r/TheMoneyGuy

I currently own a 2012 Toyota Camry with about 230000 miles. I’m currently been thinking about it is financially worth it to just replace with a new car. The work that has currently been done within 365 days with approximate pricing

1. Computer needed to be replaced. Between the misdiagnoses from Toyota along with the computer, the total spend was around $4000. ( new ignition coils, computer, oil valve, fees from diagnostic.)
2. New tires. Total spend around $900
3. New brakes, calipers and rotors around $2000
4. Replaced alternator and fixed oil leak around $2000 ( note that the alternator was a misdiagnosis and the car still has issues)
5. Most recent quote which hasn’t been paid is $1300 to $2000 for a new catalytic converter. Cars engine has been shutting off unexpectedly.
   Estimated total:$10900

I have dumped a lot of money into this car and it feels like economically it might not be good to continue. My plan was to either fix the car by paying $2000 for the catalytic converter or buy a 2025 Camry and try to drive it for as long as possible.

I currently don’t have a lot of cash on hand but I do have and emergency fund and 100,000 in a taxable brokerage. If I did buy a new car, I would be selling out of stocks to pay cash.

Any recommendations and thoughts would be helpful.

26M.

I have been wanting to get a cat for the past week or two and am considering it in November as soon as my lease will likely renew.

My net income is about 49k.

My expenses are: $1760 rent and amenities

$60 utilities

$30-40 gas

$10 renters insurance

$100 car insurance

$250-400 food (I need to reduce spending on food and likely can)

I have $18k in my E-fund (7-8 months expenses but want to build this back up to 12), and $30k invested for retirement across ROTH, brokerage, employer accounts. Aim is to max ROTH ever year - not aiming for 25% gross currently.

No plans to buy a house for the forseeable future.

Can I afford a cat?

28(M)

Annual Gross: $66,560

FOO Steps 1-4 Complete

My marginal tax rate is 22%.

For Step 5, should I prioritize increasing my contribution % to employer 401k rather than Roth? (No HSA from employer)

Lastly, my employer offers Roth 401k. Is it okay to just contribute to that rather than a personal Roth IRA? Obviously, I can’t quite max out a Roth 401k, but I could pretend like it's an IRA and just do the $7,500.

Appreciate feedback!

I make at least 160k a year, I have a paid off Raptor I can sell for 75k. Monthly expenses are around 5k per month so I plan on just investing as much of my income over the next 13 years as possible, currently I’m 27. I owe about 285k on a 450k value home. I’m not in terrible shape as I got a few months of savings but my goal is to make work optional by the time I’m 40. Wife wants me to keep my truck since it puts a smile on my face but I feel like it’s waste of having that cash in the driveway not doing anything for me when all I do is drive too and from work. Anyone been in a similar situation? If I wasn’t a car guy this would be a no brainer. I’m thinking of just taking 75k I get from the truck and buy a 30k Camry cash. I have a daughter on the way so I don’t want to buy a cheap beater.

Hi guys,

Below is the situation before I found out about the Money Guy. I had a 2023 Subaru Impreza that had a blue book value of $18.5k and a loan balance of ~$8k I traded it in for a 2025 Subaru Forester Hybrid with an MSRP of 39k, 2.5k dealer discount, and 0% APR incentive from manufacturer.

So the 10k positive equity from my trade-in is technically already above the 20% of the 20/3/8 rule. I did finance it for 72 months which goes against the rule but it's for 0%, and the monthly payment is less than 8% of my monthly net income.

I'm in a financial situation to make a principal payment to ensure it's paid off in 3 years. Do I do that or use the fund instead to build up my emergency fund?

Hi all. Long time listener of the show but not a contributor here.

Long boring story short:

* gross income is 240k a year for me and my wife, I don’t include bonuses in gross because I don’t rely on them.
*401k/403b/529s are very healthy for our current age. No worries there.
* putting 20% down in cash at our price, all available and liquid
* 2 kids, about $2k a month in daycare costs, this is falling because our oldest is finally aging out and our youngest is on the downward slide now.
* no other debt

We’re in our starter home. It’s too small, neighborhood is…eh…and the local schools are a mess, like non negotiable mess. We gotta move, and I want to move is to a good location with a good school system to support us. We found a great place, gorgeous, at 590k and jumped at it. According to all the rules from money guy we’re good, more than good even when I consider the kids daycare as debt. Same with financial samurai, the only one I don’t satisfy is Ramsey, I’d be at like 30% of net for the mortgage, not quite 25%. We gotta sell our currently place and we should come out of it with a tidy profit of like $150k after all is said and done so I’m not going to be dangling in the wind…I’ve been thinking about doing a recast but that’s a few months down the road according to my servicer.

