If you have an HHI under 200k and no family money, where do you go for financial advice

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These days, I would also try feeding info to ChatGPT and ask what to do.

This is what I do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:- mandatory retirement savings and get 100% of employer match.

- aggressively pay off all debts. Refinance mortgage if the rates are good

- live pretty frugally. Find gigs like small scale catering, babysitting, laundry, dog walking, before and after care - (even if SAH parent),

- buy a home that does not bankrupt you

- college savings? start small. First save for 2 years of community college tuition. That takes away the extreme stress and anxiety. Then stretch it to cover - 2 years of in-state public college.
Now, in worse case, your kid can go to CC for 2 years and in-state for next 2 years. Now, stretch for the full 4 years of in-state public college tuition. So on and so forth. Don't think that you have to have 1/2 million of college tuition. It is dumb and it does no favors to you or your kid.

- If you do not have insider knowledge and lots of money - go for an index fund.

- Under 200K is a good HHI. You can choose - retirement, good choice of housing, college. No need to keep up with the Joneses.

- Finally - Invest your time in your health, your kids, your relationships and in acquiring skills and knowledge. You can be very wealthy - but if you raised your kids to be terrible humans, or your relationship/marriage fails, or you have health problems - then I think you are not successful in life.

This is all great advice.

[Anonymous]

Bogleheads

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This country is blessed with many universities. The choice of major is indeed really important. If you are a parent with a child who wants to be an engineer and you don't have a lot of money for college consider yourself lucky. There a lot of engineering schools that are very affordable and if your child starts doing internship after their freshman year and do so until their junior year, they will be very competitive on the job market.

I am an electrical engineer precisely in DSP and I have had interns from a wide range of schools. The Interns from the lower ranked schools were not unqualified at all.

This. ABET sets a high floor for engineering degrees. As a hiring manager, I do not find a significant difference between most engineering college (MIT, CalTech, Stanford are examples of exceptions), BUT I do find a big difference between students who took the easy upper-level in-major engineering electives and those who took the more rigorous upper-level in-major electives. Rigor matters to employers because it translates into on-the-job knowledge and skills.

Pick an engineering college that offers the student’s desired degree and is affordable and has a high graduation rate in engineering, then study hard and be sure to take the rigorous upper-level in-major electives during the last 2 years of undergrad.

Also, consider going straight through to get a Masters degree, either at that program or another program. Many engineers in industry have a masters. Most programs will pay full-time engineering graduate students as a TA or RA, so it ought to be affordable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bogleheads

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bogleheads

+1

Just to clarify— bogleheads.org not so much the Reddit site

[Anonymous]

Wall Street Journal
Bogleheads.org

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I sometimes struggle with finding good advice for things like saving for college, allocating retirement savings, financing a home purchase, etc., because so many resources are geared towards people with higher incomes or additional money resources.

Curious where others are going for guidance truly geared towards middle class people. Mid-40s, one kid. Own a home, both have 401ks plus we have money in Roth and brokerage accounts. And we have a 529 but college funding is still kind of a mystery.

Definitely not DCUM unless your HHI is $5M+ and NW above $15M

[Anonymous]

Bogleheads and a fee-only hourly certified financial planner.

[Anonymous]

I have recruited C level candidates for F500 companies who started in community college. There should be NO SHAME in how you start and where you start for college. Where you finish and how you end up in life whether happy and good at what you do when you are 30 or something is when it counts.

Starting at Stanford, not graduation or even if graduating then not finding a career track or not doing well on that track and changing course multiple times... that is significantly more challenging than a straightforward track of moving on up!

And I say this not just about where you go to college but about where you buy your first home, what income you start at and how little you first have to save. I tell my kids all the time - it's NEVER where you start but where you are going that is meaningful.

[Anonymous]

I used to read free financial books from the library about 15 years ago. Then, I started searching on internet, found some bloggers who would post their saving/investment strategies. I learnt about stocks/dividends etc.. I'm an immigrant and come from a country where there was no stock market, no internet, so I had very limited financial knowledge. All I knew was about the money was to save them from my parents. What I didn't realize was that money has to invested, otherwise, it will lose value over the time. I also later listened to a lot of youtubers, financial groups from Facebook, boogleheads. So l learnt quite a lot over the last 15 years. I'm proud to write that I have about $1.2 mln saved and invested in 401K over the last 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your kid would probably qualify for aid at many schools, given that your net worth is tied up in a home and retirement funds and your income is low for some aid calculators. Spend some time researching and learning how financial aid works, and how to work it...

Income is not low and some schools count the house, which they should. Someone shouldn't get aid if they have a million dollar house.

Again, research. Some schools do not count home equity or retirement funds in their financial aid calculators, and some do. Some schools, like Yale, consider $200,000 or less in household income "poor" and meet or exceed tuition in their aid packages. At OP's income level, they may even want to strategically keep their income at or below $200,000 and continue funding retirement or paying down their house, in order to qualify for aid. Research and learn, OP.

How does it work for divorced families? Are both parents income taken into account, or just the income of the primary custodial parent?

For our blended family with 50- 50 custody, it was BOTH divorced parents plus my ex's new wife's salary as well. Ot seemed ridiculous as we have two homes, two sets of bills, etc. Plus, my ex's wife is not a legal guardian but her income was still counted.

[Anonymous]

Op, my family is almost the same profile as yours. I recommend watching “the money guy” YouTube videos and their financial order of operations. The only thing I don’t quite follow with them is prioritizing our 529 because their are state tax advantages in our state.

They don’t like to give specific recommendations on how much to allocate to stocks in each account, but at your age try to be at least 70-90% stocks depending on the amount risk/volatility you find acceptable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bogleheads

+1

Just to clarify— bogleheads.org not so much the Reddit site

I find the bogleheads.org site hard to navigate. Any tips?

[Anonymous]

Erin Talks Money on YouTube