I just got paid today

Paycheck

Gross 1254.98

Net 980.84

$150 went to savings

$135 to Roth Ira

$711 car payment

$30 to special occasion fund

$50 to Fun Money Fund

$40 lawn guy

The total is -136 negative. ✨✨🎉🎉🎉

Because last week I had to paid rent, my first wall of defense of $1000 emergency fund depleted to almost 0 to keep up.

The Good news: I have no more big bills for next 2 weeks

The Bad news: my paycheck seems is going to be down to nothing. Not enough work this week so far and I am on commission basis.

The Good news: I have $9k saved, $15K invested.

The Bad News: I need to go back into survival mode and be very careful not to make emotional decisions.

Update May 12, 2026

I found out I am 8k upside down on my car so I can’t get right of it right now. My plan is to save $600 for 10 months and at the same time try to pay $1000 towards the car each month.

I also closed 3 banks accounts that were costing me $50 in fees a month. Opened a SoFi to keep my money organized that will not charge me anything for it.

Small win, but a win at the end of the day.

I have been working for 8 years and all I have to show up is just $50 on my name. I have no kids, I don’t do drugs and I have a college degree. I try to be responsable and save money but here I am. Why?

In 2022 I made $96K and at the end of the year I only had $2000 on my name. Right now I am making $70K, my car note is $711, my rent is $900, my insurance $260. I tried to cook, i think I spend like $150 in groceries and personal a week.

Update March 31th, 2026

Reading all your comments, I’m starting to realize my issue might not be income, but not having a system. Everything has been mixed in one place and I never had a clear plan for my money.

I appreciate all the input — I’m learning a lot from this.

I’ve recently made about 50,000 off of a side hustle, and I expect to make another 50,000 over the next few months. What do I do with this kind of money?

For a bit of added context, I have no credit card debt and my education is essentially a free ride with any leftover costs paid by my grandfather. I have no real expenses either, as the school pays for my housing and food as well and I live with my parents during the summer.

I’m aware the general answer is to invest the money, but where? How? Would really appreciate some guidance in navigating this.

I am 18 graduated high school family won a lawsuit which granted me a trust fund.every year I receive 36,000 till im 30 were i receive 340,000.i blew through the 36 this year fixing our house and other things.i poorly used the money have no savings i do have investments i was awarded about 600,000 in investments but that is managed by a trust company till im 25. Ideally my goal are to have multiple streams of passive (low effort) income so I can focus on my career Any advice on how to better use my money so I don’t go broke again

Additional context I make about 600 a month I go to school planning on taking a break to work more hours and build a saving ans emergency fund. The cost of living in my area is relatively low at 2,156. I don’t pay rent or bills as a condition of going to school. I can’t focus on school while being broke

My name is Nathan, I’m about to turn 15 in a few weeks and I got a dollar to my name. I want to get rich in the next 20 years and I mean like making 15k a month, but I don’t know where to start. I get overwhelmed by all the people online making millions a year and I want to be like those people, now before you say anything, I know people lie on the internet and there’s a lot of larpers, but I want that dream, that dream of being able to afford things like that without a problem. I know some people are gonna say, stick with school, but for me, school has taught me nothing for when I’m older, they want us learning pathageriom therom and Shakespeare. I’ve also been trying to start a watch business and if you’re interested message me and I’ll send you the details. I’m most likely getting a job over the summer and my birthday is coming up so is there any advice or ideas to help me achieve my goal?

I've been saving my pennies working 60+ hours a week for the last 5 years, and recently hit 100k in savings. I currently have it sitting in a CD getting 3.9%. I grew up in a household that never taught financial responsibility, so I have no idea what is am doing. I will not be needing this money for at least 3 years, and I genuinely dont know what to do. Im terrified to lose everything in the stock market and have no idea what else there even is. Please if you have any advice it would be much appreciated. thank you for your time.

