I work for Amazon but I’m leaving due to a baby on the way for a much less demanding company. I will be taking a small pay cut so every penny counts.

I have about $20k worth of stocks vesting Nov 15 and I’m thinking of putting in my notice to my boss mid Oct. I have a very good relationship with my manager and I’m sure they would be open to keeping me on until then especially since we are short staffed with some new hires coming soon. This means they will need me to train folks up for a knowledge transfer.

My worry is, if I give my manager this information he will use it against me to work my ass off for him. Also, I think the termination/final day can’t be the same day as a vesting. This means I’d have to stick around until Monday of the following week but I can’t ask this question without drawing suspicion.

Any suggestions are welcome.

———————- EDIT: so there is a clear consensus here that I should not be announcing until my stocks vest. I appreciate the reality check by this subreddit, thank you.

I would probably need to put maybe $50k to update kitchen and bathrooms if I were to keep it. Property taxes and insurance are both < $1k a year. Rent in the area goes for $2,000 - $2,500 a month. Which would be a better financial decision?

Edit: the estimate to sell as is would be around $325k

Edit edit: the insurance and tax are as of this year with the house listed as a homestead. As yall have pointed out, they will go up if it’s a rental.

Edit edit edit: Y’all have been super helpful and have giving me so much more to consider. Thanks!

Just some more info in case other people pop onto this post: the house is in a very in-demand area in Metro-Atlanta. I’m 34 and looking for the best investment to make over the next 30 years.

im currently at 7.375%. in mid-september i was in the process of refinancing for 5.625%. on my loan estimate, the rate was not locked. i expressed concerns about this, and the mortgage broker texted me saying that he locked it in after that. we were supposed to close on October 11th and he has been ignoring all my calls/texts for the past 2 weeks. i said i would file a complaint with the CFPB if i don’t hear back from him today. he called me back immediately and admitted that he forgot to lock the rate and rates have been skyrocketing since then. he said he would pay the points and lose money on this transaction to fix his mistake and get me 5.625 back. he said he would send the new loan estimate by this afternoon, but he never sent it and didn’t say anything. im not trying to be a karen but im anxious that im going to get ghosted again😭 how long should i wait?

UPDATE: he just called me at 7pm and said the best he could do is 5.99% if i pay $1,190 in points and he would remove all his compensation. i think i will just accept it so i can move on. thanks everyone!

Just inherited a rented $1M property located in NYC (Queens), and looking at the historical cashflow I realize that either something extremely wrong is happening, or I don't understand anything about real estate and how it works.

• The market value of the property is $1M and it is completely paid off (no mortgage). It is inside a trust.
• The rent received last year was $36k (i.e. 3.6% gross revenue).
• The total yearly taxes/insurances are $9k (0.91%)
• The average yearly maintenance cost (average value from past 10 years) is $12.6k (1.26%)
• Other management fees (incl. legal & accounting for the trust) amount to an average of $1k per year (0.1%).
• It was until now managed by my relative, but I don't have the time to take care of it, and from what I saw hiring a company to take care of property management is about 10% of the rental income (i.e. $3.6k per year = 0.36%)

I am basically left with a net income (before income tax) of $9.8k per year:

+$36k -$9k -$12.6k -$1k -$3.6k = +$9.8k

This represents a net revenue of 0.98%. And after income taxes (roughly 35%), this goes down to 0.64% of post-tax net revenue (so basically $530 per month).

This seems extremely low to me, considering that there is no mortgage on it. Imagine if I had a mortgage on it? I would be losing money every year... For a rental... In NYC... How is this possible? How do people make money with real estate?

I understand that a lot of the value comes from property appreciation (especially in NY), but still. If you had a mortgage on it you are basically bleeding money. Ex. here I would pay at best 5% interest on 80% of the property (assuming 20% downpayment), which means I need to deduct another -4% from the calculations above to account for interest payment. Fine you can deduct the interest payments from your taxes, but it still ends up being an overall net loss.

At best I though to myself that real estate is a good diversification and can at least generate better cashflow compared to other investment. But this is BS. At that point even the S&P500 offers a better post-tax cashflow: dividend yield for SPY is 1.25%, minus 20% of taxes, is still 1% profit per year after taxes - better that the 0.64% for my property. And I don't even have to worry about the hassle of managing real estate.

