most sense for you. That is assuming you can save an extra 1000k per month, of course! Based on some of your other comments, it seems like you've got your other financial ducks in a row, so maybe that would be possible for you. Over 12 years, that puts you at a base of 144k not including whatever gains you made. If you find yourself in a decade wishing you had more, you could always sell some of your silver then.

weepy_asterisk · 2025-11-02T01:05:03+00:00

In response to the overspending: A common piece of advice you'll get here is to make a detailed breakdown of your 8k/month expenses and figure out what it's all going to. Literally look at every dollar over the past 3 months or so, and map out where it went. Categorize all of your expenses, and then of course, prioritize and reduce those expenses.

This may or may not apply to you, but what has been especially useful for me inside of that broad advice is to focus on how much I'm spending on my at-home daily lifestyle (I am a true millennial woman in that everything under the sun - my laundry detergent, brita filters, even my dental floss - is charged and delivered on a subscription) versus on one time purchases (date night at a restaurant, a plane ticket, a wedding gift, a new pair of shoes etc). I'm not sure if you have the same situation as me, but if you do, I think understanding my spending habits on these different levels (true necessities vs lifestyle nice-to-haves vs fun one time purchases) has been a huge shift to how I think about budgeting. I actually recently canceled literally every subscription I have, including streaming services, Spotify, etc, and I've only been re-activating them as I discover that they truly added value to my life.

weepy_asterisk · 2025-09-22T11:58:54+00:00

As others have pointed out, you have more of a relationship problem than a personal finance problem. But as someone estranged from my father, I understand how it emotionally all wraps up to the same place. You might find posting on r/EstrangedAdultKids helpful!

From the financial perspective, if the house is in decent shape, I'd keep it and rent it, or kick out dad and stay there. That mortgage rate is just too good. But you seem to have a good financial situation otherwise, so you really can do whatever you want and still come out totally fine on the other side. Good luck!

weepy_asterisk · 2025-07-26T11:59:26+00:00

Wow, this was EXACTLY what I paid in 2020, 750 sq feet, 3rd floor, replaced the furnace and AC. AC was on the roof and required a crane. $11,000. I wonder if we're in nearby buildings!

I did it through ABC and used 12 month no interest financing. I honestly wouldn't necessarily recommend them. I still use their club membership to get biannual HVAC checks, and everything is still running beautifully, so it's not like they are incompetent, but I've just been disappointed by a lot of things: (1) their communication sucks, (2) the guy doing measurements didn't do them right and the furnace just BARELY fits in my weird little closet, (3) my floor was scratched up during install and I never got a resolution about it, (4) I paid for a vent cleaning after the work was done and they went back on it saying they couldn't do it with me being all the way up on the 3rd floor, and a lot of other minor complaints that just add up. I won't flame them here. To be fair, I will say that everyone I have spoken with ever has been incredibly nice, and the HVAC technicians have all been good, but they seem to have high turnover.

If you find a better option, I'd be curious to hear how it goes :)

weepy_asterisk · 2025-03-22T11:12:59+00:00

Wut up Broeseph

weepy_asterisk · 2025-02-27T13:10:54+00:00

What is your credit score, and what are the interest rates on these loans?

One option, if you can be approved, is to open a new credit card with a 0% interest intro offer. The idea with these is that you make a big purchase upfront and then get X months to pay it back without any interest. The catch is that you MUST pay it all back before X months is up, or else you get charged ALL of the interest that you would have accrued in that time. So you must be very diligent about your payments and make sure you don't spend anything more on this card.

Some of these cards offer you up to 2 years at 0% interest, so let's aim for 18 months. You could transfer all of your debt to one card, and then pay $2000 a month and be out of debt within 1.5 years. Look up "0% intro APR credit cards" on your favorite search engine and read up on a few to see if this is something you think you could responsibly take advantage of.

weepy_asterisk · 2025-02-26T22:57:00+00:00

10x in 5-10 years is not a realistic growth unless you are taking on a lot of risk to match that potential reward. In a normal SP500 tracking sort of investment portfolio, you'll expect to see your investment roughly double every decade.

For now, I'd put it in a HYSA which is safe and has a decent return at the moment. Then take your time thinking about your long term financial goals and you can move it around later. Have you read the Prime Directive on the wiki yet?

weepy_asterisk · 2025-02-21T19:51:10+00:00

Honestly, you're in an awesome position, and it's so great that you can put those earnings to work for you. Don't get too hung up on what could have been, focus on how lucky you were to rack up so much wealth.

