Hello PF, I am a long time lurker of this subreddit and first time poster. My brief story is that I was living abroad and running my own small business. Eventually, the business couldn't support my living costs, I incurred some credit card debt, and moved back home. During this time I started learning how to code and eventually got into a coding bootcamp (intensive 3 month training course).
My plan before starting was to use some existing credit cards I had open to do a promotional 0% APR balance transfer for 12 months and get a job before the interest payments started up again. However, it took about 6 months longer than planned to get a job, and those interest payments are back and I would like to pay them all off as soon as possible.
My new job is making $95k as a software engineer in the Bay Area. My living costs are around ~$1500 a month due to many meals eaten at the company and living with roommates.
My debt is as follows:
- ~25k loan at 19% APR
- ~9k cc at 17%
- ~6k cc at 16%
- ~7k loan at 10%
- ~5k cc at 0% (until August before interest starts again)
What is the optimal way to pay down the debt? Is it better to tackle the higher interest rates first and continue from there? I don't like debt at all, so I can see the "relief" of paying down the smaller debts first. But I also enjoy the feeling of "min-maxing" and doing the most optimal solution.
My next question is how to start contributing to the company 401k. I don't have any retirement savings, but I do have a $2k emergency fund. There is a 4% match in the 401k, but I don't believe I can start contributing to it for another couple of months since I just started. Is it best to contribute the maximum matched amount as soon as possible? How does that play in to my strategy of paying down my debt? Thanks in advance for any advice.
Submitted May 30, 2018 at 03:39AM by SomeFeedback5 https://ift.tt/2LIICx1
