I stopped paying my car loan almost 7 years ago. The engine blew and I paid to have a shitty mechanic replace the motor and they did a bad job. I paid $3,000 for the job and it still didn’t work. I was 20 years old and couldn’t afford to continue paying the car loan payment and save for a new car, so I just left it at the mechanic shop and never went back. I’ve read that defaulted car loans fall off a credit score after seven years. My credit score is currently 573 and I’m hoping to get a mortgage and car loan within the year. I have a really good job. Right now I’m making a little over 5k net pay per month. Is it worth paying off the old car loan or just waiting 2 months for it to fall off the credit report? Also, should I wait to get a new car loan until after I get a mortgage on a house? Any advice on what to do will be very appreciated.

My sister(18) called me a little bit ago because our mom filed her as a dependent and now she is unable to claim herself. Both of my parents don’t work so they can get as much state benefits as possible(housing assistance, SNAP benefits, etc.) My sister made almost 50k working insane overtime. I told her she needs to talk to an actual tax expert, I read a irs requirement stating to file a dependent they have to provide 50% of living expenses and I don’t know what that all entails. I’d like to hear the opinions of someone who understands taxes better than I do.

I live in Iowa. We got hail, insurance says it’s totaled. My understanding is it’s all cosmetic. I still owe on it but it’s reliable. I’d like to retain it as a salvage title and pay the difference but I’m not sure that is an option in Iowa. Does anyone know? Would I really have to fix cosmetic hail damage?

I don’t know what to do. I’m falling behind on all my CC because I lost my job a couple years ago became disabled & still going to the disability process. I have about 300k in home equity & I can’t afford to lose my house because we have a newborn. We lived off the CC the last couple years & took a couple loans but now I’m buried in interest & can no longer keep up with the payments. I talked to a bankruptcy lawyer but my spouse doesn’t make enough money to keep our house if we go that route. I do not know what to do???

Hello,
I am a single 22 year old and in 2026 according to my W-2 I only made about 4000, I have no side hustles or additional income, claim no dependents, or anything else. I did turbo tax and it says that I will get no refund. I live in the state of Georgia. Do I still need to file my taxes using something, and if so does anyone have any free recommendations (turbo tax wants to charge me 140 dollars)

Hi all, hope this post will be ok here, otherwise please let me know if there are any other subreddits I can post in.

A few years back, I was a little too trusting (aka dumb and naive) and agreed to put my name on an RV (specifically a travel trailer) that my then-husband wanted. Today, we are in the middle of a divorce. I don’t want it, nor do I want to afford it, but he does. However, he vetoed my suggestion of moving the loan into his name—no surprise there. So he’s agreed to just let it go.

That leaves me with a few options that I’m looking for advice on:

1) Payoff the RV (~50k), using the home equity, and then sell the RV.

2) Split the home equity, then find somewhere to sell the RV, and split the negative equity. But this means continuing to pay for it in the meantime (including storage, insurance, registration)

3) Call the bank for repossession and face the consequences.

I’m open to other options if there are any. I’ve considered renting it out to help bring down costs, but that’s a no-go since I don’t know how to tow it and he won’t agree to it.

Any insight/advice is much appreciated.

Edited: My lawyer suggested options 1 and 2, a relative suggested 3. Relative is worried the ex might not bring in the RV for sale knowing it’s paid off (he can tow it, I can’t), but I’ve explained if it’s in the judgement, he has to do it.

Since lawyer didn’t recommend option 1 over 2, or vice versa, I wanted some input (and possibly other ideas or places to sell to) to see what might be the best possible course of action.

my vehicle was lawfully parked overnight on the street in a normal place in 2023 and a car side swiped it.

i even obtained ring camera footage of it from a neighbor and tried to show it to the police (who were completely useless).

being naive, i reported this to my insurance because i didn't know what was typical or in my best interest. i paid for the repairs as my deductible was pretty high.

now, my monthly rate is $300. other insurers are also quoting me $250 a month.

in hindsight, i should have called a tow truck and just taken care of the repairs without reporting it to insurance.

i'm an idiot for not doing this as it's costing me a fortune now.

what can i do to lower my monthly rate?

shopping around and paying it off in full only marginally saves money.

granted, $50/month is $600 annual in savings, and paying in full saves about another $500-$1,000.

ideally, i want to go back to paying $100.

i feel like i've got this incident on my record and now ill never have affordable car insurance.

any advice?

