1: If you pay off the entire amount of the credit card charges at the bill date you will never be charged interest?
Exactly right. If you pay off the full amount each billing cycle you don't pay any interest. You can do this via autopay (just say the "full statement amount") and never have to worry about it.
I think the only exception is if you use your CC to take a cash advance. Those usually start accruing interest from that day, not at the end of the billing cycle. However, if you're just making regular purchases, then you'll never be charged interest if you pay in full every month.
2: When I begin investing what are the numbers/amounts I absolutely must keep track of in order to not cause problems for myself? Particularly as far as taxes are concerned?
I have not begun investing but as soon as I am debt free (hopefully 3 months for now), and I intend to put my money into betterment; however, as I am investing and generating profit I am unsure as to exactly which numbers I must keep track of. Do I have to track exactly how much I invest and how much I make and claim any extra profits as work profit for the taxes? I apologize I am very lacking in knowledge of how taxes themselves work. I understand the different categories people fit in economically change the amount of percentage for taxes they must pay. I understand there are things like tax harvesting etc... and I do not even know where to begin as far as what I need to know in order to protect myself.
Just a note that you don't pay any taxes on unrealized profits. So if your investments increase from $1500 to $2000 because the stock market went up, you owe no taxes at that time. It's only when you
sell that you'll pay taxes on the gains. ($500 in this case) If you earn dividends (which you will if you're in a broad market index fund), those are taxable every year whether they are reinvested or not. However, it takes a really really long time to earn any amount that will have any significant effect on your taxes, so it's nothing to worry about. For example, the S&P 500 EFT (SPY) pays out a 1.86% dividend yield per year. So if your $2000 was all invested in that, you'd earn and pay taxes on an extra $37.20.
And as FLBiker mentioned above, the brokerage keeps track of everything for you and sends you the proper forms to file your taxes so there's not a whole lot for you to keep track of.