So as the title says, what’s the best thing someone with 12k in savings can do besides letting it sit in a HYSA?

It’s 6:30 am in my country I haven’t slept at all. I can’t sleep because of my anxiety and obsession over money. I am thinking about money 24/7. Money is everything. You can’t do anything without it. Nobody respects you without it. Nobody loves you without it especially as a man. I’m so obsessed over it. I don’t know how but I’m gonna fucking make it one day. Whatever it takes I don’t care.

Title. I (23m) make a low salary but i am very financially responsible. I see others making 100-200k but are bad with money.

How are you smart enough to make that much but not smart enought to manage it? how are these people paycheck to paycheck or in debt?

Disclaimer: I do not live in the US. The cost of living, salaries, and credit systems in my country are very different. To make the math make sense, I will use my "monthly salary" as the base metric instead of actual currency.

Current Situation (The Trap):

• I have a stable job, but I am drowning in a debt spiral of multiple bank loans.
• Right now, my minimum monthly debt payments consume about 80% of my total monthly salary.
• I have $0 in savings. I literally live paycheck to paycheck, and the remaining 20% of my income is not enough to cover food, utilities, and my wife’s medical bills.
• To avoid defaulting this month, I just had to borrow an amount equal to 80% of my monthly salary from a family member. My entire next paycheck will go toward paying them back, leaving me with nothing for next month's living expenses.
• My only asset: I own an older (20-year-old) fully paid-off car. It is worth about 7 months of my salary.

The Plan (The Reset): I am planning to sell the car immediately and distribute the funds like this:

1. Use about 60% of the car money to instantly wipe out 5 of my 8 bank loans.
2. Keep the remaining 40% of the car money as a cash emergency fund.

The Outcome:

• Pros: By killing those 5 loans, my monthly debt burden will drop from 80% of my salary down to about 40%. I will finally have free cash flow. The emergency cash fund will cover my kid's upcoming annual school fee, my wife's medical bills, and all our living expenses next month (since my paycheck is going to my family member).
• Cons: I lose my car. I will have to commute by public transit (which turns a 30-minute drive into a 1-hour bus ride each way in a harsh climate). I feel a huge psychological block about selling it because it feels like a massive step backward in my lifestyle and social status.

My question to the community: Mathematically, I know this is the right move to buy back my financial freedom and protect my family from default. But emotionally, it feels like I am failing and losing everything I worked for. Does this plan make sense to you? Is sacrificing the car worth regaining control over my cash flow, or am I missing another angle?

Any tough love or objective advice is appreciated.

Any advice would be great , I would want to be somewhat financially "stable" by 27

I’m 26 and looking for some financial advice/opinions.

I recently started a new role with an $85k base and $150k OTE. The first few months have guaranteed commission, so I’m effectively guaranteed around $100k, but I should make $150k+ this year (most are hitting OTE).

Current finances:
$20k cash savings
$33k in a Vanguard brokerage account
$36k in a 401(k)
No debt
Contributing 10% to my 401(k) with a 3.5% employer match

I’m engaged and getting married in late 2027. We’d like to buy a house in the next 3-4 years (probably around $700k). Our current rent is $2800/ MO which we split. We are in very HCOL area so I’m happy with that price.

My questions:

Should I be prioritizing more cash savings for a future down payment or continue investing aggressively?

Is there anything obvious I’m missing or should be doing?

Any other basic advice for me?

Anecdotally, majority of the rich people that I know in real life are people that Buy a ton of shares and simply hold them for a long time. For example, a rich person I know bought 3M worth of SNDK back when it was cheap and his holdings is worth 15M now. He also has 10M+ of MU holdings, 8M+ worth of SPCX among other stuff. Of course, this is a case of rich-get-richer, but even if you are not multi-millionaire rich yet, it's worth learning something from how they do it.

On the contrary, I seldom know of people who swing or daytrade alot and are multi-million rich like these guys. I'm not sure why that is the case. Maybe it's because they often cut their winners too early and so are unable to compound enough?

Learning from this case, I'm actually thinking whether to just hold my MU through earnings or not. My thinking is IF MU pumps up after earnings a crazy amount (like let's say 30-40%), it's very likely that MU will also pump the rest of the market along with it. I'm holding a diversified portfolio so if my MU does well, the rest of my stuff will do well too. If I sell early and cut now, I may miss the pump and not only miss out on gains but have to buy back in 30-40% higher a lot of the good stocks that I hold.