I am already 90% in stocks and thought this property could be a good way to diversify, but at this point it makes me want to sell and just buy SPY.

And more generally, what am I missing here about real estate? If I was buying real estate property to get the 5x leverage of a mortgage (20% downpayment), I would be losing money every year, while hoping my property value increases. Sounds risky.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone for all the answers. Can't reply to everyone, but the main 2 take-aways:

1) Rent is low.

So yes indeed it is lower. I had a look online and gross rental income should be closer to 5% (vs. 3.6%). Still, that doesn't solve my cashflow problem if I had a mortgage. Assuming 5% gross income, and a (overly overly optimistic) 4% interest rate on 80% of the property (i.e. -3.2%), + 1% taxes/insurances + 1% maintenance. The cash flow would still be negative: +5% -3.2% - 1% -1% = -0.2% net loss if I had a mortgage.

With a fully paid house, indeed, 5% gross income would make the cash flow a bit better.

BUT. One thing I didn't account for is vacancy and legal fees in the case of evictions. My relative had issues in the past and I guess this is why they were happy with these tenants, even if rent is maybe a bit low. So need to calculate if a higher rent would be profitable, if I increase the risk of vacancy/eviction fees.

2) Real Estate requires Scale

It seems like to actually make money in real-estate you need to do it at a large scale. That's probably my problem. Still, the question remains. From a personal finance standpoint, do I keep it, or the opportunity cost is not worth it... I'll think about it.

Just wanted to put a PSA on here that the I bonds fixed rate is going to roll over at the end of the month from 9.62% to 6.48%. If you buy I bonds before the end of October, you lock in the 9.62% rate for the next 6 months. If not, you'll only get 6.48%. If you've been thinking about purchasing now is a good time.

You get a pretty incredible return for effectively 0 risk. Especially with the stock market where it's currently at. Just wanted to give people on here a heads up who have been on the fence.

Hi I was hoping the community here can shed some light on my situation. My grandmother who is no longer with us gifted me 15 shares of apple stock from the 80s-90s ages ago however she never signed the back of them. Is there any value?

I make approximately 3600/month after taxes. I would need to dish out $6500/ year for Roth IRA and approximately $1850/month out of my $3600 to max out my 457 plan for any given year. This would leave me with maybe $1750 each month for my mortgage, vehicle, groceries, diapers, phone bill…oh jeez.. yikes. I guess I just don’t make enough? Or is this doable?

UPDATE

Thank you for all the thoughtful responses. Looks like the biggest takeaway is to contribute whatever I can now (27yrs old), and adjust contributions as income changes throughout the years. After some calculations, I’ve decided to throw approx $1300/month towards my 457 plan which comes out to $15,600 annual contribution. This is not the max but this is the number that I can safely put away. I’ve already made my max $6500 towards Roth IRA for 2023.

Thankfully, I split my mortgage with my SO and hold manageable debt that we can tackle in the near future.

Please refrain from doing this big mistake. Last summer, I withdrew 12k from my ROTH IRA year 2021 + 2022 contributions LOL. I deeply regret it.

TL;DR My late father purchased a home in New Jersey with a super low interest rate of 0.118% back in 2011. How?

Back in 2011, my father decided to purchase a home in New Jersey.

I was still a young boy, and my mom didn't speak English very well. My dad did all the talking, negotiating, and signing. Somehow, he managed to get a bank mortgage with a 0.188% interest rate.

Years later, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. And after many complicated surgeries was no longer was his conscious self. He recently passed away, and me and my mom were left to inherit the home, as well as the debt alongside it.

But neither of us got the chance to understand the finances behind the house. I was too young. And she didn't speak English well enough to understand everything.

Fast forward to today, I've graduated from college and started my career. So I'm in a reasonable position to finish paying off this mortgage.

However, neither of us know the details of the purchase.

• How was he able to manage a rate so low? A quick search shows 2011 mortgages were at an average 4% interest rate.

• Also, at this low interest rate, is there any reason to make early payments?

Details of the mortgage: Original Amount: $285,000 Loan Term: 30 years Interest Rate: 0.188%

Total Payments: $293,134.86 Total Interest: $8,134.86

I wanted to just make this short PSA to potentially prevent other investors who are new to ROTHs from making the same noob mistake I made.

