Hey! I'm an E-4 living off the economy and let's say I'm actually making some decent take home money compared to when I was an E4 living in the barracks of Alaska. Single, 5k in debt (poor choices ever since 2020) but the debt will be paid off in full on this next paycheck. (Wanted to keep it because I was PCSing from California to east coast – I'd rather stay in debt for a little longer while keeping what I have in my account.)
I already have future apartment set up, I'm slowly trying to figure out the best insurance rate for my current truck (1991 chevy k1500) and phone policy (at&t)
My truck isn't going to be my a-b transportation anymore as 1. I'm going to live 30 minutes biking distance from work 2. I'd like to purchase a decent civic year to keep me going for (however many years I'd think it wise to keep it.)
3 years left on my contract, I'm an I.T. and I may have the option to extend for (6-12?) months for an extra buffer zone.
There really aren't too many viable I.T. jobs civilian sector-wise where I'm now located at, but what I've realized here is that:
1. Renting here is expensive
2. Purchasing a decent $200,000 +/-10-20% house is viable (Won't be my choice for the next few years.
3. My income is roughly $60,000 after living on the economy. As a single dude and with the cheaper cost of living, (the only thing that is worse than where I used to live is renting/apartments.) I should be making out quite a bit more compared to California (home state.)
With that said: Here are my current goals:
1. Have that ~5k debt paid
2. Purchase a reliable vehicle for a-b, travel, daily driver (civic was my choice after hearing from family)
3. Save atleast $100,000 for an eventual down payment (I don't want to risk purchasing here cause I don't know if I'll even be here after 3-4 years)
4. Learn how to maximize my TSP – I put 15% into it to make up for my dumbass not paying into it for my 3 years in the army. (I'm in the legacy retirement so I don't know what exactly that entails.)
5. Last but not least, I'm simply coming to you all for some help. I'm just a dumb 29 year old trying to fix his mistakes, learn more about my money and how to, simply put, do better.
With that said, I know this is a long post, so tl;dr: 29 y/o dummy trying to learn. I'm going to try to learn about budgeting, banking options, TSP options, money market, mutual funds, certificates, etc. Any guidance, recommended resources to study-do my own research would be very helpful.
Thanks for taking the time to read, if you even post just based of the tl;dr any insight would be great.
If you request any information I'll reply to you & update the main post just to make sure it's listed properly. Thanks y'all!
Posted by iClover1