Hi everyone, so a brief overview of my situation. I'm 28 y/o, got married last summer, and my wife recently received a payout for a portion of her equity which means we now have $99k in our joint account. Between the 2 of us, we still carry about $250k in student loans from our graduate programs.
We're talking to various financial advisors to see what their advice is, but I wanted to open this up to Reddit since I've found this sub very enlightening and helpful for various topics in the past.
Basically, my wife and I are trying to decided how to utilize this money properly, ideally pay down some student debt, save some, and invest some.
We don't have any kids, but probably will start a family in 1-2 years, so looking ahead, we'd like to buy a house (we currently rent/live in Southern California, if that helps understand our cost-of-living a bit).
I'd also appreciate some tips for reducing how much we will be taxed on the capital gains from the equity payout. I'm a freelance video producer considering starting a sole proprietorship — would this help in any way?
Some other things of note:
- My wife has an IRA, I have a Roth IRA
- My wife has a 401k through work
- We barely have any CC debt
- About $30k is split among the IRAs, some stocks/bonds
Thanks in advance for any advice — I understand this is a very general overview, but I'd happy to provide additional info if requested.
EDIT #1: Formatting
EDIT #2: Our joint incomes total roughly $6k/month — I left my full-time job a few months back, am actively job-seeking, and freelancing in the meantime.
EDIT #3:
- INCOME: My wife's position is sales-based, so her commission can fluctuate, but essentially she makes $100k/year at the moment.
- INTEREST: The average interest on the loans is 6.51% — they range from between 5.16-7.76%.
- EXPENSES: Monthly expense are roughly $5k (rent is almost 1/2 that).
Submitted May 08, 2017 at 07:48PM by xtnvieira http://ift.tt/2pYbJ73
