I also have some $820 in acorns and <$1500 in a rollover IRA I have yet to move to a ROTH but putting it off for tax/wuss reasons. However, I have $772 in CC debt. But a win is a win, I can pay it off with time 😁

Gonna try to save $10k next year

Through hard work and some good savings I’m going into the new year with $4,935 in my savings… I didn’t quite hit the goal but that’s close enough for me… I’m very proud of myself!

The Christmas I was gifted a shirt that I returned to the store. It was only worth like $17, but in all the hustle and bustle and the sheer amount of people I lost the gift card the store gave me, and I am so upset at myself for falling so far in my finances that something under $20 can ruin my day.

4 years ago I was completely debt-free, owned my car, and was making investments in my retirement. Now I'm barely scraping by, with $30k+ in credit card debt between surgeries/out of work/low pay/supporting family members.

There's no advice to be had, I'm just really feeling it this holiday season.

Apricot (top) Tang (bottom)

I got my boys after a roommate abandoned them. I couldnt bring myself to take them to a shelter. They cost me 4459 a year between litter, prescription diet, and insurance. Not to mention needing the money for vet visits up front. Tang cost me 4k this year after insurance covered 90% for a urinary blockage and other things and Apricot cost me 2k and counting this year after insurance covered 90% for a string of nailbed infections they are still trying to find the cause of and other small things.

I love these buggers but they are crushing me in bills. If this were happening to me even a few years ago I would have had to put them both down and the thought of others going through that keeps me up at night.

I grew up I'm poverty and have been on my own since I was 15. I'm so thankful for my fiance and his mom ❤️

I don’t sleep at night at all. I think last week I got like 20 hours of sleep total. I have no money for my antidepressants, anxiety meds, sleep meds or anything and I’m always on edge. I’m seriously starting to question everything. I’m not going to make rent this month but I thought at the very least I would have $50 for at least one drug. I’m so lost.

Both of my parents didn't grow up with money. They were born in a third-world country and immigrated to the U.S., where they worked like crazy and scrapped every penny they could for the family.

This instilled a sense of hard work from which I have benefitted. However, there is one thing that I've always hated — the non-stop nature of their work ethic.

My mother is a few months from retiring and I'm helping her with the paperwork. Yesterday, she mentioned she has over 400 hours of vacation time and over 600 hours of sick time. She was happy because her union recently got the company to agree to pay all the vacation time of people retiring and half of the sick time.

I can count on my fingers the number of times my parents took vacation. It was always this precious thing because it was so rare. Most summers I spent on my own (I'm an only child), and once I turned 13, I was also working or volunteering. As for sick time, only in the past three years has she started to use her sick time. Before, there was always this idea of working through the pain. Even I was sent to school if I was sick.

I'm almost 40 now, and yesterday, when I saw how much unused PTO time she has, all I could think about was why she didn't want to spend more time together. I'm not even thinking of some grand vacation; I would have been so happy if she had taken a few Fridays off during the summer so we could just hand out together.

Since I joined the workforce, I have made it a point to use my paid PTO whenever I wanted or needed to. I refuse to follow the same mindset. Yes, work hard, but don't drive yourself to the ground or miss on spending precious time with your family.

I try to invest 300-400$ every month. I found good gains from couple stocks so they definitely helped me. I feel so proud of myself and I definitely will invest more because it gets addictive.

To my surprise I got some mail on the 10th saying my landlord sold my house,and the new people are giving me 30 days to leave! The holiday season has been so shitty, we’re not on a lease, paying month to month. I’m sure that they’re in the legal right to make us leave, but we’re extremely fucked.

I live with my mom and dad. My mom is the only person in our household who works. My dad is on disability and already got his pay reduced a few months back, and I have severe mental issues like him but don’t receive any disability checks or anything. We literally have no options. We BARELY get by as is. And the rent in every property has skyrocketed like crazy. I don’t know what to do dude, we can’t afford to do anything at all, we don’t have people we can stay with or family with money to help out. We also have 2 dogs and a cat. It feels like our life is over and I’m freaking out so bad and am feeling so manic.

