Hey guys & gals,
I just wanted to explain my current situation and thoughts and ask if you guys thought I was on the right track, had any input, or think I'm doing something completely wrong. So let me start by explaining my situation:
I have a job I love, but there's not much pay in it and I'm here for now mainly because I like it (easy work, great boss) and I'm a young professional farming experience that is just lucky to have any job in my depressing career field (communications). I know, not the best booming business to be in, but I enjoy it and even though I've thought about getting additional schooling, the debt of another degree, plus not knowing if I would like being in any of the handful of STEM fields keeps me away (I do know I hate programming!) and after a few years of experience I have found jobs in the field with decent pay, but they just may require me moving. The only debt I have is from a car (11.6k) so I've decided to take on a second job for the next few months to try and pay it off and save a little on the 2.9% APR. Even though my primary job doesn't pay well, it does have some notable perks (I work for the state) I get free healthcare, a gym on site that is fantastic and only $30 a month, and a pension that if I were to stay in for until I'm 60, would pay me 69% of my five years' highest salary, but 6.75% of my paycheck goes to funding the pension (still a good deal though) but this blog has had me dreaming of early retirement. My finance situation is as follows:
Assets:
2.4k emergency fund (should be 3k but I'm waiting on my roommate to pay me back on some damages he made to my car)
1.8k roth mutual fund
2.4k owned on Car. It's valued at 14k, but has 11.6k remaining on it (I've been paying 3x the minimum on it for the past few months)
$20 invested in Acorns app (just trying to see how it goes let me know if anyone has any thoughts on this!)
$500+ sitting in credit card rewards points that I plan to use on my next 6 month car insurance payment (I pay the 6 months up front for a discount)
Various old games and crap that I plan on selling on eBay/Craigslist
Take-home pay:
1800 primary job
1100 secondary job
Total 2900
Monthly costs:
rent+utilities 500 (rent 400 w/roommate, internet 20, electric 50, water&trash 30)
Gym+netflix 40
Groceries 160
Gas 80
Fun money 100 (used on eating out and entertainment and hanging with friends)
random expenses that come up 25 (gifts/oil changes)
Total Monthly Costs 905
Remaining amount for the sake of ezyness: 2k
Questions:
Right now I'm living at around less than 30% of my income and am trying to figure out what to do with the remaining 70%. My first thought was to just work the second job a few months and pay off my car and then I could quit and still live on about 50% of my income and have more of a work/life balance, which I value. But if I could handle it, I would ideally want to work the 2nd job for longer at least until I could find a main primary job that pays more.
My best friend is big on investing and is an accountant and told me about a fantastic mutual fund (been around for 20 years with a great return) that is closing to new investors at the end of this month, but requires $2500 to open. I figured it would be worth foregoing about a month's worth of my car payment to go into just opening the account and getting in.
Even though the APR isn't super high on the car, I would like to pay if off as soon as possible because if I lost my roommate then my rent would double until I got another one, and that's not sustainable for me to pay 1k on rent. However, I have thought about if that happens getting an apt thats $750 but close to work, and then just walking to work every day, and selling my newish car and buying one that's older and making about 5k doing that and investing it (I'd feel more comfortable owning an older vehicle if I could walk to work.) But I'm not sure. I've also thought about looking into jobs that would pay more even if it causes me to move because then I could move and just find a room to rent in a house nearby to my job and still have a fairly low cost of living anywhere I went—but I'd be giving up my pension. Also, I'm wondering if I'm too worried about paying off my car, and should be using the extra money to invest since its not a high-interest debt and then just pay the minimum 320 on my car and invest 1680 each month. I've also drawn up a post-car debt budget as well but for the sake of brevity I'll make a separate post to get opinions on it.
Thanks for reading and let me know what you guys think!