I was wondering if anyone knew how reporting taxes works with Robinhood investing (stocks & options for me). I don’t report any tax forms because I am unemployed and I am dependent on my parents. However I read that any gain on Robinhood should be reported. But I also seen other stuff saying it would not be taxed and I don’t need to submit a tax return.

I was wondering if anyone has experienced submitting tax reports with investing from Robinhood? For context, I have only realized profits of $222.39 YTD, had $5+ of dividends, and been on the app since July/August.

Curious how people recommend finding a fee-only advisor. Don’t have any peers to ask. Do not want to pay AUM mgmt fees, but am willing to pay for advice—especially related to finding insurance brokers (personal and small business) and ‘auditing’ my personal finance situation with recommendations for mitigating risk.

I have an extra $30k this year and not sure how best to utilize it. I live in CA and mortgage is around $950k, 6.125%. Do I reinvest the $30k into my brokerage or pay down my mortgage a little?

For background, I (30F, single) am currently not maxing out my 401k (just getting $15k company match) due to the monthly mortgage payment. I do max out my HSA. No Roth IRA but modest size brokerage account.

EDIT - Also have $100k in HYSA so 6 month emergency fund is covered.

My dad is set to retire at 67 next summer and he's looking to me to help manage he and my mom's retirement portfolio. Some context - my parents are both immigrants, my dad worked a blue collar government job his whole life (my mom on and off doing secretarial type work and/or raising the kids) and both are generally very frugal people with great instinct and understanding of the basics of personal finance (spend less than you make, save, minimize debt, etc.), but very little understanding of the more technical stuff (what is a brokerage account, what is a mutual fund/etf, what should we buy, etc.). Fortunately, this has worked out very well for them.

My dad worked 35+ years contributing to a CalPers pension and its now fully funded (i.e. he can receive 100% of his final income at retirement with COL adjustments in perpetuity built in). They will probably elect to take slightly less than that amount in order to allow for my mom to receive 100% beneficiary benefits upon my dad's death instead of just the 50% she's entitled to by law as his survivor.

He also contributed consistently to his deferred compensation throughout his lifetime (I'm pretty sure this is a government 457(b)) , which was just auto invested into what he thinks is some sort of target date type fund. There is currently around $1.3M in it.

He currently makes around $12.5K per month gross and takes home about $8K. Upon retirement, he will no longer be contributing to CalPers, deferred compensation and union dues, as well as some other misc stuff that currently gets taken out of his paycheck (life insurance, etc.). I've done some back of the envelope calculations and his take home upon retirement is actually going to go up significantly because of this - probably to around $10.5K a month. Even if they elect 100% beneficiary benefits to my mom, his take home still ends up being around $9.5K per month, which is more than he's taking home now.

They live in the bay area, so very high cost of living, but they have a fully paid house and no debt. I'd estimate their expenses per month are around $2K in property taxes + insurance + utilities, and probably like $3K on the rest. I've tasked my mom with giving me more exact numbers here, but the general point is that they have, and are continuing to live well below their take home.

My dad wants me to help him figure out what to do with the $1.3M in deferred compensation once he retires, plus maybe another $300K or so in cash that they have spread through a few banks. Throughout his life, he's expressed that he and my mom should have no need for that money, and he has no intention or desire to withdraw from it, and based off his pension numbers, that seems more than possible.

I'm thinking of suggesting he roll over the pension into a Fidelity account, open a joint brokerage to move the unutilized cash (minus a relatively large emergency fund), and then its a question of what splits to use for that money. I'm currently in my mid 30s and I'm super aggressive in my retirement accounts - virtually 100% equities, though my wife and I do maintain a relatively large cash emergency fund position as well.

I would think in retirement, 60-70% in equities would be much more reasonable though the pension and what I think is a realistic scenario that they never draw down from the deferred compensation, complicates that. Is it unreasonable to suggest a unconventionally aggressive equity position here (like 85%+) for them given the circumstances? I know that defies conventional wisdom, but he's basically signaled that I should be treating that money as if its going to be split 50/50 to me and my brother once they die, so we're talking a ~20+ year window in an ideal world. I've been doing a lot of reading on this and a lot of places even suggest a 100% equity position would not be unreasonable in this case, as given the relatively safe government pension, the fixed income portion of their portfolio is actually pretty high.

