Looking for Thoughts

[aja8888]

No loans here and no debt except monthly CC and that's paid off immediately. Credit score is 830.

[GLM]

True, we have paid cash for our cars for about 25 years, pay off our credit cards every month. We gave not had a mortgage since 2004. Our scores hover around 820.

Besides paying our bills on time, one thing that helps is utilizing very little of our available credit. (Normally about 3%) Additionally keeping old credit cards going helps your history.

We did co-sign the kids first cars. That was done about a decade ago. It did not do much to bump the score higher.

[Walt34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset The idea that a person needs to be constantly in debt or have a loan to have a high credit score is false, FAKE. I have zero debt, and haven't had any for the last 16 years, and my credit score is high at 800. I keep my car for 10-12 years.

Same here. We haven't had a mortgage for decades and pay cash for vehicles (on those rare occasions when we buy one). We do use credit cards a lot but pay them off in full every month. Our credit scores vary of course with the phase of the moon and stars or whatever metric it is that the credit companies use but usually run a bit over 800.

Technically of course we're constantly "in debt" as there almost always is some outstanding credit card debt that has a balance that isn't due yet. For example at the moment I'm wearing a pair of sneakers from Amazon that I haven't paid for because the bill hasn't arrived. When it comes I'll pay it. But the money is in the bank right now to pay for the shoes and is earmarked for that, so in my world of "mental accounting" we're not actually in debt.

YMMV

[EastWest Gal]

My son would be jealous!

I'm quite sure you have more than enough, especially with the income from streaming. Though it's work, it feels less like work than the hospital job.

I can't figure out why you do not know what is in your IRA? You should really check into that. It sounds odd that "your tax man" tells you how much to write for your IRA. If you are maxing it out, it is easy to figure that out on your own. Do you not track how it is invested? You could move your IRA to Vanguard so you can track how much is in it. How is it being managed?

My credit score has been north of 800 ever since I started checking. Our house and cars are long paid off, and we will pay cash for the next car I'm sure. I have two credit cards, using only one and paying it off each month. Carrying debt will lower your credit score, not raise it, I think.

I think you should quit the hospital job. Why risk getting COVID going to the hospital? Much of your income is from streaming anyway. Doing the streaming, you won't be technically retired, but it sounds awesome.

[pb4uski]

You all made me look... 817... but not sure it is worth anyting in that I have no plans to borrow.

[bobie]

I just paid off my car loan.

I go to a tax man 3 times a year to deal with the streaming and my eCommerce store. I can do simple taxes, but have not tried to do business taxes yet.
My tax man likes to look over everything and he wants to make sure I get the right amount in my 401k. At work we have a 403b. I think this year is 19,000 total for 403b and 401k together.
I'll get my 401k info on Monday if I get a chance.

My job is kinda complicated.
I work for a large Medical system, but work in a large office building on the weekends. Some times I will work from home during the week for a few hours. I'm the top dog at running the food service software that we use. I deal with diet compliance, allergies, cost, menus, and keeping the computer system up to date. With all the vendor issue were having from COVID we have had to switch brands of products we use and causes lots of extra work and sometimes messes up a lot of stuff.

It's not all fun and games playing games on line. There is a lot of multi tasking you have to do to keep people engaged. A lot of times I have to play the game before hand or do research to make sure I know that the project I'm about to do live is going to work and I have everything I need to make it work. If you don't make it interesting or miss to many days people will move on to someone else.
There is a lot of organization that you have to do to make it work.

My daughter skipped 3 grades in school and then did dual enrollment the last 2 years of high school to get all her credits.

[AbbA]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobie My job is kinda complicated. I work for a large Medical system, but work in a large office building on the weekends. Some times I will work from home during the week for a few hours. I'm the top dog at running the food service software that we use. I deal with diet compliance, allergies, cost, menus, and keeping the computer system up to date. With all the vendor issue were having from COVID we have had to switch brands of products we use and causes lots of extra work and sometimes messes up a lot of stuff. It's not all fun and games playing games on line. There is a lot of multi tasking you have to do to keep people engaged. A lot of times I have to play the game before hand or do research to make sure I know that the project I'm about to do live is going to work and I have everything I need to make it work. If you don't make it interesting or miss to many days people will move on to someone else. There is a lot of organization that you have to do to make it work. My daughter skipped 3 grades in school and then did dual enrollment the last 2 years of high school to get all her credits.