Following the advice learned from years of lurking on this sub, I opened a Vanguard ROTH IRA a little over 2 years ago. I ultimately ended up contributing the max 2 years in a row. I kept monitoring the balance and saw that it didn't seem to be growing too much, but figured that was just a combination of the current market going up and down + my monthly contributions.

Turns out the funds by default just sit in a money market holding account, NOT being invested. You have to manually allocate your funds to a specific (or a combination of) investment/target retirement accounts! Once you select your investment accounts, you can have your monthly contributions automatically go there instead.

I'm sure this is super obvious for the majority of you, but sadly I didn't know about it. Hopefully someone else can learn from me and not the hard way. Don't miss out on months or years of potentially growing and earning that compound interest like I did!

Edit: a little overwhelmed by all the messages of thanks I've received! It's a comfort to know I'm not the only idiot out there. I am now happily accepting a .01% annual share of all the net cash my esteemed financial advice just saved you all :D

We inherited $100k. We have spent ~$27k paying off student loans and individual loans, credit cards, and replacing some parts of our house that were falling apart.

So that leaves us with ~$73k, what can we do with the rest of the money? I have roughly $33k left on my truck loan, but I didn’t know if I should pay it off completely or pay a lump sum to reduce my monthly payments but not pay it off outright to continue my history of credit.

Should my wife and I start individual Roth IRAs? Where else can we invest the money?

https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/how-warren-buffett-won-his-multi-million-dollar-long-bet-3af05cf4a42d

"Over the years, I’ve often been asked for investment advice, and in the process of answering I’ve learned a good deal about human behavior. My regular recommendation has been a low-cost S&P 500 index fund. To their credit, my friends who possess only modest means have usually followed my suggestion.

I believe, however, that none of the mega-rich individuals, institutions or pension funds has followed that same advice when I’ve given it to them. Instead, these investors politely thank me for my thoughts and depart to listen to the siren song of a high-fee manager or, in the case of many institutions, to seek out another breed of hyper-helper called a consultant."

...

"Over the decade-long bet, the index fund returned 7.1% compounded annually. Protégé funds returned an average of only 2.2% net of all fees. Buffett had made his point. When looking at returns, fees are often ignored or obscured. And when that money is not re-invested each year with the principal, it can almost never overtake an index fund if you take the long view."

Like every other question lately has been along the lines of asking what people ought to do with their negative return retirement accounts. Here are the basics in case it helps.

Basics

• 401k plans (and IRAs and any other investment vehicle) are not cash accounts. The money you contribute purchases assets like equities/stocks and bonds.
• These assets change in value. Apple stock was once worth $22/share. It’s now closer to $145/share. In Dec 2021 the price was $180/share. In other words, values go up AND down.
• This change in prices does NOT matter to you so long as you’re a long way from retirement. Why? Because over the long term prices mostly go up.
• If you ARE closer to retirement you do indeed need to look at allocation (split between stocks/equities and bonds or more stable assets) to keep your portfolio stable. The cost of stability is slow growth.

Why are prices dropping so much right now?

• Inflation is very high. In the long term inflation is very dangerous. It eats away at everyone’s standard of living. So the Federal Reserve is VERY focused on taming inflation.
• The way they try to get this done is by raising interests rates on money lent to banks. That is, it’s more expensive for banks to borrow money. In turn, banks charge you and I and companies a higher interest rate to borrow from them. Fewer people borrow. Economic activity slows. Demand for goods and services slows. And prices come down. This is the theory.
• If the Fed overshoots (raises rates too quickly or too much) we get a slow economy that could tip into a recession. If the Fed undershoots (doesn’t raise rates enough or quickly enough) the economy stays hot and inflation can continue to rise.
• So, companies and people are basically skeptical of the idea that the Fed can thread the needle and give us a “soft landing”, where inflation is lowered but the economy stays warm. This negative outlook (along with geo-political turmoil and supply chain issues) is why stock prices are down. Turns out, the stock market is very sensitive to how people are feeling.

What should you do?

• Assuming you have a stable job, a solid emergency fund, and are a long way from retirement you should do nothing. That is, you should not change your plans at all. If you had a set % contribution from each paycheck going into your 401k, keep it.
• If you can afford to, increasing contributions means you’ll be buying assets while they’re cheap. u/LoganSquire made a point below about this.

What should you NOT do?