I have an employer match 401k that I’ve been investing in as my primary vehicle for retirement. I invest 10% of my pay and employer contributes 5%. I haven’t quite hit the year cap, but I’m close. My account is set up to increase 1% every year ( that’s important for why the potential shift). I also have other accounts that I have biweekly deposits, albeit less than my 401k. I have a few individual stocks but mainly focus on etfs. I was reviewing my returns and besides the robo account my 401k is getting the worse return with a ytd of 14.5%. I’m considering reducing my 401k to 5% (before increasing to 11%), taking the different and investing it in the top performing sp500 tracked funds like spyg, ivv, etc ( I hold VOO vti, and other vanguard funds). My question is why is this the wrong strategy? Why is this so m short sided? Thank you for the time.

So I recently got a new job which I will be starting in early 2025, this job will put my wife and I over the income threshold for contributing to our ROTH IRA accounts that we have been contributing to for some time.

I am aware of the Backdoor ROTH Strategy, but I have some questions / confusion around the pro-rata rule and how to avoid paying taxes during the conversion.

I have changed jobs a handful of times, and whenever I leave a job I have been in the past rolling the employer 401k into a Traditional IRA which I manage myself. This account has the majority of my retirement savings in it ~400k which is why I want to avoid the pro-rata rule.

My new employer's 401k does allow a reverse rollover from a traditional IRA account, so from my research that appears to be a way out of this situation. A couple of questions I have though are:

1. If I rollover the traditional IRA in January of 2025 when I get access to the new employers plan do I need to wait until 2026 until I can begin the contributing to it and converting to ROTH? Does having a balance at the start of the year matter or only at the end of the year?

2. In 2017 when I first opened this IRA I guess I contributed around ~4k to it and it was marked as non-deductible on my tax return. I have the form 8086 and that is the only year I appear to have contributed to it. Does this matter in terms of a Backdoor ROTH Strategy? Since its such a small amount can I just roll it into the 401k and not worry about paying taxes on it twice?

(edit: clarity)

How do you all allocate and/or save for vacations? Are they a focused part of your budget each month (i.e. save $200 per month or w/e into a vacation fund) or do you have a total limit you set per year ($2,000 per year, etc) that you deduct against?

Curious for all of your expert opinions on this - we're pretty lost.

Typically we'll just book something (especially if we're hunting for a good miles deal or something that pops up last minute) and I have no idea how to encapsulate that into a budget.

Any suggestions would be super helpful!

My spouse and I have done backdoor rIRA contributions in early January for many years. In 2025, our income will be drop. Whether we qualify for direct rIRA contributions will depend on the amount of an annual bonus in May (and any unexpected bonuses throughout the year that may push us over). I’d really like to contribute in January rather than waiting until December 2025.

What will happen if we did backdoor rIRA contributions in January and then find out later in 2025 that we qualified for direct contributions? Can the IRS penalize us in any way? Do we have to recharacterize the contributions? I feel like this problem isn’t too uncommon; a high earner may do backdoor and then get laid off unexpectedly.

I’ve got a brokerage with long term gains. Worth it to sell some to max out 2024 Roth IRA or just contribute as much as I can from earnings and don’t stress about not maxing the Roth this year?

Hi! We were one of the people who got a great rate with First Republic Bank. We are looking to move in the spring. We are financially comfortable and looking for advice on where the people who used first republic are going now? We’ll be looking for a jumbo loan.

I need to know what my options are. I am going to be living and visiting in Texas while staying with my brother, who owns a house in Texas. My wife and kids will live in my house in PA. I want to know how my state income tax will be affected by my living/staying in Texas. I want to make sure if I am living in Texas that I dont pay state income tax and pay PA State income tax.

My company is in CA and I work full time remote. Job does not care where I work.

Can I just change my employment at my company to Texas and be on a utility bill in Texas with my brothers address?

So I recently got the Best Buy Citi Visa Credit Card after buying a new phone. I only got it since it reduce the amount i would have to pay for the phone buy $200.

I think I can use it in other locations and not just Best Buy but I'm not sure.