Life sucks bro!!! Kms

I grew up super poor. Our electricity would get cut off several times a year, we couldn't afford the garbage service. I didn't have my own car until my 20s. My wife also grew up super poor in a family of 10 kids. Every Christmas. The kids would take turns getting a big gift, otherwise it was a $10 - $20 deal per kid. None of the extended family gave them anything.

Anyway, I lurk here a bit because I can relate. My wife and I aren't poor anymore but half of her siblings are struggling pretty hard in this economy with their own kids and families. Inflation and slow wage increases is making the situation worse.

This year we finally managed to get out to this part of the country for Christmas. We decided to spoil people a bit. My wife took our nieces out and bought them all new clothes for about $200 each (they were wearing old stuff). My wife also took out our sister-in-law and bought her $1,000 worth of things she needed. The first two items were a tablet for school and a vacuum. Their vacuum had broke a month or so back and she couldn't afford to replace it. Now my wife is out doing another trip with another sister.

We asked people not to tell anyone. We weren't trying to flex, just help out. They're very grateful but also not sure how to take it because they've never been helped like this before. It's sad how normal never getting substantial help is.

Anyway, I'd like to offer my thanks to this community for keeping me grounded in the realities of regular people. That made it more likely that we remembered to do something for someone rather than blow the money on something trivial. I'm hoping this post inspires someone else in my position to do something likewise for someone else. It feels good and is deeply appreciated.

Merry Christmas!

I have a checking account that is free if I auto transfer $25 into a savings account with the same bank every month. So I only keep $25 in there. When it's transferred, I transfer it right back to my checking.

I put any and all money earned into an external high yield savings account. I use a credit card with high points back (I have an Amazon Prime card, 6% back on Amazon purchases) to pay for any and all purchases. I never, ever use cash. When the bill is due, I transfer enough money to pay off the balance into my checking from my external savings. I use the points towards the card balance.

I also use Care Credit for vet, dental, and med expenses. Sometimes this means I get two years zero interest to pay off a "promotional purchase." I pay the minimum on that card to avoid fees and then, when the "promotional purchase" is set to expire, I transfer the money from the external account to my checking and pay it off. Care Credit also recently became a Mastercard and has been offering double points back in groceries and pet store purchases. Woo hoo!

Making less than 40k a year, using this method, between points and savings account interest I had $1500 in capital. That money was enough for two months of rent and groceries.

You have to make your money work for you.

This method also works psychologically. Every time I take money from my savings, it hurts me. So I end up really watching my spending to keep my card balance low.

It does take a bit of foresight, knowing when to transfer money from my savings, but it works. Every day I wonder if my bank is going to catch on.

Edit: I did have a good "nest egg" in my savings account. I had been saving for a two years to be able to afford six months without work while I finish a clinical experience for school.

Also, I started this method as a way of sharing expenses with my partner while not having to share bank accounts. They use the credit card, too, so the points are coming from expenses for two people.

I am a 22m, live at home with my mom. I have not made any real progress in school or a career. Did 2 years of community college online, but no clue what I wanted to do and felt directionless. Work a job making $12 an hour. I have 4k saved, and don’t touch it unless it’s for emergencies. I recently totaled my car in an accident. My mom is a single mother of 6 children (including me the oldest, the next oldest is 17) and she only makes 42k. She is very good at finding resources that can help her out, but we still struggle obviously. She also does not make smart financial decisions at times. We currently rent an old 4 bedroom house for $1000 a month, which is way below what the average rent around us for similar houses. I am very close with my siblings, especially my youngest ones, because of how we grew up without dads, so I feel a responsibility to be there for them. However, this is also leading to a lot of pressure and has caused anxiety and depression, so I have been talking to a PNP and going through different medications. I feel like a failure and like I am letting my family down, and just need some advice.

So, I moved into a new apartment Dec 1 and everything was going well. Then, literally the week after I moved in, I lost my job. I was 1099, so not eligible for unemployment. The landlord is a property management company with several complexes.

I am poor and with no savings. Also, I was not able to get approved for a loan. I have job interviews coming up, but would not be making any money till after rent is due (January 1st).