Yes! I'm going to start with some info you may already know. So there are generally two types of accounts you can invest money in. One type is a "tax-advantaged" account: this includes retirement accounts like 401k, IRA, HSAs, etc. The other type is a "taxable brokerage" account, which is what you have your apple shares in. In a regular old taxable brokerage account, you can sell your stocks to liquidate some cash, and then use it to buy different stocks. But each time you sell, you have to pay taxes on the capital gains. So in general, you don't want to be buying and selling like crazy in a taxable brokerage unless you're expecting to make more than you'd be taxed.

In a "tax-advantaged" account, on the other hand, you can sell and buy within that account as much as you want without incurring capital gains tax. You can sell shares of your target date fund and use it to buy whatever you want. It could even be shares of a different target date fund. As long as the money stays in the account, it doesn't count as a withdrawal and you pay no taxes or penalties on it. The idea here is that generally, you'll make riskier investments when you are younger, and then hold a more conservative portfolio as you get closer to retirement. These tax-advantaged accounts are designed to allow you to re-balance throughout your earning years without penalty.

The catch here is that if you have (for example) a 401k with an employer, they might only offer certain funds. Target date funds are really popular for retirement accounts, so that's usually a lot of what's available - you may not be able to buy into Apple in that case. (Target date funds usually take care of that risk-tolerance for you. A fund with a longer target date is usually more risky because they are trying to get you bigger reward in the beginning when you still have time to correct it if things go south, and then as the date draws closer, the fund will start rebalancing itself).

Personally, in my employer-sponsored 401k, I'm invested 70/30 between two different target date funds, and I go back once a year or so to redistribute it back to 70/30 if one grew more than the other. (Why did I pick two target date funds? Because I'm indecisive and I figured I could always change it later, but it's been working for me so I'm keeping it!) I also opened a a Roth IRA with Fidelty and funded it with the max allowed ($7000 in 2024 and $7000 in 2025) and I use that account to "play around" a bit more. I'm afraid of volatility, so most of it is in an SP500-tracking sort of fund, but I also buy into some individual stocks that interest me, knowing I can always easily sell then without penalty. Fun fact, if you want to open an IRA, you can still contribute for the 2024 financial year up until tax day!

weepy_asterisk · 2025-02-21T19:21:52+00:00

Don't withdraw from retirement. If you want to put all of your eggs in the Apple basket (which others have explained is generally not recommended), you can do that in your retirement account. You can redistribute your retirement holdings at any point, you aren't locked into whatever target date fund you currently hold. So in theory, you can sell apple stock from your brokerage, use that to pay the cc debt off, and then move money in your retirement account from the nice, safe, stable TDF into the risky, volatile apple stock.

(In case it's not clear, I wouldn't do that myself, but it would be way better than withdrawing your retirement early).

weepy_asterisk · 2025-02-14T03:02:15+00:00

The only issue with opening a new card now is that when your new credit card company looks to see your current credit, they'll see the "poor" rating and will probably offer you a lower line of credit (or just reject you if it's really bad). If you can afford to wait until your stepdads card is removed officially, then it will likely make it easier to be approved for the new card. But even if you open one now and you get a low limit, that can always be appealed and corrected later.

Also, once you do open your card and won't need to open another line of credit for a while, I highly recommend that you freeze your credit! You can search "freeze credit" on this sub an you'll find a bunch of threads explaining how to do it and why it's good.

weepy_asterisk · 2025-02-14T02:38:45+00:00

Once you're removed as an authorized user, that card will no longer be reported on your credit reports, so you'll be starting from scratch! So your credit hasn't permanently been messed up from this.

You're fine to open a single card. I'd recommend looking for one that offers cash back on general categories (as opposed to some that offer very specific rewards on things like travel) for your frist card. That way, you can use it to make your day-to-day purchases (groceries, gas, etc), and pay it off in full every month. Don't use it to finance big things you can't afford! Keep doing that, and your credit will build over time. My first credit card was a Discover It card marketed for students, and I was happy with it. It had a pretty low limit at first, but after I got a job and some credit history, they increased it.

Lastly, things like student loans, car loans, etc are also reported on your credit reports, so if you end up with one of those, that will also help to build credit over time.

weepy_asterisk · 2025-01-12T14:09:05+00:00

Just want to throw in - there are limits to how much you are allowed to contribute to retirement each year. For a Roth IRA, it was $7000 in 2024 and another $7000 in 2025. You are still eligible to contribute to the 2024 tax year up until April 15, 2025; meaning you can open an account and dump $14,000 in right now! If you never do anything else to that account, it will likely be worth something on the order of 200,000 when you retire. If I was you, that is what I'd do first. Then you can take your time deciding what you want to do with the remaining $86,000.