However, I feel like the walls are closing in. $4k a month mortgage makes me want to hurl and it’s causing me a lot of stress because I want this for my family. I guess I just need someone to validate that this isn’t a terrible decision and I’m not going to be destitute? Sorry if this is a low quality post.

I've been following the Money Guy show for about two years now and one thing keeps coming up whenever I see people chasing hot stocks or trying to time the market. Index investing is genuinely, almost painfully boring. You buy, you hold, you resist the urge to do anything clever. That's it.

And I think that's the whole point.

Every time markets get choppy or some new trend shows up, I notice people around me start secondguessing their boring total market funds. They see someone on social media bragging about gains from a single stock and suddenly the slow and steady approach feels wrong.

But the data keeps showing the same thing. Most active traders underperform over long periods. The Money Guy has hammered this home repeatedly. Yet emotionally it's still hard to stay the course when boring feels like losing.

So my question is, how do you personally stay disciplined and keep the boring strategy going when everything around you is screaming to do something exciting with your money? Do you revisit your why, rewatch episodes, check your longterm projections? What actually keeps you anchored to the plan?

Would love to hear how others handle the psychological side of this, because I think that's honestly the hardest part.

Hi everyone!

Sorry if this has been answered before, but I couldn’t find it while searching the subreddit.

My wife, 31, just became a medical resident with a hospital that qualifies for PSLF. Her current career trajectory has her working in a non-profit/academic hospital throughout her career since her end goal is to be a program director. My question is how would her debt be treated under the FOO?

Most of her student loans are considered high interest, but with PSLF these would be discharged after ten years.

My thought is that we should treat these payments as “low-interest debt” and move to the next step in the FOO.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

I'm (20) about to start my first job and I plan on putting at least 20 percent into a Roth Ira, however im unsure of whether it should all just be put into the s and p 500 or if i should split that 20 percent across multiple different large indexes. ​Any advice would be appreciated, also sorry if this has been asked before.

I have a feeling I know the answer that’s going to come from this, but just seeking confirmation. I’m about to be 29, currently have about $55k in my 401k and have two semi-large debts that I owe. I do currently have my employer match set to the highest they will do. I also recently downgraded my brand new truck that I owned for a little over a year to a used 22 Camry that was gold certified (came with an extra warranty).

I have an 8.99% interest rate on the new car loan currently at $18k that follows the 20/3/8 rule, and a $19k personal line of credit with a variable rate that matches the prime rate (currently at 6.75%). Part of me wants to get rid of the car loan first and pay it off as quickly as possible since I’ve never not had a car payment. However, if it’s going to be paid off within 3 years would it just be better to prioritize paying off the personal loan?

2 years ago my junior year of HS Oct.2024 i was involved in a terrible hit-and-run bike accident in NY which forced me to stop playing Basketball and go to physical therapy for over an year. Long story short driver never found filed a lawsuit already had a lawyer at the time ended up sueing and won. I just graduated high school this past June and also just turned 18 this past may which now that im of age i was able to get my lawsuit check which settled for $25k 7-8k was my attorney percentage and the rest is mine which im left with $17.2k. Now I’ve waited about a month to deposit my check which i did on Wednesday because I didn’t wanna be impulsive with my spending I wanted to sit and think before I do because I don’t know when I’ll ever receive another check like this anytime soon. I’m going to school trade school specifically and only have to take out a $13k loan that i myself have to pay i was qualified for financial aid so that did help a lot with that being said i have a couple of questions

• I have 4 accounts
• TD bank checking & savings
• Chase bank regular checking which is a car maintenance fund i save and put money away for a car or my car I’m considering fixing
• Just created a fidelity brokerage account $0 in there as of right now
• I also got approved day of my birthday for capital one platinum CC $300 limit

• Right off the bat how much do i keep for myself ? Checkings & savings
• How do i set myself up for the future ?
• Do i spread this across different accounts?
• What do i do with this money ?
• how do I make my money earn money ?

I’ll try to keep it short here.

Situation:

I’m in my 30s and I’m a working professional living in a MCOL area. I have done “well”, from a financial standpoint point, and was able to save up a healthy amount in my retirement where if I don’t put another penny and assume 8% growth, to factor in inflation, I would be able to replace over 85% of my current salary in retirement if I start distributing at 59.5. In addition, I have an affordable mortgage that is less than 10% of my gross monthly pay and I save >25% of my take home pay, not including company match.

Essentially, I’m at step 8 of the FOO and I’m starting to change my savings to an after tax brokerage account investment to eventually bridge the gap between an early retirement age (say 50) and 65. If I keep going at this rate and pivot my savings away from retirement minus the amount to get my company match, I should have about $70k a year in the bridge years.