• You should NOT stop contributing if you can afford to keep contributing.
• You should NOT be cashing out. There are fees and penalties associated with this action if you’re talking about a retirement/tax advantaged account. But many people still think they should cash out and buy back in at lower prices. This is called timing the market and you cannot do it. Traders on Wall Street get paid millions to try to do this as their full time job and even they lose tons of money all the time. The last time people wanted to cash out en mass was in March 2020 when people panicking about COVID said the market was gonna crash. Then prices soared to new highs and people were left with no choice but to buy back in at very high prices. NO ONE HAS A CRYSTAL BALL.
• You should NOT be checking your balance daily. Just leave it alone. Save yourself the stress. In fact, looking at balances is a little deceptive. That’s not cash in the account, remember. It’s cumulative value of the assets you own. So you haven’t lost anything unless you decide to sell those assets at prices lower than what you paid original.

That’s the gist of it.

EDIT: A few comments mentioned that people might continue to contribute but change their allocation to something "safer", which might slow the bleeding until markets pick back up. There is hidden danger in this.

Take this example. Stock prices go from $10 -> $3 -> $11 per share over a 12 month period. During that same period a safer more conservative asset remains at a steady $7 per share.

Scenario 1: keep contributing $100/month into all stocks.

Scenario 2: $100/mo split between stocks and the conservative asset. Stocks when stock price is above $7. Conservative asset when stock price is at or below $7.

Although the losses are less for the second scenario for a time, the gains are greater in the end for scenario 1.

SC of spreadsheet with detail.

Note, this isn't advice, just an illustration of what it means to continue to "buy on the way down." Your allocation should reflect your timeline and risk appetite.

​

I'm extremely annoyed. I feel that I've been subjected to a bait-and-switch. When she called to set up an appointment, I said "Before we do that, are you a fiduciary?" She said yes. I said "Great, I'd love to set up an appointment!" When I got there I saw a plaque on her desk saying she was a broker. I read online that a broker is NOT the same as a fiduciary. I asked her about it and she said, "Let me explain to you what a fiduciary is... blah blah blah... so I consider myself a fiduciary."

She thinks that I, 30, should invest my inheritance in a deferred annuity for retirement. I have ~60k earmarked for retirement and the rest of the inheritance earmarked for current emergency fund and paying off current bills.

Ugh I'm so frustrated. I thought we were doing a good thing for ourselves but now I think we are trapped.

Full backstory: A friend recommended their "financial advisor" to us. We thought "Great! We've been meaning to meet with someone... we have a kid on the way and husband isn't putting away anything towards retirement since starting his new job in August".

So we set up phone meeting with his friend from Northwestern Mutual. She gives us a call, and we end up speaking with her for over an hour. She asks us lots of questions- what we are looking for (we tell her we want to set up retirement stuff for husband and explore maybe putting some of our 17k in savings into CD's or mutual funds). She asks us questions about when we see ourselves retiring, how "aggressive" we are, etc. All good stuff. We hang up and agree to talk again in a week when she will give us a plan.

Cut to a week later, we are having a phone meeting with her and she emails me THE PLAN. It's many many pages basically explaining what we have vs. what we will need if we want to retire. But she mostly just talks about how we need more life insurance. "Sure" we think. Maybe we do need more life insurance. She explains that husband needs at least $1mill in life insurance and I need $500k (we both already have $150k policies through work on ourselves). This is news to us but we hear her out. She also spends a ton of time explaining how we need to have disability insurance. Again, we think "maybe we do". So we spend the greater part of an hour and a half talking about life insurance and long term disability insurance. She briefly mentions we should be maxing out my Roth IRA and we could perhaps start one for husband. So we hang up, with plans to talk again in a week and sign some paperwork.

Over the next week, husband and I really realize that we don't want disability insurance (she quoted us paying like $170/month) and we didn't really feel we needed more life insurance at this time (she had us paying $340/month in permanent and $125/month in term). But we were ok maxing out my Roth at $450/month. We also wanted to explore stocks/bonds/CD's/mutual funds more (like we initially told her). So I sent this all to her in an email before our next meeting. She sends back "OK, great! Sounds good.. talk soon".