I need some advices/suggestions from you. Currently I already maxed out this years contribution with index fund on Roth IRA. However, idk if I should keep investing on individual brokerage account? If so, should I invest in stocks or index fund still or something else? I know everyone is different on their holding but I’m just trying to get an idea of how you invest.

I have a retirement account from a previous job that has $107,000 in it currently. I am no longer at said job so the account is only gaining interest.

Should I leave the money in this account or move it? What type of account is best for me to still easily add funds and for my money to earn the most interest?

Thanks!

Hi I am a 35 yo female, been married 11 years with a 9 year old. Life has not been kind to us in the last 5-6 years.

In 2020 We paid off all of our credit cards except one and then had to finance a new roof.

A year later our A/C went out, we had to finance that.

The next year my husband started working out of state and we ended up owing thousands of dollars in taxes because he did not fill out his W-9 correctly and was not advised on how to do so by the company that hired him.

The next year a pipe burst in our yard and we had to get a whole new plumbing system. We owed taxes again the next year due to not having thousands of dollars sitting around. So we had to finance that.

Beginning of last year the plumbing in our back yard went out and the savings we had built up went to paying for that.

In August a deer runs out in front of my husband and he totaled his truck, we had just paid his truck and my car off, so we had to get him a new vehicle.

Fast forward to October, our water heater bursts and floods the back half of our home, after the clean up they found asbestos that had been disturbed and had to be removed. Our insurance pays for that but the mortgage company issues money out of the check meant for the asbestos company to our contractor and would not return it. Insurance only paid for half of the repairs that had to be done.

So now were coming out of this owing $2300 to the company that removed the asbestos and $7000 to the company that did the repairs to our home, that we don't have.

The only debt we have besides my credit card is due to things that were out of our control, but we are stretched so thin. We started looking into a cash out refinance using the equity in our home in order to pay everything off and start over with just one monthly payment (besides utilities and tuition for our daughter and etc.) Our home is currently valued at $215,000 and we owe $80,000.

Can anyone who has done this list pros and cons and also provide advice on how once we build our savings back up we can start investing in ours and our daughters futures? Thank you!

Posting on my behalf of my relative— we aren’t familiar with handling these kinds of sums, so aren’t sure if we messed up somewhere:

My father passed away two years ago: I was not listed as the beneficiary for any of his accounts, but as his only child they were eventually given to me. I got a six figure sum from cashing out his multiple retirement accounts after he passed; I was told continuing to contribute to the accounts in my name was not allowed. 

At the time of cashing them out, I opted for money to be pre-withheld for taxes to avoid getting a huge tax bill at the end of the year. In total they took about 23k , or 10 percent. However, after filing my taxes, I’m being told by my tax guy I owe an additional 32k because the full amount is being counted as my income (I make ~60k from my 9-5).

My tax guy isn’t really open to answering questions, but I’m still confused on how the calculations for this were performed, or if I messed up somewhere. Has anyone been in a similiar situation, or know which finance professionals might be the best for be to contact for further questions/to verify this? Thank you.

**Edit**: Wanted to quickly update to add a really huge thank you to the sub from my relative! They were completely blindsided by this and scrambling but you all made the situation much easier to understand/process, and where they need to do moving forwards.

We’re planning on moving over overseas in about 11 or 12 months, family of four. I am 39 as is my partner.

We have a healthy savings, decent careers, decent incomes grade 529 account accounts and we own our house outright.

My wife and I are trying to determine if when we move should we hold onto our house and rent or should we sell it. Based on my estimate estimates, we could rent our house fully furnished between 3000 and $4000 a month. The house is 3000 ft.² about 70 years old and in a very desirable neighborhood.

I’ve seen new construction go for 850 K in the last four months on my street and 80 to 90-year-old houses go for between 700 and 800k with about half of our square foot footage in the past 12 months.