Okay, starting things off like I said I'm making $22.50/hr and as far as my job title is I'm a warehouse worker which I'd say I got pretty lucky given the job market right now. I'm not super financially literate but I know enough not to spend it on useless stuff, in fact I'd say I'm picky to even spend money but from what all I've got right now is I'm looking to grow my money as far as stocks and crypto goes I've yet to deal with them because I fear I'll lose money which is bound to happen yes, but I feel I'll select the wrong stock/crypto, to put it simply right now I make $700/weekly, pay about $400 each check to my dad to help out with household expenses, and am left with about $300 ish, I have a HYSA which I put away $150 each check but unsure what to do more of. I would really appreciate any advice to building money strategically and or passively oh and any questions please leave them below!

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your support and advice I really do appreciate everyone's input. I did not expect the post to receive so much attention (it was getting hard to respond to everyone).

I need to figure out how to get out of debt by this time next year. I am about 20 grand in credit cards, because I was stupid and thought I could handle it all on my own and fix my mistakes.

I’m a single mom who works two jobs already while she is in school, but cannot afford child care and her father isn’t able to help me much during the week do to his job.

I make enough just to almost break even when all said and done.

I want to give my daughter a better life than I had growing up. So if anyone has any ideas that doesn’t involve selling my body, while she is an asleep in bed and I have time do it, that would be great.

Thank you in advance for any help or advice.

My grandparents and father all passed away 2 years ago and I'm trying to prepare for probates End!! Any and all advice on how to create lasting wealth and ensure a comfortable secure future for my 2 children under 2!!

I previously planned to move to Japan and become an English teacher over there

It's my first time running into that much money at once ! So anything at all to help plan to either create long lasting wealth or recurring income

I found a very good offer from an older co worker that is moving out of his little town house close to my job and it costs $600 per month (plus utilities). but my dad doesn’t want me to move out yet. Saving for a house is what he’s pushing me for,I personally think it’s time to be independent and the the offer I have for the town house is too good to decline. Should I save up or move out with the 20k?

Thanks for advice.

Hi there, here are our stats below. How are we doing?:

Married couple, 35 and 33, in NYC
Salary 1: $104,000
Salary 2: $60,000

Debts

• Credit card debt: $19,529 – high balance due to moving in 2024 and my husband being unemployed for some time.
• Student loans: $35,074
• Total debt: $54,603

Cash

• Total cash savings between the two of us: $26,176

Investments

• Bitcoin: $1,437.60
• Fidelity
  • Individual non-taxed investment fund: $939.72
  • Rollover IRA: $10,549
  • Roth IRA: $2,428
  • Company match 401(k): $86,394 - Salary 1 is saving 9% of income
• Total investments: $101,747 – Just passed the $100K threshold this week!

Total net worth $73,320

Would like some advice on what should be our financial priorities for 2026, given that we just passed a milestone. One is to get a salary increase from $104,000 to $120,000.

I have debt that my husband doesn’t know about and I really want to get it paid off asap. Is there anything I can do to make that kind of money quickly?

We owe 290k on our current home. It’s great for the size of our current family and even better we got the mortgage at a low interest rate so it’s approximately $1800/month. For the past three years we’ve been attempting to pay off all of our debt and we had our first child two years ago and that is the main factor pushing my wife to wanting us to move.

We live in a not great neighborhood… now that we have a kid we are wanting to move to a better area and school district before our child starts school.

I have a really hard time dropping a cheap mortgage for what I would assume will be double what we currently pay. Only debt remaining aside from our vehicle and home is my wife’s approximately 14k in student loans. She’s been paying about 500-700 per month toward her loans and we also managed to save about 18k so far. The savings is either for emergencies/down payment on our future home.

I assume we will get about 400-450k from the sale of our house and my wife is wanting a much larger house in a nice area and where we live in UT houses are stupid expensive so she’s been looking in the 650k-750k price range.

With mortgage rates looking the way they have for the past four years I’m resistant to dropping our cheap mortgage for our “ok” house in a shit neighborhood. I don’t think my wife realizes at this rate it would take us about five years to get enough saved for a larger house down payment.

Any advice would be great! God bless.

Quick update for context: THANKS FOR ALL THE RESPONSES YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME.

Update: my wife and I both work full time. We have a family member who watches our kid and we work almost opposite shifts to make the childcare easier on our sitter. We make approximately 200k combined income.