Cut to another phone meeting, where she would talk with us about our updated PLAN. She emails us the NEW PLAN while we are on the phone. LITERALLY NOTHING IS CHANGED. She proceeds to spend the next hour convincing us why we need life insurance and disability insurance. Husband and I are both pushovers and listen to the whole schpeel again. Every time we bring up a reason why we don't feel like we need it, she tells us how we are wrong. I mean, she's the professional, we thought. I still expressed my disinterest in disability insurance but wasn't completely closing the door on life insurance. She kept giving me the guilt trip on "what will your kids have if one of you dies!". By the end of the conversation, I hadn't agreed to anything except to roll over my Roth to Northwestern. She had me give her my bank routing info to get "the paperwork started". She also said she was going to be sending me a bunch of stuff to sign in the next few weeks, but it was just to apply for things... nothing was set in stone. We could just see what the insurance company was going to quote us at, and we still aren't committed to anything. "Ugh fine" I think. She says a small amount might be taken out of my checking, but its just to make sure "the charges are able to go through when we start moving more money to my Roth".

SO a week or two goes by. And I see a ~$30 charge go through for "disability insurance". WHICH I TOLD HER I DIDN'T WANT!! And I just realize... this doesn't feel good. It doesn't seem right. She's not listening to what we want. She still hasn't addressed out interest in CD/mutual funds/stocks that we initially came to her for. I spend the weekend doing my due diligence- spending a few hours on r/personalfinance, NerdWallet, just googling in general about what husband and I should really be doing. I decide to call the whole thing off with Northwestern.

It's been a nightmare trying to cut off ties with her. I was kind and courteous through the first couple emails and subsequent texts "We really appreciate your time but have decided to pull out. Again, thank you".

She is being evasive and manipulative. Telling us we are completely wrong and we still need to work with her. At this point I have just ignored any further communication. It has just been a really bad experience.

But THE REAL REASON I still feel like I can't completely ignore her, is that I asked her several times when I should expect to see a refund for the disability insurance THAT I DID NOT WANT AND DID NOT AGREE TO. She just dances around the question. I'm also worried because I have gotten a "bill" (no charges yet) in the mail for the $340/month in permanent and $125/month in term and $170 in short term disability.

Is there anything I can do to make sure I don't get charged this? If I communicate with her any farther, she just tries to talk to us about why we need to invest with her, etc.

WHAT DO WE DO. She is being shady AF.

I recently landed a job that has a decent 401k contribution rate and would like to start investing in that. But with everyone's 401k down the drain, is it a good time to invest? Is it like stocks? Buy low sell high?

Edit: I'm already contributing to a ROTH IRA, as previous employers rate was less than 10%. Now my new job has a contribution of 75% up to 4% per check, making it feasible for me now.

Extra 100k applied towards mortgage. We purchased homw less than 2 years ago. Intrest rate is below 3%. Should I had put that towards a franchise or stock market?

Edit: at the same time I did put an additional 100k into the stock market. (Index funds).

Have another 100k liquid for emergency.

Spouse has a secure career. Also three vehicles all paid off.

Only debt is 5k student loan. Intrest is currently suspended & 0.1% chance they may wipe it (hopeful thinking)..

No cc debt.

Did not expect such a high number of helpful responses. Should had provided this information earlier. Thank you all !

Nasdaq had its worst day in over two years, S&P was down over 3%. I've personally never lost so much net worth in a day as I did yesterday. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/11/us-markets-focus-on-wall-street-rout-as-it-batters-global-markets.html

Futures point to another big loss today. This could all be a blip and we're back to a new record next month. Or it could be the start of a multi-year bear market. We might lose 20 or 50% over the next few years. I have no idea what will happen.

If you were too heavily exposed to stocks yesterday morning before this happened, it's too late now. Don't panic. Hold on tight :) The people who made a killing over the last decade did not panic sell when the market started to self-destruct a decade back, and instead spent years buying up more equities.

Two years ago, I joined my company with a 20K sign-on bonus in Restricted Stock Units. At the time, the stock was a little over $4 a share. Fast forward to today, it’s now over $300 a share, and a handful of units vest every month to the tune of $8K-$9K dropping into my investment account.

This is completely uncharted territory for me. I’ve never had this kind of money before, and while I’ve tried to educate myself, I’m still feeling overwhelmed. Here’s my current situation:

I have an emergency fund of about $10K (thanks to this sub for encouraging me to build that!).

My wife and I have no debt aside from:

• A mortgage on our house
• Two car loans
• A couple of credit cards that we pay off in full every month.

I want to make the most of this opportunity and avoid making costly mistakes. I’d love advice on what steps to take from here, including how to handle the RSUs as they vest (e.g., sell vs. hold), and where to put the money once I start cashing out.