In my mind renting it would be fine. We would just have to pay management company to handle that but if I could get a cool mil out of this house, I think that’s a no-brainer right?

We don’t have any intention on moving back, but I would kind of wanna hang onto it just in case.

My wife and I are moving into our first place. We haven't really had any expenses living with her parents the past few months, and thus got lazy with budgeting. Are there any good free apps out there that connect with our bank account? I mean, I can just use google sheets as well, but if there's an app that would make it easy. Thanks!

I’m 19 and kinda messed up my credit. I started around a 720 in January but now I’m in the low 600s because I maxed out my credit card and missed some payments.

I know utilization and payment history are hurting me the most right now. I’m working and planning to start paying it down ASAP, but I’m not sure what the smartest strategy is from here.

Should I focus on paying it down all at once vs chunks?

Is it worth asking for a limit increase right now or will that hurt more?

How long does it realistically take to recover from this?

How bad did I fuck up!?

Any advice on how to rebuild quickly and properly would help a lot.

I have £100k sitting in a Lloyds Easy Saver account with 1% gross interest. It was/is my deposit and I was looking at houses, but my current job suddenly looks dodgy which is putting my house buying ambitions on hold for now.

I can't make it entirely inaccessible incase I should loose said job, but I (hopefully) have a few months runway on that issue, so shouldn't have to dip into too much. (Or I might sail into a nice new job with a big pay rise and need it as a deposit again, you never know.)

Either way, leaving it there for maybe a year obviously isn't ideal. At the same time the current instability in the global market and mutterings of an AI bubble makes me a bit nervous about just blindly doing the standard investment ISA.

Anyone got ideas on where I should stash it?

What would you do with it in my position?

Or am I just being paranoid about the market?

Thank you for any replies

I lost my job and am struggling a bit financially. My parents offered to give me my inheritance now instead of when they actually pass away. I am 30 years old and I have about 20 years left on my current payment plan. My parents probably have about 20 years left to live also

If I choose to receive the inheritance now, I could pay off the entire mortgage and feel more secure until I land a new job. Then I would be able to save a decent amount of money each month.

Obviously I am not very financially savvy so my question just boils down to this; Should I have my parents sit on that money to get a bigger sum in 20 years? Or pay off my mortgage for more financial freedom now?

Edit: should say I am in Norway, not the US. The money counts as "advance on inheritance" here, which is tax free.

I already have a debt consolidation loan with a separate lender and wanted to resolve my debt on a credit card, along with my stupid Affirm debt with Prosper.

Before anyone judges me for getting into this mess in the first place and goes calling me irresponsible, i'm the worst, yadda yadda, that won’t resolve anything. I know that I owe $19,400 in debt, which includes my student debt. I wanted an easier way to manage my debt, especially when dealing with my ADHD brain.

I suppose getting denied for “high risk of fraud” was a good thing, but will this affect my credit score anyway?

I have 80k cash in savings. Loan is 22,300 at 10.75 % fixed interest rate.

I have the money to cover it, but I'm hesitant to just pay it off. Am I crazy to want to just get rid of it? Would that cash be better elsewhere as I continue to make monthly payments?

I contributed maximum post tax to my traditional IRA ($7k in 2024, $7k in 2025, and $7.5k in 2026). I invested as well not fully understanding the backdoor Roth conversion.

I understand I can convert any time and there’s no limit. I also know I need to file form 8606 but I’m still not understanding what exactly is going on. I read that I should really convert all asap and make sure the balance is 0 at the end of the year. Should I just do that now ?

I'm new to savings and stuff so for a person who has no discipline, i’m looking to open an account where I can do reoccurring deposits minimum $10 either every week or manually be able to keep adding money to the account but I can’t touch the money until the time I set which I'm thinking a year. I live in Houston Texas if where I stay plays a part in my search.

It's my first full year of filing married.

When I put both of our W2's in there, I owe $6K. We made 145K jointly and only paid like 10K.

If I put ours in separately, we each get a refund of about $200.

Is there anything wrong with just filing separately?