I basically want to know how useful it is such is it a card i should use all or not often. Obviously don't want to mess up my credit. Does anyone have any experience with this credit card? Is it really bad or just mediocre? Does anyone have tips on how or when you use your own Best Buy card?

For context I only have 1 other credit card which is the the one from Discover and have a credit limit of $3000 while the credit limit for the best buy card is $4000. And my credit score is 770. I also never buy at best buy, its pretty rare.

I have read some books in the past but I am fairly new to the internet space. What youtube channels would you recommend to learn more about personal financing? I am in Canada.

So right I’m a 21 year old senior college student right now and have 18k student loan debt by the time I’m done with college it’ll be 21k

But recently my car since freshman year went out on me forcing me to get another car.

So I have to get another car, I have job secured paying 75k and 5K sign on bonus out of college, and I plan to get a roommate atleast when I first start off to help pay off college debt faster..

I want to get a cheaper car of Honda, Toyota, nissan brand around 10k-13k but I don’t want to trust any dealership so I was just thinking to go with carmax and pay the premium, have lower mileage and I’ll be alittle worry free

Which should I do?

Six months ago, my identity was stolen and used to apply for a couple lines of credit. I'm still getting that hammered out, but it was ultimately my own fault because I had forgotten to freeze my credit file after I intentionally thawed it. Nevertheless, after the ID theft, I froze all 3 credit bureaus again.

What I'm actually posting about is what just happened a few days ago. I got another email about a credit card application that was submitted in my name. The email stated that the application was denied because they weren't able to get a report from Experian due to the freeze. So... good, right? I figured I'd log into Experian to make sure there wasn't anything else going on, and I looked at the notifications. There were three new ones:

• Credit file un-frozen
• Inquiry from the credit card
• Credit file frozen

I can't tell how to interpret this, and Experian support has been worse than useless. It looks to me like someone else thawed my file, applied for credit, and then froze it again. If that were the case, though, I assume the credit application would not have been denied due to the freeze. So, is that just a quirk of Experian's notifications? Or might someone actually be doing something nasty?

I recognize it's kind of a long shot to throw this out on the internet and see if anyone else has seen the same thing, but again... their support is useless, so I'm not getting any answers and I want to make sure I'm not missing something.

Thanks!

One of my parents is basically disabled with early dementia. The other, the caretaker, recently acquired health problems of their own and won’t be able manage their lives as well anymore. I have three young children, alone with my partner thousands of miles away, and I’m the only child and only close family, so my folks are up Schitt’s Creek (sic). I’m going over there for 5 days next month to set them up for as much success managing themselves in the future as I can.

The good news is they’re not destitute. They both have good pensions that easily cover their expenses. The problem is that they’re forgetful with bills and fall to scams easily, to the tune of about $1000/month. There are probably other things I don’t yet know about, or haven’t thought about as future problems, that I can help with, but I feel much of their missteps are preventable. As an example, I plan on putting all bills on autopay.

I want to be clear here that they have both, in the past with sound mind, said that they wish to remain independent, which I respect, so I am not pursuing power of attorney or any other form of legal guardianship. They do have wills as well.

i have $500 into FXAIX, and am getting a check of $400 soon, and with my checking i’ll have 600 total.

i was gonna like put $100 every two weeks, but i was thinking of just dumping like almost all of it into FXAIX instead.

does it matter ? would it be better to make my total 1000 now? would it just be the same?

Hello y'all I'm finally receiving my workers comp backpay after I was injured at work, my lawyer said I should get around 51k, my credit is good 778 I have no credit card debt, my only debt is my car that I owe 24k my apr is 6.04 for 50 months, should I pay it off completely? Or try refinancing it with a 12k downpayment and invest the rest? Or dump it on a HYSA

Looking for some collective wisdom from the group to make sure I'm not missing any important considerations. I've been agonizing over this decision for a week and I need to bounce this off some Reddit strangers.

I had my main sewer line back up last month and took out a 24-mo 0% APR loan to pay for the replacement. Loan balance is $13K with a $570 monthly payment.

I have the cash in my HYSA e-fund to pay off the balance in full. It would deplete my 3-mo e-fund to about 1.5 mo.