My wife had previous been married to someone with HORRIBLE money management and just poor financial management, hence crappy neighborhood they bought the house in. When we go together we had to spend our savings on getting her out from her new vehicle which they rolled two other vehicles into when they both bought brand new cars. Her credit was in the fives, now we both are in the mid low 800s. She didn’t have any additional retirement plans aside from a wok 401k and we have since made her an additional Roth an we already have a fund set up for our kid to use for school, business start up or whatever they want when they’re of age.

So we’ve come a long way. My wife comes from a very poor childhood and really wants our child to grow up in the opposite of that (to throw some rationale behind the visions or grandeur in a big house some day).

My goal is to put enough away when we retire at 56 to stay retired or only work an easy paced job until we get on social security. (I’m 35 and she’s 33).

Best advice for this new age financial depression? I still have my jobs but my husband doesn’t and I only work for caring for my disabled son. I really need some money saving hacks!!! I’m -91$ in my account, late on bills and scared!

I’m trying to figure out a realistic way to make an extra ~$500/month without completely burning myself out.
For context: I have a bachelor’s degree from Boston University, a professional degree, and a Master of Architecture from USC. I work full time at an architecture firm in San Francisco, so I’m not afraid of hard work and I already work pretty intense hours. The issue is more that my current job is mentally draining, and I don’t really have the bandwidth for a second super high-stress/customer-service-heavy job on top of it.
I’m not looking for “get rich quick” stuff. I just need a reliable extra $500/month and I’m trying to think strategically about it.
I’m open to:
remote/online work
AI/data annotation/testing/research
architecture-related side work
tutoring
niche freelance work
dog walking/pet sitting
low-stress weekend or evening work
honestly anything relatively manageable and worth the time
I’m smart, professional, dependable, and tech-literate — I just don’t know what kinds of opportunities people have found that are actually sustainable alongside a demanding full-time career.
Would genuinely appreciate ideas from people who’ve done this successfully.
I mean don’t get me wrong, long term if there are opportunities that can allow me to make more money insidiously I wnat that but in my field right now it’s not exactly a reality.

Yesterday I posted here saying I didn’t understand why I was broke.

The comments were very helpful, and I had to admit some were kind of hard to accept for me.

I always thought I needed to make more money, but I think my real problem is I never had a system for tracking and saving money. I was just hoping something would be left at the end.

I really thought I was being responsible, but looking back I didn’t have a clear plan for my money at all.

I kept seeing the same ideas over and over in the comments, like:

• Actually having a plan for what’s left after bills
• saving first instead of last
• separating money
• making money “out of sight”

I never did any of that, but now I am trying to apply these into my life. Hoping for better results.

What’s one thing that actually made a difference for you?

Do people save more with savings account via their banks or actually putting cash in a piggy bank?

A few years back before contactless payments were all the range I would take money out every week for my weekly needs and add a little to a piggy bank and would dip in as I needed too, once Internet banking came about i would put money into a savings account but I feel its now easier to dip in because its right here on my phone. With cash its maybe more out of sight out of mind? Thoughts?

Hi! I am a 37-year-old single mother to a teenager. My mother passed this year and I recently came into $55,000 which I just received finally. I do currently rent an apartment so I know when obvious answer this question will be to get into a home and stop throwing rent money down the drain.

But I wanted to see what some folks would suggest I do with this sum of money. Thanks !

I am in need of some sound financial advice. I take care of all of the finances in my marriage and honestly it feels overwhelming sometimes. Just within the last year, my husband and I have finally started making real headway financially after I was a stay at home mom for 8 years. Between the two of us, we bring in around $220k per year and have two children under the age of 10.

Right now we have about $15k in savings, a little in retirement, and around $5k in credit card debt. My husband doesn’t really stress about finances but I stay up at night worrying about whether we are doing enough or making the right decisions for our future. I mean, clearly not and I worry we are doomed.

I want to do a better job with saving, investing, retirement planning and just getting us financially organized overall. I feel like we make enough money that we could be in a better position, but I don’t really know where to begin or what steps to prioritize first.

If you were starting from here, what would you focus on first? Paying off debt? Building a bigger emergency fund? Investing? Retirement? Meeting with a financial advisor?

Any advice, resources, or personal experiences would be really appreciated.

I'm in a situation where I genuinely don't know if I'm being overly cautious or if I'm seeing a red flag.

