As the title says I am 22 years old and have managed to save up 20k from working my part time job over the last few years. My credit score is currently 740 on transunion and 746 on experian. I don’t have any expenses because luckily my parents are able to help me with stuff like phone bill, health insurance, etc, and I don’t pay rent since I moved back in with them during the pandemic.
As for other life style choices I generally don’t spend too much- on a weekly rate of about 560 I spend about $100 a week - mostly on weed lol- which I can cut back on. The only reason I know this is because I started using MINT to track my spending and help me create a budget. Honestly that’s probably what I spend the most money on and I’m planning on quitting once I really start job searching.
I am about to graduate college in a week or two. Which is stressing me out but I’m still going to continue working at the job I’m currently at for the summer until I get my first “real” job. I also currently owe $25,347 in student loans.
My question is what should I do next. I know keeping money in checking/low yield savings is a waste of money bc of inflation. I also know I should open up an IRA - but my question on that is should I just max it out every year putting in 6k every year?
My student loans are all federal and some are subsidized and some are unsubsidized. The highest individual balance I have is $5,500, and the lowest is $2,000 with the others falling between those. As of now I have some money to pay them but no real plan on how I’m going to do it. Obviously eliminating debt is beneficial because the interest payments on student debt would likely exceed the capital gains and dividend interest from stocks, but at the same time it would allow me to get that many years of compounding.
Besides that I have $300 in individual stocks (I’m the next warren buffet I know) and $300 in physical cash as sort of a good luck charm/ emergency money.
I don’t know how much to hold in checking either - probably around 1k? I know I’ll have some big purchases coming up soon too - first last & security, furniture, and monthly loan payments - so I’d like to have a good amount in there.
I don’t know what to do with the excess. Obviously the safest bet would be to put it in a mutual fund like vanguard or something, but idk I’m young and have time and risk tolerance to make riskier choices. I’ve managed my own stocks before and when I’m hyper focused and into its fun but the rest of the time it’s a lot of work. Should I put some into an ira then the rest into mutual funds? What’s a good repayment strategy?
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Submitted May 02, 2021 at 08:43PM by seantheshahk https://ift.tt/2Rexgb8