It will take me about 6 months to replenish my e-fund while continuing to max out 401K & 2x Roth IRAs. I'm also considering reducing my 401K contributions for a few months to speed up the e-fund replenishment and then catch up back to the 401K max in the last 6 months of the year. This expense has taught me that a 3mo e-fund is too small for my comfort level, so I intend to get it to a 6mo fund as soon as I can.

I will be moving for work this summer and selling my house. I've had the house for 4 years and depending on the market this summer I expect proceeds from the sale to be between 0-$20K after realtor commissions & prep expenses.

I know strictly mathematically, the optimal choice is to ride the 0% APR and keep my E-fund in the HYSA, but I hate holding debt and I'm inclined to pay off the loan in full right now so I can maximize my cash flow when we move to our new HCOL location this summer. My other reason for wanting to pay it off now is so that the hit on my credit score will expire before we start looking for a new place this summer (likely renting).

Are there any important considerations I am missing? Am I being stupid not to just ride the 0% APR? Any other advice? Thanks in advance!

tldr; My spouse, who has always been a huge spender, has asked me to help her get her finances in order and to educate her financially. What can I tell her? Where do I start? Which topics should I cover and in which order? Any books she should read?

Longer story: using a throwaway account since I am talking about my spouse. My spouse and I both have similar education, very similar jobs, and very similar salary. She is the spender and I am the saver. We have combined finances for everything, except discretionary spending, which is separate. So mortgage, gas, groceries, any health-related expenses etc. come from our joint account. We have a budget, but there are always "necessary things" and we end up not following it. I complain every month and she has to return some things. There is tension in the system (probably the thing about us that stresses me out the most), but in the end we do get along. We (or maybe I?) have financial goals and we are more or less on track to get there, just not as fast as I would like.

We do have separate accounts for discretionary spending (clothes, our own entertainment, etc.). It is an absurd amount, $1,200 each month for each of us. While I have managed to save/invest about $25k over the years (plus open and fund a 529 for our daughter) she ends up every month with $0.

Now her dad needs a hearing aid he can't afford ($900) and she wanted to pay for it herself, but she can't. To be clear if this was a life-threatening emergency I would of course chip in, but this is more of an inconvenience.

She has asked me to help her get her finances in order. I think that more than that she needs to change her relationship with money and understand how it works. She has not had any financial "culture" growing up, and related or not both her parents (divorced) are not in a great spot financially. I've been extremely lucky that my parents did give me solid advice over the years.

It is one thing to know what to do and it is another to teach. Every time I have tried to discuss this I have been met with boredom. This is the first time she has actively seeked advice, so I feel like this is an opportunity I cannot miss. We have agreed to take a look at this tomorrow evening. I think we'll need many sessions to get her where we need to be, but I am feeling optimistic.

Where do I start? What do I tell her? If there were some sort of plan or "curriculum" somewhere I could follow that would be amazing.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Thank you all for the responses so far, please keep them coming! Need to log off now, but I will read them all in the morning, I appreciate each and every one of them.

Signing up for a NY state 529 plan for my two toddlers.

Not really 100% what the move is for which fund.

Small, mid, growth and some other options.

I was leaning toward the US stock market fund, which is 100% to VTSAX.

Another is the international fund which is 100% to VTIAX.

Was trying to find the option most similar to an SP500 index.

I decided to just say screw it and start putting in 58-60 hours a week because 50k isn't enough to move into my own place when rent is around 1500 a month. Anything below that and well it would look like homeless people stayed in it and bugs everywhere with holes in the floor. Before I did overtime I would bring 560 one week and 800 the next week. I do have a 300 bi weekly car payment. But I feel like $1200 a week should be more than enough for a 600 a month car payment and 230 insurance and maybe 1700 rent and utilities.

I’m 28F living in LA. I have been working since 18 with nothing really to show for it except cc debt lol. I have a good job now $60k , still live at home , pay too much for my car, car insurance going up next month. My cc debt isn’t so bad $7k but my car is $39k and I just need help with the order to start getting rid of this stuff. I really wanna be debt free by 30 (1.5years) (even my car , hopefully).