Additionally, the electric company wants me to pay a deposit, so I don't know if my power would be immediately shut off once I'm unable to pay that on the first.

My phone bill is only 25$, so I can do online surveys and make enough to pay that. As far as everything else goes... wifi, electric, rent... it looks like I'll be at the mercy of the companies. Also, I was stupid enough to get a rentacenter bed, so that's getting repossessed on Saturday.

Obviously I'm anxious and stressed about facing homelessness in the middle of January.

I know Doordashing is an option for some, but I don't have a car or insurance.

What suggestions or gameplans do you guys have?

Thank you in advance.

Christmas sucked. I wasn't able to purchase gifts seriously. I am in debt out my ears. I don't want to ever be homeless so I out everything into making sure I have a roof over my head. I get tired of people telling me Christmas is about the Lord and Savior. WTF does that have to do with no money? Am I am bitter...I guess. Sorry for the rant but poverty is the only thing I know that risk real these days.

In the past year I've been able to save 13,000 dollars while only making 16 dollars an hour. I probably make more than that counting tips but that's my hourly wage. I keep my money in a standard savings account. How can I make this money work more for me this is the most money I've ever had in my life

I’ve been thinking about my own personal relationship with money and how it has changed, rather dramatically, over my life. I am aware that many of the folks here on Reddit are younger, and I thought it might be interesting. It has also been helpful to think it through.

I was raised by parents that were very frugal. While necessities were never at risk, I was raised without most middle-class comforts. We rarely ate at restaurants, my clothes were either hand me downs or in my teenage years no-name brands, and we didn’t have any of the new electronics that began to arrive in the 80s.

I largely embraced this frugality, saving my allowance which was about a quarter at age 8 to 9. I would pool money with my brother for lego sets, but other than that I just saved. We were raised with a keen eye that empty cans were worth a nickle, and after going to a college football game realized that the tailgaters were a gold mind of empties. For the next three years my brothers and I would go to out local college football games and collect cans for hours and hours. We might make $100 dollars per kid for several hours of work, which seemed like a gold mine.

That said, my relationship with money was very warped. The value of saving so ingrained in me that I was scared to spend it. I have a distinct memory of being at some kids roller-skating birthday party, and wanting a soda, having the money, but knowing if I spent it, I wouldn’t have it again, so I spent enough time in angst over it that I have a distinct memory of that still 40 years later.  In middle school I was caught at the local K-mart stealing a candy bar and the security guy was legit confused why I stole it despite having almost $60 with me.

So, this is the person who went to college. Who shared a thumb print studio apartment with his girlfriend in grad school. I would walk an extra mile because the pizza was $1 a slice and not $1.25. When I started working, I saved almost half of my income. I chose jobs and communities that were a lot more driven by mission and passion than money. I worked at a hippy boarding school as a teacher, where the pay was low enough that it was untaxed – thus preventing anyone from having to contribute to war taxes.

Despite never particularly working at a high-paying job, my strict saving and investing had begun to create a little nest egg, and I was interested in the ideas of saving enough that you could live off the interest, although primarily through cutting your living expenses to almost nothing.

I then had two experiences that rattled this faith in savings. The first was as my first wife became sicker and sicker. We were quite young, early 30s with a little two-year old. As my wife’s health declined we accepted the fact that maybe she wouldn’t be able to work full time, revising it later to maybe she wouldn’t be able to work, until things got bad enough that the question became – what would happen if she would need permeant bed-care. The cost of this would exceed any income I could imagine making, and I started to plan out how we could go bankrupt. The idea that all of my saving behavior could get washed away just seemed unfair. Alas, the rare bright side of her passing was that our savings were not damaged.

The second was watching my father, who had saved so much during his life, make poorer and poorer decisions as his mind faltered. Tearing down and rebuilding a rental property that he should have just walked away from, and giving away to much to a young woman he had become infatuated with, who wasn’t old mature enough to not accept this senile man showering her with gifts. Luckily after he co-bought a car with a stranger, I was able to sue him for custody and despite an ultimately multiple years of him persisting in a vegetative state, was able to give about 40k to each brother.