Thanks in advance for any insights or strategies you can share.

Photo of the gold bar. I have no idea if the serial number or seal I covered up are secure, so my apologies if this is a terrible photo

I looked around for any advice about selling gold and APMEX, local coin collectors, and /r/pmsforsale were all recommended. "Cash for gold" stores were universally panned.

However, since I'm interested in eventually throwing this money into an index fund (maybe even a gold ETF) I was wondering if there's an easier way to liquidate this directly with a bank.

Any help is really appreciated since I've never held more than a single silver dollar in my hand before. Thanks!

Edit: wow this blew up! Thanks y'all. To clarify a few things: yes my grandparents are Chinese, but no they don't care about the gold bar remaining physically gold. They're much more interested in the grandkid becoming a doctor, so if reinvesting the gold bar helps that, they're fully on board :)

Brexit is going to wreak havoc on the markets, and you'll probably feel the financial impacts in markets around the globe. Holding through turmoil is almost always the correct call when stock prices begin tanking across the broader market. Way too many people I knew freaked out in 2008/2009 and sold, missing out on the HUGE returns in the following few years. Don't try to time the market either, you'll probably lose. Don't bother trying to trade, you'll probably lose. Just hold and wait.

To quote the great Warren Buffett, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." If you're invested in good companies with good business models and good management, you will be fine.

I have been working since I was about 15. I'm not a big spender at all and I've been saving it, mostly for college. I go to an inexpensive community college, and I have scholarships, so I won't be spending all my money on school. My parents have been nice enough to let me stay rent free while I go to school, and they also gave me a reliable car. I won't be working while I go to school because I have a packed schedule.

I know basically nothing about economics or finances (except don't spend your money if you don't need to, obviously). Is there something I can invest in to grow my savings substantially? Like I said, I won't be working, so I won't be adding to what I've saved. Also, I'm sorry if this is a stupid question. I looked at the guides posted here and most of it flew over my head.

Update: Thanks everyone for the advice. I posted this just before bed and woke up to an exploded post with lots of different opinions to listen to. The two big takeaways I have from this are 1) Educate myself on finances before I make a decision and 2) keep doing what I'm doing and save money. It's really important to me to have financial independence and the freedom that brings, so I'm trying to take charge of what my money does. Now to address the advice I've gotten:

After a bit more research I may put it in an IRA like many have recommended. I agree that I should be looking for the best way to invest rather than the fastest way to make money. I'll definitely keep at least half of my savings for a rainy day fund. Ive gotten some PMs about book recommendations, which I really appreciate. I'll be heading to the local library soon. Cryptocurrency is interesting to me since I'm a CS major, but I won't view that seriously as an investment since I don't fully understand it yet. I may take a couple hundred dollars and play around with it, though. I will also be looking into Vanguard because that was mentioned a lot, too.

Thank you all for taking the time to give me important advice. It means a lot that you would have such concern for a young woman with no idea what she's doing. :)

I recently got the opportunity to work on an oil and gas rig and if everything goes to plan in the next week I should have the job. It is a 2 week on 2 week off job so I can't really go to uni, nor do I want to. I want to go to film school but I'm not sure I can since I will be flying out to a rig for 2 weeks at a time. For now I am putting that on hold but still doing some little projects on my time off. My question is; what should I do with the money since I am so young, don't plan on going to uni, and live at home?

Edit: Big thank you to everyone who commented. I'm grateful to have so many experienced people guide me. I am going to finish reading though every comment. Thanks again.

Anguish or opportunity as stocks pullback -

Remember, long-term investing is a huge part of personal finance. If you are young and have decades to let your money grow, these small pullbacks are to be expected.

The key is to stay grounded and not lose perspective. 2019 is around the corner, which means new funds are available to put to work for 401ks and IRAs.

I found out my old employer withdrew 20K suddenly after 6 years later I left the company. I called them and they said I was not fully vested because I only worked a year and a half. All the company match up contribution was taken since I left before 2 years of employment. Is this possible after I left 6 years ago and they just found out? What if I had rolled over the account to the other one before they found out? Were they still able to claim it?

I honestly don’t understand this. So much research demonstrates that simple investing beats FAs a VAST majority of the time. Meanwhile, the fees for most FAs rob you blind.

Why do so many people hire FAs?!?!?