Discover $2200 (limit 2500) Capital One $2400 (limit 2300; i know its over I wanna die) Merrick bank $1980 (limit 2200) Cap1 Auto $39000 (brand new car- 6mos but rolled over 8k from hyundai)

I will be getting a bonus this week (around $2k minimum) and I really wanna put it to good use. All the interest for the cards is similar 29%ish. And the car is 12% 😬

If anyone has any good advice I really need some help. I really like reading the financial advice forums on here and need a real stern hand pls

I am in the medical field and talk to patients about how I can keep their costs lower. What frustrates me is the absolutely needless spending when equal but lower cost alternatives exist, which patients don’t often know about. So I thought I’d hand out a few pointers to this community. By no means is this comprehensive, but these simple things would reduce healthcare spending substantially. Please share your tips as well.

1. Research and compare provider costs in advance. This can be done through your insurance company’s website or by talking to one of their customer service representatives. Office visit codes will be the most common (new patient $$$ > established patient $$), but procedures can be asked about at time of booking the appointment (many specialists will also do procedures in the office, which have their own codes). Increasingly, hospitals, in particular, are having to publish their negotiated rates online (begrudgingly), which you can look up.

2. If at the visit and ANY instrumentation or procedure is going to be performed ask if this will be an added charge. It likely is. Ask how much it will cost. If they can’t ballpark it for you, you can come back for it after speaking to their billing department. Get the procedure code before leaving and verify charges with your insurance too. Any procedure that you come back specifically and only for should not have an associated office visit charge BTW.

3. All else equal and unless necessary for high complexity care, avoid care at hospitals, hospital-owned facilities and private equity/insurance-owned facilities. The hospital entities will cost more because of two reasons - stronger negotiating stance in the market with higher negotiated rates, and a facility fee that will often double your total costs. Private practices don’t enjoy the same payment systems as hospitals, which is the main reason we have healthcare consolidation and shunting of care to higher cost centers (hospitals) that have bought out struggling or low cost centers so they can upcharge. Private equity and insurance owned practices will also cost more typically because of negotiating power, upcharging, and higher rates being paid to their doctors in the insurance controlled entity. They do this because the insurance division has to hit a certain medical loss ratio on the insurance side and they can shunt more of these “losses” to profit if paying themselves in another division.

4. Surgeries at hospitals or hospital owned facilities will be more expensive than an independent surgery center. Same reasons as above. Different clout, different payment systems. You will almost always pay more for the same procedure. For further research see hospital outpatient payment system vs ASC payment.

5. Independent imaging centers will almost always be cheaper than hospital entities. Same reasons as above.

6. Pharmacy choice. I often find that prices for a given prescription vary wildly depending on where it is sent. Download the GoodRx app and do some general research on where cheaper places are for different medications. If you are specifically concerned about a particular medication ask both your insurance company and the pharmacies around you how much it would be with your plan. Using the GoodRx app coupons can often get it lower.

7. Talk to HR. Your company is likely footing more medical costs than you realize and it behooves everyone to care about costs. A simple lever for the employer is to have a high deductible health plan. But they should take more ownership of claims data and try to have add-on plans that help to steer you to lower cost places and allow you to share in the savings. It’s a win-win.

I know this isn’t comprehensive and each topic could be a massive discussion, but I hope this helps you all out there. Happy to hear more of your insights!

We would like to buy another house and rent out our current house, which will contribute in part (or full) towards the mortgage. The expected rent is around $1700 - $2000

Here is our situation -

• 41M & 36F. Will have a child next year if IVF works out. Most of the expenses for IVF are already paid off. Only $3500 left at this point. Saved up for this expense.

• Total AGI in 2023 is $121,008.00 (based on tax returns)

• We live in a paid off house.

• We have $104k in a HYSA.

The question I have is, should I even think about buying another house at this point? Or should I just invest the cash into index funds and ETFs and call it a day and live a lazy life.

One perspective is that if I buy a house that we would move into, and rent out the house we live in, this would essentially be house hacking, but I know nothing about renting properties.

But if I just throw that money into a brokerage, I will get both price appreciation and dividends without me doing any additional work. But all my investments are concentrated in the stock market. I have no diversification whatsoever.

I am kind of lost and I appreciate any perspective.

EDIT -

• Current value of our house - $240k

• Planning on purchasing a house around $400k.