But, both of these experiences made me really question the value of this hyper saving that I had done my whole life. So, I relaxed my hyper vigilance some. Making sure my son had some fun birthday parties, allowed myself to travel more. Once I got a much more conventionally paid professional job, I could relax even more. I was able to use my nest egg I had built to purchase some rental properties, and actually didn’t by my first home until I was almost 40.

Things shifted rather dramatically again when I met my second wife, who was my age but had never been married or had kids. She was a relatively high-powered doctor, and when we started dating, I joked that it was like dating a princess. By our eighth date, I would say that seven of the top eight restaurants I had ever eaten at were with her, and that was in part because we didn’t go to a restaurant for one date. We got married, bought a house that I couldn’t have imagined owning as a kid.

For the first year or so, I would genuinely walk around still in a little bit of shock. My boss would tease me about the fact that I would still collect my empty soda cans to return to grocery store out of old habit, going so far as to calculate what an insane economic activity it was.

What is wild, is once that initial shock has passed, I can’t say that my actual day to day experience feels that better than when I was in my 20s, making easily 5% of what my family does now. Almost everything feels like just a different way of getting the same thing. For example, while I do have a chance to eat at some nice restaurants, but in my hippy 20s I was often on farms eating fresh produce, cooked by people who spent a lot of time thinking about food. My first wedding was catered by sister-in-law, an amazing chef, who for a few thousand dollars of supplies made spreads that were better than my professionally catered second wedding. While we do have a lot of hire help, in fact I often feel like managing my family is like a small business, with a fleet of employees from cleaners, babysitters and dog-walkers. When I was younger, I was able to find that help through friendships and exchanges. The luxuries that I actually find the most valuable, such as walking in nature are actually harder to do in my much busier adult life.

I am not saying that there aren’t many things I appreciate. My hyper-saving was a result of a background anxiety of not having enough, that I have been able to relax and know that we will always have enough. I continue to work because I find it meaningful, and worry about what I would do to feel productive if I didn’t work, but also know that if I lost my job, I would be in no rush to find a new one. When my son struggled in school, we didn’t have to worry about financial aid offers from prospective schools. But the reality is that the real limiting factor in my life is time.

One thing I actually worry about is my son grew up during this transition, and I am struck (and honestly worried) about what he thinks are “normal” purchases. I have tried as best I can to prepare him for college days of eating only Ramen, but it is hard to hold that rigidity when it is not actually there for you as an adult.  

so basically our drains backed up on Christmas and I wound up having to call a plumber to hydrojet the clean out and he ran a camera through the sewer line and showed massive amounts of root instrusion and what was clearly a broken clay pipe towards the end of the line.

He told me that this pipe is on the verge of collapsing entirely and making the house unliveable (and he also got his camera stuck on it, which is how bad it is, the 4 inch opening has shrunk down to just about 2 inches, if that) and quoted me $12k to patch the line in 9 spots and dig up and replace the broken pipe that cannot be patched which seems like a pretty good deal to me but...

how on Earth are we supposed to afford this? I called this in on behalf of my dad and burnt through a good chunk of my savings and don't know what to do. Our house needs a new roof as well, but since it doesn't really rain that's not as urgent as not having functioning plumbing.

We live in the Bay Area so our house is valued at $1.5 million or more (bought when it was still cheap) despite its terrible condition. My dad does not have much education and doesn't really speak English so I was trying to explain to him what is going on but I don't know if he'll be able to maneuever this and we definitely don't make enough to save up for it. Since our house is worth so much our plumber told me that we might be able to use our equity (which I barely understand) to get a loan but I don't really know what mess my dad has financially. He nearly lost the house when I was in highschool because he was more enamored with binge drinking than paying the rent so...

I really don't know what to do. Please help. Thanks.

Not going to lie, with bills, car payments, etc etc. My savings is minimal at the end of the month. But I have a seperate savings account that I try not to touch since its what I'm using to save up for a down payment on a house eventually.

Happy to report that as of today, I have $5000 saved up to put towards a house if I ever eventually manage it. I'm pretty hopeful that eventually I'll find a decent place, or a fixer upper would be preferable.