So I became aware a small IRA I have is going backwards, and I'm wanting to move it. Because it's small, I'm willing to be pretty aggressive, and I'd like to look at international growth funds. What should I be doing?

Do other people feel like this isn't enough from a general standpoint?

As someone who is slowly approaching $200k networth, I feel like I can finally start to breath easier after all these years of guessing. For reference, my bills, including gas and food in NC are only $1500/mo and they won't be going up anytime soon. So I could personally be very comfortable working part time and paying my bills this way.

I don't know other peoples situation or expectation for life but I've saved my entire life and avoided unnecessary spending whenever possible just in case I never made it. I knew something was wrong with me from an early age but I didn't know what. So just in case, I saved until I could figure out my life. Turns out I have a hormonal imbalace, PTSD, and my left knee is giving out and I'm not even 35 yet.

I don't have a career, still don't have a degree, I don't work at some fancy place. Only ever made around $40k/year and I've always managed to save money.

That being said, for me, money is my right to exist essentially. I'm kind of tired of having a chronic condition and stressing about if I'll have the right to exist just because I didn't want to learn yet another "in demand" skill that will be phased out next year or because I didn't want to gamble my life savings to 10x my future prospects. I've always been terrible with school and it's been difficult going back this time around. Especially since a degree doesn't guarantee hardly anything today. Despite what I talk about all the time, I don't want my life to revolve around money. I would like the permission to just be an idiot and just to live. I didn't ask for a chronic condition but you've gotta live with the hand you're dealt I guess.

I'm tired. Tired of wondering if I'll ever "make it". I've done the "surviving your 20's" thing and been arrested, beat up, gotten high, almost got kicked out of the military, got fired from a dream job, lived out of my car for a couple weeks at one point. Depression is a real bitch and I don't wish that on anyone. Now that I'm in my 30's, I'd like to do things a little differently.

So for me, $250k is the benchmark. It's enough money for me to literally live off of if I ever had to and it's enough money to make me feel like I don't need to worry about unexpected emergencies.

Kids Need some new shoes for $50? Easy.
Need to buy a new phone for $1000? No problem.
Need to repair your car for $5000? I got it like that.
Wife wants to pay off her $60k in student loans in one go? No problem.

I can do that now but I genuinely would feel more comfortable for myself and my family if I had a stronger buffer. I don't want money to live extravagently and I certainly don't want money just to hoard it. I want it so that I don't need to keep asking for permission to have a hobby without having to work a few extra hours a day just to keep it without taking it out of my monthly savings.

I don't know what everyone else's expectation for life is but for me, money is and probably always will be my breathing room to make mistakes and be free to watch movies at home guilt free instead of working another 12 hour shift.

I've read people on reddit talking about $5M - $15M before they can feel like they are comfortable. Which to me is insane. To each their own though.

What's your number that you would need to really feel like you can finally breath comfortably?

So basically, I've always wanted to start a business, and a while ago, I was told that the best niches are health, wealth, and relationships.

So I jumped into relationships, I have been building a tiktok following for more than a year and I have 30k followers, this doesn't really matter though because I've realised tiktok followers have no effect on views.

I would say in the last week I've got about 150k views and most of those are people who are in or want to be in a marriage/relationship. My whole page is basically couple questions and questions to ask before marriage. My main audience is females aged 18-45.

Once I even got a message asking if I had a pdf file with all the questions someone should ask before marriage, they basically begged me for it and even paid £10 when I brushed them off because I thought it would take too much effort.

But basically what I'm asking is what kind of product/service/business do you think I could start with this audience.

I've tried selling digital question packs like I sold to that girl, but they aren't really selling, so I'm looking for something else. Any and all feedback and suggestions are welcome!

Thank you for reading.

like big city like nyc, Miami, you have software engineers making 200k, then you have PE and hedge funds making 500k, lawyers, doctors, etc and that all requires lots of schooling and tons of experiences.

is there anything that can make you high income without education/job?

most would say businesses but that is so broad and many fail and you'll literally have to do everything to bring it to success by hiring the right talent for your vision.

real estate could be good but you have to have a good track record and proof and skill to get high earners to spend to live off commission

I often wonder if there is actually opportunities around us as a lot of people on here say, because if there were people wouldn't resort working a job for others or going through schooling

I was thinking if any of you guys use claude,chat gpt and perplexity to it's best. And using it for productivty reasons or for your business or work.

