Hi PF. Hoping you can provide me some insight here.
I'm 27 years old, and currently live with and support my girlfriend and 5 year old son. Up to this point, I've constantly struggled financially. I was making 42k a year at my last job, and barely getting by. Bad money management is partly to blame for this, but I've always been able to keep a handle on it enough to avoid complete financial destruction (losing home, car, etc.).
I am now making 150k+ at my new job. Up until I got this position, 42k was the most I've ever made. So this massive leap in income has me quite nervous. To put it bluntly, I don't want to fuck this up. I won't be getting my first "big" paycheck until the beginning of august, so I have a couple of months to get this properly figured out.
I'm currently renting a home in a less than decent area paying 1200 a month. My first big priority is to get the hell out of here and purchase my own house.
I also have an auto loan which has a 19k balance on it. Part of me thinks I should just pay this off ASAP, but the other part of me says to keep making my minimum payments on it for the credit score benefits. Which leads me to my next point...
My true first priority is to repair my credit so I can actually get a home. Currently my score is 590. I only have two accounts reporting payment history (car loan and student loans). I have no credit cards. I have about 3 accounts in collections for amounts less than 200 each. So first thing I'll do is pay those off. Should I get a credit card or two and pay it off every month? I assume this would help my credit faster, right?
My main concern is how the hell I'll manage all this money. Obviously it would be smart to invest, get a nice little diversified portfolio going. But how do I even go about this? I'm largely uninformed with how investing works, as I've never made enough money to even consider that side of the coin.
Sorry if this sounds like rambling, I'm just really nervous about this massive change in lifestyle. I want to do it the right way. Anybody ever been in a similar situation? How did you handle it?
Submitted June 18, 2017 at 09:30PM by heisenburg69 http://ift.tt/2tD6atc
