Hello fellow Mustachians,
I recently moved to the US, English is not my first language so sorry for the mistakes.
I am 32 and my wife is 28, recently married. She is working full time grossing $45,000 per year and I am self-employed/looking for a job. We live in San Francisco and our monthly expenses are $4,000 including rent, student loan, groceries and eating out once per week.
I own a passive online business that went well until a year ago but now is in its decline. It is still making some money though, in the order of about $1,500 monthly after expenses, revenue is expected to go down gradually over the following months.
My wife’s student loan is composed by $26,000 private loan at 10% avg interest and $17,000 of State loan at 6% avg interest. We pay off the minimum every month ~ $500.
I am debt free. We have $87,000 in stocks and about $145,000 liquid.
We plan to have our first kid next year and hopefully move somewhere else cheaper than SF.
Coming from Europe, I am somehow feeling overwhelmed by the different options that exists in the US in terms of credit, debt, investment, score…etc. I considered investing part of the money in a real estate property but the housing market in the Bay Area is definitely not for my pockets. Out of state investing could be an option but, being new in the US my credit history is null so I can’t get a mortgage (the bank requires 2 years at least of job history and my business was based in Europe, so that wouldn’t count).
I am planning on paying off entirely wife’s private loan of $26,000 at 10% and I was debating if It was a good idea or not paying off the rest of the student loan at 6%. If not, we could save and invest the money that we were paying for the private loan monthly instead. Is it a good strategy?
I am looking for a job, but I find the market pretty competitive here so I am having some difficulties encountering it. We are planning on buying a used car with the idea of doing some Uber while looking for a job. Max budget for car is $10,000. Additionally I can do some online marketing consultancy.
I am not sure what to do with the rest of the money, about $100k. I looked into Personal Capital, Betterment, Wealthfront. Despite Personal Capital highest fees, at the moment is the one that I feel more secure with. On the other hand, markets are in all time highs and I would like to have some cash ready to invest aggressively when markets go down. Where should I put this funds?
Given this situation, what would you do?
Any advice would be great!
Thanks