Wow, you've got a seriously smart daughter!! What does she study and wish to do when she graduates?

It sounds like you're some kind of entertaining programmer. You can do a very serious IT work for a medical company and then you do some kind of entertaining programming to engage 'Minecrafters', yet the latter pays the majority of your income.
Since I know nothing about gaming, I'm curious how you stumbled over such a lucrative opportunity. You obviously didn't study this in college . I thought that kids who play Minecraft deal with a programmed game and not a programmer in the cloud.

Can you share some detail about your merchandise business? Do you buy and then resell stuff? I knew a lady who was learning how to make extra money on Ebay I think, but she said that she doesn't engage in receiving goods at her house. It all happens online. Find a deal on one site and then somehow sells it on her Ebay store by adding a margin... No clue how it works but apparently people have become millionaires doing such business, she told me.

Like others had already advised, you definitely should familiarize yourself what you have in your retirement accounts. Do you have a clue of AA of your investments? What do you mean by a 'taxman"? Would that be our accountant or FA or what? To me, a taxman is the IRS or state tax authority.

[Rambler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset The idea that a person needs to be constantly in debt or have a loan to have a high credit score is false, FAKE. I have zero debt, and haven't had any for the last 16 years, and my credit score is high at 800. I keep my car for 10-12 years. My DW has had no debt for well over 20 years and her score is higher than mine by about 20 points. DW keeps her car for 20 years. We pay cash for our cars, brand new.

I bought a new truck 12 months ago. My credit score was/is about 820. I thought I’d finance it for a while since the last thing I had financed was a truck 7 years prior (I financed it to get an extra $2k or so off the price, paid it off in 3 months). Even though I had a high credit score, I was refused financing, because I hadn’t had monthly payment financing on a big ticket item for so long. I said “fine, here’s a check for the rest.”

[2cheap2eat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pacergal Looks like you are doing well, financially. Your daughter is only 18 and has almost completed 3 years of college? Congratulations! One thing I would recommend is to go online and figure out how much you do have in your IRA and what it is invested in. If you are sure of your budget, you look ready to retire. Enjoy!

I’m confused, 18 y/o and 3 years college done?? Is that correct?

[2cheap2eat]

Never mind, I just caught up to the reply on this.

[bobie]

The system I mess with uses oracle on the back end and a custom program on the user interface. It’s just a DBA job with nutrition tossed in. The worst part of the job is how it interfaces with the electronic medical records. I do a little bit of programming, but not much. There are 2 DBA’s that do the day in day out of keeping it running. I do more of getting the kinks worked out, making it simple for the workers to deal with it, and the list keeps going.
I got into Minecraft and started out playing on YouTube. I ended up playing with a group of about 15 on a server where we all posted on YouTube. I ended up on twitch and dropped YouTube due to their BS. Playing in a big group like that also comes with a contract with lots of BS, but your name gets spread around to a lot of new viewers.
My merchandise business is 100% stuff that we design. Clothing, keychains, mouse pads, beach towels, the books I wrote, and the list goes on. Everything is new. My store is on an ecommerce site, but I use amazon pay due to there benefits that come with it.
My tax man is the guy I see 3 times a year to do my taxes.
I did sit down with a FA. I’m looking over what I have been told, doing a bunch of reading, and have sent out an email to the retirement person at work with a list of questions.

Yes, my daughter is 18 and has completed 3 years of collage. The first 1.5 years were dual enrollment to get the rest of her high school credits. She’s doing a DBA / Business Management mix.

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobie The system I mess with uses oracle on the back end and a custom program on the user interface. It’s just a DBA job with nutrition tossed in.

I will think of this for awhile. What does it mean?

[bobie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 I will think of this for awhile. What does it mean?

Most larger data bases use 2 programs and sometimes more. The back end is where the data is stored. The front end is the user interface and most likely will be a custom or semi custom program from a different company. Depending on what all you need from the data base it's not all that hard to setup your own user interface if you have the time.

Oracle and MySQL are very common for large databases. There are a few other programs, but every program has it's ups and downs.
The user interface is a nutrition system (as I work for a food service department).
My work days revolves around nutrition and diets as that's what I play with most of my days.

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by target2019 I will think of this for awhile. What does it mean?

I think he means he is a data base administrator.... DBA.

It took me a while to figure it out too.

[target2019]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski I think he means he is a data base administrator.... DBA. It took me a while to figure it out too.

Lol. Thanks.