I am always so interested in people that make over 250k. Get a budget live by it, and that is it

You make 300k.

Why will it take 2 months to pay off 3k of (presumably) high interest credit card debt?

Have you written out all of your expenses?

Is there any possible way to rework things a bit to get the CC paid off sooner?

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There is no relationship between income and financial literacy. For instance "Keeping up with the Joneses" really can mess up a budget as can status symbol spending. Much better to simply not care what other people think, drive an economy car, keep the dated interior design, etc etc etc.

I’m curious to see where your $ goes. Unless the $300k combined income is recent, it sounds like there’s a lot of spending vs debt, and I would increase my EF and tackle the cc debt asap, and perhaps front load the retirement more, tax deferred helps especially in this environment.

In six months things will drastically change with the drop of $2500/month expense, and as long as you stick with saving/investing it should be fine.

You’re trying to do way too much. Clean up your debt before investing. Get on a real budget and stick too it…

betting most of that is a retirement match from an employer - assuming a 5% match on 300k, that’s about 6 years without factoring market returns

always hit the match before paying down debt if feasible, it’s a 100% risk free rate of return

You are spending too much and and saving enough with 300k income.

Where is all your hard-earned money going?

The $300k is recent (less than 6 months). Explanation of the debt: we experienced job loss + 50% pay cut during Covid, childcare is expensive where we live ($2500/month—no family and friends where we live so it’s a necessity), we had to move during all of that too (for the new job—no reloc) which is what wiped out our prior EF and put us in the hole. Our CC debt is on 0% interest which is why we didn’t knock it out quicker in favor of investing and building back up EF. And we are absolutely on a budget and getting back on track but still feel very behind because of everything that happened in past 3 years. Again we live in HCOL area, we are not buying furs and eating lobster every night.

Thank you. Most helpful out of the bunch. We don’t think home ownership is in the cards for us. Would need a down payment of at least $100-200k in our city so feels insurmountable esp with the student loan debt. Maybe when that monkey is off our backs we can reassess.

Net worth of negative 100K at age 40 for two people?

Yes, you are behind.

Your budget would be beneficial here; the only thing I can see is that somehow you are only sparing $1500 a month which suggests your discretionary spending is way out of whack.

Without more info it’s hard to say how you are going to do. How you’re currently doing - based on your comments it seems as though the HHI is fairly recent and your networth is below average. But, that doesn’t mean it has to be in the future. You have 20-25 more years to laser focus on building wealth. You can do it if you both get absolutely serious about it. 22 years ago i had a networth of $0. Today that stands at somewhere between a low of $2.4M to $3M (depending on illiquid investments). I did this raising 3 kids and a SAH spouse.

Assuming 1) your HHI remains the same and accelerates; 2) you rightsize your emergency fund and pay off the credit card debt this year; 3) your budget going forward is aggressive towards the savings side and maximizing employer matching ($5-8k/month); 4) your salaries grow but your budget doesn’t grow alongside those increases; in 20 years you should be able to accumulate a nest egg of around $3.5M. It’s all math (compounding returns). It’s a great time to begin investing in the market too. Best of luck!

Is 300k your take home pay or your gross?

The extra $2500/mo should be going towards the private student loans once your kids finish daycare

I’d probably consider stopping your investments beyond company match to pay off your highest interest loans first.

You’re behind but you do have a great income but also a lot of debts. I’d also try to build up your e-fund in a much shorter time than 12 months.

That is so true. Thank you for pointing that out. For me that is an unbelievable amount of money. Raised 5 kids on 65k a year (my choise, well, my wife's too) I work now with ynab, youneedabudget.com, excellent program.