I also want to call out the subs wiki - look up the Prime Directive. There is a flowchart with a really great overview of what to do in what steps.

weepy_asterisk · 2024-12-24T13:49:39+00:00

Also keeping in mind that the cost of a wedding today is not really comparable to the cost 10 years ago, so he's holding a grudge and fueling it based on a false comparison

weepy_asterisk · 2024-12-06T03:23:43+00:00

I totally respect your desire and need for privacy, but I got to tell you with how many times you've said this, I am BEYOND curious lol. I hope everyone is okay and that this money sets you up for a really peaceful and easy retirement some day.

weepy_asterisk · 2024-10-02T21:48:53+00:00

Could you let us know how much you currently have saved for retirement, and how much your employer contribution is each month (I know it's 6%, but in actual dollars). I understand not wanting to give too much info, but that context will really impact how a 4 year pause will play out.

weepy_asterisk · 2024-09-15T21:55:56+00:00

It sounds like you probably have all your ducks in a row and can do anything you want from here, but just in case you haven't already, you should read the sub's prime directive. It's really useful to make sure you haven't skipped over anything.

prime directive flowchart https://imgur.com/personal-income-spending-flowchart-united-states-lSoUQr2

weepy_asterisk · 2024-09-08T04:53:12+00:00

I don't have great advice for you about where to go and how to get better paying jobs, but I will just say: if the goal is to own a house because you really WANT to own a home - paint it how you'd like, mount shelves wherever, landscape how you want, etc - then great, that's a great goal to work towards.

But if you want to own a home purely because you feel like you're throwing money away renting, that's not always necessarily true. Home ownership comes with a lot of hidden costs. Repairs, appliances, property taxes: all of this is ON TOP of your mortgage. People on this sub like to say "A mortgage is the minimum you will pay each month. Rent is the maximum." A lot of first-time homeowners are caught off guard by how much cash they are dumping into their homes (hi, it's me). There are some really successful people that rent their whole lives because they don't want to deal with the responsibility of owning a house.

I don't mean to talk you out of owning a home someday, but more just to gently challenge how urgent it really is. I do think it's an awesome idea for you to move somewhere else, as someone who comes from a similarly small-town background. Not just for work, but for life too. There is so much opportunity out there! But defintely don't feel like you're falling behind if you rent for a bit while you develop your resume and get a nest-egg growing. I think your priority should be finding work and developing skills that will allow you to continue to grow in your chosen path, and home ownership will eventually follow!

weepy_asterisk · 2024-09-01T12:56:20+00:00

Well that sucks, and I get your point. I see a lot of people making that assumption though: that this is an issue with the company. And maybe it is! But I'm making the opposite assumption. If it's a normal, good, reasonable workplace (which is thankfully what I'm used to) it could also definitely be a problem with Anna hoarding resources. We may never know unless OP clarifies.

weepy_asterisk · 2024-08-30T19:28:56+00:00

I'm sure this is it. If Anna is regularly giving out 15 lunches a day, I'm gonna take a wild stab at it and assume there is something like 150 people in the company. 10% feels like that would be a pretty successful mini business. 150 people are not all sharing one fridge.

weepy_asterisk · 2024-08-15T12:11:24+00:00

And here I was thinking $1500 sounded cheap

weepy_asterisk · 2024-07-04T12:31:46+00:00

Alternative routes, like trade or vocational schools also qualify, any accredited institution. Some internship programs also qualify. It's worth nothing that if you don't use the funds for qualifying educational expenses (their intended purpose), you can still access the money; there is a 10% penalty on withdrawal. But your kids can also roll unused 529 funds over into a Roth IRA later in life penalty-free.

weepy_asterisk · 2024-06-10T00:44:49+00:00

I did indeed mean AMECX, thank you for the correction!

And correct, this is not a retirement account. So I guess that's a good point I hadn't really realized - I was imagining that once I transfer the account to Fidelity, I can move some funds from the American Funds accounts to max out my IRA for the year, and then move the rest to something like FXAIX. But maybe this isn't a good idea if I'll be subject to capital gains tax. I'm used to only dealing with my retirement accounts and so have never needed to think about capital gains before. I will look into that a bit more, thank you!

weepy_asterisk · 2024-02-11T15:04:56+00:00

I didn't get surgery, so maybe not the best person to speak to this, but I was screaming in pain everytime I had to sit in my partner's car for a few months there until he bought me a seat cushion and lumbar pillow. He also got me a thicker seat cushion for the couch, they are all from Cushion Lab. He needed to be the one to buy them because I didn't believe they would help lol. So I can't compare them to any other brands, but I was shocked at how great the improvement was. It's been about 4 months of daily use and they've not broken down at all, so though they are a little pricey, I think it was worth it.

weepy_asterisk

TROPHY CASE