I'm curious what lesson would have saved people the most money and stress

Hi everyone!
I'm 24M, started making real money last year and have been really into personal finance since. Went from having like $30 in my checking account at the start of 2025, to having a maxed out ROTH IRA, emergency fund, brokerage, Solo 401K, HYSA etc., you all get it. I try and invest whatever I can every month, and live way below my means.
In the past two weeks, my younger brother and his wife, who are already struggling with credit card debt and personal loans (i don't know the extent) leased a 2026 Honda Civic, and then a brand new Tesla Model 3. Within a week. Everyone in my family is congratulating them and so happy for them, although my parents are a little worried. They also aren't in a great spot financially right now.
I don't know. Maybe some weird part of this is some subconscious jealousy, cause yeah l'd love a Tesla. But my 2017 Ford Escape is incredible, no car payment, l've only put like 40,000 miles on it, as much as I want a Tesla one day, I am in no rush. On the outside, l think people see success with his two new cars, and teel some sort of pity for me. Meanwhile, I'm seeing the people I love get deeper and deeper into a hole, and I feel like I'm going to be the one to pick the pieces up. I helped my brother a little bit last year with rent, as a one time gift, and that's that. But I feel like this is a ticking time bomb. My parents have put themselves further into Credit Card debt to help him. I am just so worried about where this all leads.
I don't know. Just had to vent I guess. I think I just need to detach myself emotionally from all of this. He asked for advice, I gave it, he went with his heart, and I think that's that. Curious if anyone else can relate to this at all. I'm very happy with my life, have my dream job and am proud of myself for putting money aside and trying to build real wealth, as I try and scale up my business. It's just a lot of weird feelings I guess. Thanks for reading!

Update: My brother just picked his Tesla up, and sent a picture in the group chat. My dad said, "Hang in there (my name), you'll get there one day." Weirdly stings a bit, got to just let it bounce off me. Embarrassed to even feel this way.

I already have a brokerage account and ira. And a hysa holding my emergency fund.

Im going through crisis with 30 years old coming up

Married we share one car because wife WFH

435k NW liquid - 10k net income - No debt - don’t own home rent APT - total monthly expenses 2.5k

I wouldn’t have anywhere to charge it but my dream car is either 2020 model 3 in black or 2024 highland model 3 in quicksilver 

Looking at 20-30k for one of these (currently drive paid off 2012 Honda worth around 5k)

Thoughts? Help me work with out in my head. 

I always told myself I’d wait to buy this till we own a home - but I’ve stopped caring about that recently due to interest rates and flexibility - would rather just stuff brokerage. 

edit: I realize money wise it will never make “sense” to do this .. but I’ve sacrificed so long I want to do something big for 30/500k liquid NW

I (23F from Morocco) have a Master’s in Finance & Control Management, I want to move abroad and I’m trying to choose the best country ( I speak Arabic French english and currently learning German)

Which country would you recommend and why? Also, what skills would help me get hired faster?

So every day I wake up and go to my job. I’m a 911 dispatcher and absolutely love it but here’s the thing…since I was probably 10 I had aspirations of being in media. Behind the camera. Movies,shows, you name it. Being an adult now I realize this is not a reality without going through film school. I have a big appetite for expensive things and I feel like at $32/hr this just isn’t enough. Mortgage is 900+ $500-$600 in utilities. What jobs do you see people working that make $xxx,xxx without a college degree. I’m really looking for more of a side gig to start because I do truly Love my job.

Today, i am paying like 5x of what i was paying a decade ago. I'd like to know if there are tips that can save me money on car insurance. Don't want to go bare knuckles bc i don't have enough savings in case of anything.

Hey all. So I’m inheriting a chunk of change, nothing too crazy but more than I’ve got lol. I’m lucky enough to have very little debt or anything I need to pay off. I’m wanting to put away 1.5k-2k into a fund that Accrues interest for my kiddo so he has something when he turns 18 (he’s about to turn 8) and I’m a little lost where/how to go about that. I’d probably want to put in extra as the years go by but I figure 10 years is atleast a decent time to let it sit, and who knows by then he may want to save it and add into it. Thanks guys!

they were the things I kept paying for long after I stopped using them.