Honestly, it may seem like a small milestone to some. But to me this is a BIG deal.

New York City is the biggest city in the USA and it's very romanticized and I'm sure there's lots to do in here.

But most of my life, me and my family have struggled financially and in other ways.we currently in a very small apartment and there's 6 of us.

I am 21 years old and I never have done anything worthwhile here. I struggle with finding a job, I haven't graduated college, I haven't made any money, I haven't even found a social circle, no friends, nothing.

My family wants to move out to Atlanta Georgia because other family lives there and we will buy a house.

I can't help but feel so upset and angry at myself for this.

I'm sure theres plenty of opportunities and things to do, but I just haven't managed to find them here. The only good experiences I've had that I'm happy about are attending the New York comic con and the new York anime con.

I also went to a horse riding class, and went to coney Island and some zoos but that's about it. I haven't really done anything serious. I'm so fucking disappointed and upset.

my spouse and i will finally (finally) be making enough to keep our heads above water and have some change to start paying off our debt and hopefully save up to get out of my hometown over the next few years.

we’ve had a very hard past few years. it’s long, sad story. we’ve racked up like $11k in CC debt and and a student loan (there may be more of these while i try to finish my degree).

i don’t even know where to start. we’ve struggled so much, we’ve been in survival mode just trying to get better jobs and get our feet back under us. the debt is daunting and feels overwhelming. we have been living penny to penny, then paycheck to paycheck, and now we have just a little breathing room. every bill is being paid, and we’re starting to rely less on food pantries.

where do i even begin besides a budget? i can share that if it gives context. how do we buy groceries?? what takes priority when spending? can we invest a couple bucks anywhere? what goal do i need to be aiming towards? and wtf is a credit score!

thanks in advance

I've got 2 foam mattresses from IKEA from when my kids were younger. They finally grew enough to need real mattresses, which we did like 7 months ago. And since then we've just had them old ones like....hanging out around the house.

Our local dump has a big "NO MATTRESSES" on their website, and anyway they like to upcharge every little thing. In the past living in an apartment, I woulda thrown it in the dumpster and declared it not my problem. But nowadays we rent a house, and since my husband's layoff we can't afford much let alone what it'd cost to get the trash collection company to take it on trash day (different folks than run the dump). And they're both covered in marker from when the kids were younger.

I feel like I've run up against every option, but maybe you guys have ideas?

Edit: I feel like the down votes might be related to the 'dry begging' PSA in here a few days ago, so I want to be totally transparent and say that I do not want anyone's money. I just wanna commiserate about how expensive the dump is, and be told the creative places y'all have shoved unwanted mattresses.

So everytime I try to use more than one coupon stores tend to be like "lol no" or the coupon is something like "$1 off any $10 purchase one per customer". Obviously now and then you can get some really good coupons but I have never been able to coupon to the degree of the extreme couponing I see going on in the states. Coupons are like a huh nice I saved a couple dollars at this point, but how do I as a Canadian turn it into a $300 of groceries for $3.99 like the American TV show? If anyone is out here in Canada extreme couponing please give me the info. I have the time and the pettiness and the desperation and I'm ready lol

I recently received a bonus check of $1200 and want to get some advice on best/most strategic use of it. I meed to make a large purchase in the next month that requires financing and want to give my credit score a proper bump if possible. Current debt listed below, excluding regular expenses

Debt: Capital One credit card; $4,400 balance used on $4500 limit; minimum payment $150~; APR 27%

Fortiva Credit Line (for dental work); $1400 balance used on $1900 limit; minimum payments $105~; APR 31%

Credit one credit card; $400 balance used on $850 limit; minimum payments $45~;APR 30% (if typically pay this card off monthly)

Comenity Bank credit card #1; $300 balance on $1200 limit; minimum payments $40~; APR 28%

Comenity Bank credit card #2; $300 balance on $900 limit; minimum payments $40~; APR 28%

Any helpful advice is appreciated 🫡

Like, with the whole economy situation, the crazy rents a stagnating wages + it being harder to get a well paying job.

What is the outlook for the future?