Hi PF,
I need some advice for my and bf. He is also a reddit user, but he knows me main account and I want to be able to honestly assess.
Here's out main problems:
1) Our credit score is low (both of us are around 500)
He leases his truck and wants to be able to get a new one when it expires, so he wants to improve his credit score. I've told him to just get a loan from our local credit union (we can get a 15k loan for only 7% or so) because it makes more sense in the long run.
He wants to build his credit up, so he's gotten a new credit card and started keeping a balance on it each month to build credit. I think that this is spending money we don't have right now to save money in the future. He says we can't afford to get a new truck if we buy outright.
I also have a selfish reason for wanting him to get the loan, he races his truck and goes mudding on the weekends and his lease has a mile-limit on it. This means that I have to drive him to and from work or his friend's house sometimes to save miles.
2) He just got a new job with the county and they have a pension plan that automatically takes 5% of his paycheck and a union that takes $25 per month. He only makes about 26k and I make between 22-35k depending on tips.
He's trying to find a new job to get rid of his 5% deduction and $25 dues. It seems insane that they can force him to pay both of these just to earn a paycheck. He's got an offer for a job that pays about the same, but will let him take more of it home.
Even after that happens, he still won't be able to afford his new truck and he wants to lease. I want to see if there is any way to finance a new truck (45k or so) on our income as an investment for him. He takes very good care of his trucks and works on them, so they would probably go up in value over time and he would actually have something of his own instead of making payments and having to give the car back.
3) We just bought a house. That means we're saving money on rent, but the monthly utility bills are a little higher than we were used to and the 5% deduction and dues he has to pay combined with winter being a slow season at my work are hurting us.
We put 3% down on the house for a FHA loan. The payments are the same as when we rented, but this time we are paying ourselves and if we get desperate we can sell.
Now we have a big problem that the seller never told us about. Our concrete walkway has a rise in it of about 2 inches and the city is making us fix it. The seller says that we agreed to do it when we bought it, but he never actually mentioned it and I am pretty sure that since we have an FHA loan, we can make the government get him to do it instead.
4) We're getting married sometime this year and have talked about rings. He doesn't want to budget for one until he gets a new job that doesn't take all his money and hopefully a new raise.
He wants to get some cheap-o ring for 5k from CostCo and it really hurts my feeling that he can save for a truck payment and work hard to find a new job, but will settle for my ring.
I've found ring financing options that have super low monthly payments and last for several years, so we will have time to get in a better financial position to pay it off. This seems like the smart way to do it rather than cheap out or pay a ton upfront.
I'm trying to explain to him that the same reason he wants to finance a truck is the same reason that I want to get a good quality ring. It should be the only one you ever need and you don't want to cheap out.
5) My dad died last year and I inherited his retirement plan from work. We used it to put the 3% down on our house and now we have gotten word the guy running it that we owe over $8,000 in taxes. This is insane. We googled it and you do not have to pay any taxes on what you inherit from family for $13 million dollars. This was WAY WAY less than $13 million!
We called the IRS, but it just goes to an automated help line.
I tried to put my paycheck information into turbotax and it says I should get a big refund. So, I'm not sure if they made some kind of mistake. That's not really part of our financial issues, but I need help showing him the math that leasing a truck is a bad idea, if there is anyway to get his job to give his money back since he is leaving there soon, and how much we will save a month if we finance a ring instead of paying for it upfront. I know that spending a lot on the ring is not moving us toward our financial goals, but it's a personal thing for me and that's what money is for. The main thing is that we need to find out how to manage it. How to build his credit fastest and what order we should do it all in.
Thanks
Submitted March 15, 2017 at 09:32AM by Needadvice738729 http://ift.tt/2n9Zxiv