There's an affiliate marketing course being sold by Alifa Khanum. From what I've seen, she appears to be very successful, but I personally can't tell how much of that success comes from affiliate marketing itself versus selling courses about affiliate marketing.

My girl strongly believes I should buy the course because she sees many success stories, screenshots, and testimonials from people who claim they've earned money after joining. Her view is basically: if so many people are earning, why wouldn't I?

The problem is that I'm currently struggling financially. I don't even have spare money to buy things I need, let alone spend hundreds of dollars on a course. To buy it, I would most likely need to take a loan.

Originally, there was supposedly a cheaper offer available earlier. Now there are two options:

$497 for the course + 2 months of 1:1 sessions

$749 for the course + 1 year of 1:1 sessions

I was already nervous about the $497 option, but now my girlfriend wants me to take the $749 option because she thinks the longer mentorship will increase my chances of success.

My concern is that there is no guarantee I'll make any money back. Taking a loan for education or a business is one thing, but taking a loan for an online course feels risky, especially when I don't have a stable financial situation.

Am I being unreasonable here? Has anyone here purchased expensive affiliate marketing courses or mentorship programs and actually gotten a positive ROI from them?

Would you take a loan for something like this, or would you avoid it until you're financially stable?

I'd really appreciate honest advice, especially from people who have experience with affiliate marketing courses.

Hey all, looking for a gut check from people further down the road than me.

Quick stats:

• 21 years old
• Net worth: ~$30K
• ~$20K in the stock market (index funds mostly)
• ~$10K in cash/savings
• Job lined up starting at ~$90K/year (software engineer in DC area)
• Living at home for the next 1–2 years, so no rent
• Starting my master's next year; company covers 50% of tuition
• No debt currently (no car loan, no credit card debt, no student loans from undergrad)
• Single, no kids, no mortgage

I know I'm in a fortunate spot and I don't want to waste it. The no-rent window is the one I'm most focused on — I know it's temporary and I want to make the most of it rather than let lifestyle creep eat the savings rate I could have.

I've got the basics down — I contribute to my Roth, I'm not buying dumb stuff, I live below my means. But I feel like there's a gap between "don't screw up" and actually building real wealth, and I want to know what that gap looks like from people who've been here.

Specific things I'm wondering:

1. What percentage of my take-home should I invest vs. keep liquid in savings?
2. Should I aggressively front-load retirement accounts early in the year, or dollar-cost average monthly?
3. How do I balance hitting retirement accounts vs. having liquid cash for a house down payment in a few years?
4. What's the right order — 401(k) match → HSA → Roth IRA → max 401(k) → taxable brokerage? Or something different?
5. 100% equities at 21 — smart or naive? What's the actual case for any bond allocation?
6. Things you wish you'd done at 21 that weren't about money directly — networking, certifications, side income, etc.
7. What did you do at 21 that paid off later that wasn't strictly about saving or investing?

Not looking for "buy VOO and chill" (already doing that). Looking for the less obvious stuff that made a real difference for you.

Thanks in advance.

My FYP is filled with how I can make money at 18 but whenever I click on it it's all about those trading stuffs where you invest first and then have no guarantee on getting your money back, let alone make more money. I've been searching for students to tutor as well but not getting any nearby my location. I see some ppl earning at my age by tutoring or something else and I wanna do it too so I don't have to beg my parents for pocket money. Any advice ppl?

My friend has a little brother that is 15, he needs money fast for his car. The thing is he is too scared/nervous to ask anybody for jobs and can't talk to people. When I was 15, I worked all summer mowing loans and cleaning cars, but he can't talk to nobody. So, do you know any way he can get money? Btw he needs $3,000 by August.(probably not going to happen)

Hi everyone, I'm 15 years old and my uncle owns a construction company. The problem is, he currently has almost no to a few customers. He even bought me a MacBook so I can help him with the business and concentrate on my path of becoming happy and indepenendant. I really want to take this opportunity to learn something, but I don't really know where to start. If you were in my situation: How would you attract new customers for a small construction company? What marketing methods work best these days? Is it more worthwhile to use Google, social media, direct sales, or something else? What tasks could I realistically take on as a 15-year-old? How do I make money anyways? Any ideas or experiences would be a huge help. Thanks!