Hey! Here's what's up: I'm a 25 year old that lives with my parent and has a secure job with a decent wage (approx $3000 a month.) I have approx $2k in savings (just spent $10k on surgery and associated travel which drained my savings.) I have 3 school loans totaling $29864 (one is for $5,603.62 at 3.610% interest, one is for $5,498.30 at 4.410% interest, and one is for $18,762.49 at 5.590% interest.) I've been paying on the largest one with the highest interest. I had planned to pay $2k a month into student loans because I can very easily survive on $1k a month with about half going into savings (had to pause this for surgery expenses.)
However, recently my car has had a lot of issues and I've spent over $2.5k on it since January and probably $3.5k the year before. It's a 1994 Oldsmobile NinetyEight with about 130k miles on it and it seems to be slowly wearing down (AC compressor has broken twice now, random electrical issues keep cropping up, etc.) It looks like there are decent newer used cars for around $10k in my area but that would mean 5 more months of not paying loans to save that up (and then maybe putting more money into the new used car if anything needs to be fixed?) I'd like to be financially stable but not have my car randomly die on me in the next year or two with no money to replace it. What should my plan of attack be?
Other pertinent info: The student loans were originally at $38,999 and there were 4 of them. I finished school and got my job in late August so I started paying in September. I don't have anything in IRAs or bonds or 401ks or anything. I'm off of my parent's insurance on June 30th. I am really fortunate in that I don't pay any bills except for gas (and usually my reimbursement checks from work cover that.) I spend about $100 on groceries and $50 on fast food a month. I spend roughly $300 a month on clothing, games, movies, gifts, other fun or necessary stuff, etc. Occasionally there are medical, vision or dental bills. My biggest expense is honestly my car. This will likely be my lifestyle for the next 2-2.5 years, at which point my salary will go up and my car probably will no longer be with us (and also a soft deadline for paying off my loans as I'll need to be moving out then.)
TL;DR: ~$30k in debt, car gonna be dead in 2 years or less, easy living situation for the next 2ish years, $3k income a month, use about $500 a month w/o unexpected costs - how do I prioritize my money?
Submitted May 19, 2017 at 12:15AM by quriousq http://ift.tt/2qCo27d