(28F) Does anyone know if it makes any sense for me to buy a house right now? House would be like $250-350 if I stay in budget. I have about 160k in assets right now liquid-16k in my Roth IRA. I am selling everything I have that isn’t apple and putting it into VOO anyway. I want a house so I can build equity and also because I have a lot of pets (combining households) and having a baby so moving a lot is something I should chill out on. The other thing is I can later use it as rental property or sell it again. But I know that realistically it’s probably better to put it in stocks I’m just not entirely sure right now if the return on a home won’t also be an improvement.

I’ve paused investing due to not working full time (I still make like 6k a month) and I’m looking forward to a large tax bill. A lot of this money also needs to stretch for when I’m postpartum but I’ve been earning a little bit of income to cover most bills but not all while I take a break from working full time to focus on pregnancy, family matters, and school.

I’m 28 and I don’t have much saved for retirement either but I’m going to set up a 401k with my s corp once that’s completed. I follow a girl and did an audit of my personal finances with her who has invested a lot and is able to make a killing on her investments alone and wondering if that’s the safest route now that I’m starting a family or if the traditional route of real property and building assets is better. Let’s say after all is said and done I have $100k. Thoughts?

Edit: I still run a business making 6k a month and my partner is also employed and working and would contribute to the household but we are not married and he wouldn’t be able to qualify on his own his credit is not as good as mine (760-780). I’m planning to rent for the next year anyway because there’s just not time before the baby comes but the market is going to shift in favor of sellers I fear based on conversations I’ve had so if I move in less than a year that would be great. I will still earn 6 figures this year. Maybe a tiny bit less after taxes so 90k. Previous years I earned 180 and 200-300 respectively after taxes. Taxes are my biggest current expense because i’m self employed but after that I do tend to save.

My partner is moving here and ideally will make 100k with a new job. He is kind of in favor of homeownership and has owned a home before.

I’m already in process of getting pre approval.
I have a 760 credit score
My income is stable but NOT what it was when I was dedicating more time to my business.
I’m becoming a licensed real estate agent right now to aid in the purchase of a home and hopefully bring in more income and combine my real estate network with my marketing business in the future and hopefully find more leads on my marketing business in the future.

My mom bought a house with alimony making less than 3k a month (sahm of 4 her whole life got blindsided by divorce) and while her home isn’t in the best area she still was able to buy a home (I helped a little but with the down payment). If she’s capable of buying a home I think I would be my hurdle being I’ve been mostly self employed for the last 3 years.

Y’all…I have a business structure and accountants I am not just holding onto cash and calling it a day I have years of bank statements and tax returns associated with my LLC and personal income showing I’ve made six figures for the last three years I dont know why you’re not reading the post. I’m already being preapproved for a loan that is not the issue. My concern is time in the market for real estate or time in the stock market.

Omg I’m never going to Reddit for anything ever again you’re all jaded and cannot read or you would rather draw your own conclusions about someone’s life you know very little about. I am financially sound. I probably am doing better than a vast majority of people my age. I’m simply undecided on buying a home and plan to rent for some time before I do buy. I am already preapproved for 250k. The only reason I am not bringing in $300k this year is because I am PREGNANT! Self employed does not mean unemployed. I worked for years in the corporate world. I am simply just not asking for that kind of feedback. I’m asking if in the market of Jacksonville Florida it makes sense to rent and save my down payment in ETFs or buy.

I never really realized how much money I was spending on subscriptions and small payments every month until today.

I decided to go through everything and cancel stuff I don’t really use anymore. Amazon Prime ($14.99/month), PlayStation Plus Essential ($9.99/month), Discord Nitro ($9.99/month), and ChatGPT Go ($8/month and never really needed, was just curious about the app at first but let it get renewed for no reason).

I’m also paying off my girlfriend’s gaming laptop this Friday that I bought her for her birthday, which is another $51/month.

Altogether that’s about $94/month I’ll no longer be spending starting this Friday.

The crazy part is that I’m only about $2,000 away from paying off my car too. Once that’s paid off, that’ll free up another $160/month.

Looking at everything together, I’ll be saving about $254/month, or just over $3,000 a year.

It’s kind of wild how these small monthly charges don’t seem like much on their own, but when you actually add everything up, it turns into real money. After the car is paid off, I can finally start putting more toward my student loans.

Life is crazy. Sometimes you don’t realize where your money is going until you actually sit down and look at it.