Question:

With all that said, I’m facing a dilemma at work where I’ve been passed over for multiple promotions over the last couple of years and starting to feel stuck and mentally taxed because I feel like my manager and some peers have a negative opinion of me for whatever reason. Is it normal to feel this way? If you are in a similar situation or have gone through something similar situations in the past, how did you deal with it?

I know being in Coast FIRE means I should be able to “not care” but I feel frustrated because I have shown I can do more but not getting the merit I deserve. And if I do decide to “let it go”, I feel that I wasted my potential/capability or wasting time at work doing menial tasks. I guess I was hoping that deciding to not care would be on my terms and not because I’m artificially being held back.

Any opinions/thoughts/advice are greatly appreciated. TIA!

Hey guys Do NOT trust Resident_Luck_9 !!! complete scammer! you’ll do the task he tells u to do and then ghosts you without paying. PLEASE DO MOT give him the time of day.

thanks!

Invest or pay off mortgage?

I 59yo, am expecting a wind fall of $800k post tax. I have two mortgages
$750k property at 7% balance $550K
$650K primary at 5.4% balance $380K

Retirement $800K IRA/401K
HHI $500K, no other debt. Would like to retire in the next 5 years (could work 10 more years if needed). Advice needed.
Before anyone asks, the high income is very very recent.

to clarify.
Both mortgages are on the same property. Primary home on large acreage, split into two due to restrictions on lot size on primary home mortgages. Lot with 7% interest is considered farmland. 100% tax deduction on interest.

I am going through a divorce. My husband and I agreed to only split the house. Since I want to stay, I need to buy him out. I am able to assume the mortgage and keep our 2.5% interest rate. I now need to figure out how to pay him 188,000. That is the agreed amount. Given the interest rates, etc., after looking at a second mortgage versus refinancing, and all the things, I think the best thing for me is to get a HELOC that will give me the option to aggressively make payments and hopefully try to pay it off as fast as I can. I currently am running a room in my house to help bring in additional income. My salary is only $98,000. I also have a part-time job walking dogs for a company. Between my 40 hour work week job and the dog walking I’m working my butt off. But the dog walking job has allowed me to bring an additional $21,000 my question or advice that I’m looking for is what’s the best way to pay my husband back that doesn’t keep me in such a high financial Strain. I want to be able to cut back the dog walking so I can have a life I started the job because I needed to make emergency funds after my husband left. I now have saved 40,000 an emergency funds in terms of my retirement. I’m tempted to roll over Some money into his rollover IRA. For my retirement I will have pension and I currently have 100,000 sitting in a roll of our IRA 40,000 of that are in bonds and since 2001 the bonds have maybe earned 4% interest. I was thinking that what if I rolled over $40,000 of the bonds since it’s not doing well and then only take 144,000 of the HELOC I know devices to never touch your retirement but I don’t wanna be so financially strapped. My plan is to rent two rooms in my house to bring in about $2400 that I will apply to the monthly payment of the HELOC when I get it. And then of course I have a part-time job so I would wanna add 1000 onto that so my thinking is I will make monthly payments to this HELOC of 3400 what do you think or what’s your advice? Should I take the full 188,000 and HELOC and just pay that off even if it takes Over five years or should I take some of the rollover IRA that is in bombs not doing much and roll that over to him or do I take some of the cash that I’ve saved and use some of that what hybrid approach would you recommend or would you recommend just the HELOC. Thank you if you made it through this long post.

hey guys psa!!! do NOT trust these people who are trying to buy an upwork or outlier or linkedin accounts!! most of them say they’ll buy your account for 60$ and pay you 50$ weekly. DONT trust them!!!

never do those because they could be doing something illegal with your identity and the irs will eventually catch on and you’ll get in trouble!!!

stay safe!!! and be careful with who you share your identity with online!!!

I was catching up on one of their podcast episodes and there was a question from someone about parking your money in a HYSA for a home down payment (I forget if it was a regular question or rapid fire). Brian and Bo proceeded to list an ideal APY range for an HYSA in tandem with a few banks/institutions they felt were reputable. Brian during that said something along the lines of stay away from Capital One. My question is why? Is it just their lower APY compared to others?

Edit: Ah I wasn't aware of the rate chicanery they pulled, that's really scummy. Not scummy enough to make me move my money but scummy enough to take note. I was worried it wasn't actually FDIC insured or something along those lines, thank you all for the info. Makes sense I didn't know about it considering I only joined them in ~2024.

You would have $250,000 after 50 years, assuming a simple savings calculation with no interest.

​Simple Savings: 5,000 \times 50 = \$250,000

​If you were to invest that $5,000 annually with an average 7% annual return compounded yearly, the total would grow to approximately $2,032,644 due to compound interest. Does any love doing staycations instead at home?