>Because by April 18th, I’ll have 0 credit $ until I pay it off, that’s why I’ve been making a couple payments here and there.

what do you mean by this?

but in general, no, you dont need to make all these extra payments. pay your statement balance by your statement due date, and repeat that every single month. do not break the cycle. that is how you use a credit card correctly.

The IRS has a calculator to help you fill it out.

Your payroll only withholds based on how your W4 is filled out. So yes, they likely withheld correctly per your W4, but your w4 was not set up correctly.

Fix your W4 so you don’t have the same issue next year.

General recommendation is to save at least 15% of your income per year for retirement. For your salary, that would mean maxing out your 401k to the limit and then contributing additional money to an IRA and/or a taxable account.

Car loan rates have increased as the fed rates hav increased, so the spread here is much smaller. If you were buying a car a couple years ago when you could get 2% or less loans, this idea makes more sense.

But the more broad item you are missing out on is called sequence of returns risk. So if the only way you can do this is by needing to cash out the investment monthly to pay the loan, then it likely isn’t a good idea.

You want the $6000 to show up as basis for next year, as that way when you convert that $6000 (which happened in 2023, so the conversion will be on your 2023 tax return), you don’t have any taxes owed.

Since you made the contribution for 2022 in 2023, the paperwork is a tiny bit more complicated than had you contributed and converted in 2022. This is a good site that explains the whole process, this specific location talks about your current situation.

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/backdoor-roth-ira-tutorial/#late

Giving an interest free loan to your landlord is rarely a good idea.

Assuming the losses were realized, yes what carries forward can ( and will ) offset future realized gains. Depending on your income level, you probably don’t want to be going out of your way to generate realized gains to burn through the carried losses.

Paying off your house is not an emergency, so you shouldn’t use any emergency fund dollars to do this.

Any non emergency fund dollars you have could be used to pay this off, but at such a low interest rate under 4%, I would argue that there are much better places to be putting that money rather than paying your house off.

> I have an emergency fund that would cover about 6-7 months expenses however ideally I want to use that for a wedding and housing downpayment in 2-3 years.

Your emergency fund should be separate from your house down payment or wedding funds. So if 2-3 years from now you want to buy a house and have a wedding, you need tos ave up for those goals separelty from the money you currently have for an emergency fund.

The backdoor consists of two steps. The first step is the contribution, which has annual deadlines. The second step is the conversion, which has no defined deadline (but generally is best done soon after the first step to minimize tax implications).

how many points did it drop?

Correct. The reason that biweekly payments shorten the duration is that there are 26 biweekly payments in a year, so if you do half of your monthly payment each time, you are effectively making 13 monthly payments per year instead of 12.

It depends on how your companies payroll dates aligns with their pay periods. This first paycheck is likely going to be either one or two weeks worth of pay.

It sounds like you would be a great candidate to go 100% into the target date fund that closest matches your expected retirement year, assuming your 401k offers them (which outside of extremely small businesses, you most likely have target date funds available in your plan).

That will give you an appropriate mix of funds for your situation.

Capital gains stack on top of ordinary income, so the vast majority of this would be taxed above 0%.

You had your former and latter reversed, all good now.

10% penalty plus it gets added to your income for the year for tax purposes.

this was very likely a mistake. given how small the pool of money is, its likely not going to have too significant of a negative impact on you, but you should really strive to make better decisions going forward.

Credit scores aren’t a video game leader board, there is no practical reason to go out of your way to get an 850 score.

All in all, people put too much value on credit score, and not enough value on making good financial decisions. Those two items are not always in alignment. Only focusing on credit score can lead you to make bad financial choices.

if the investment was in a taxable account, and you sold the investment to realize those losses, then yes it will impact your tax return. if these are unrealized losses, they do not impact your tax return.

investment losses arent a tax credit, they are a tax deduction (with limitations in place). so no, it wont work as you outlined in your hypothetical.

when your favorite brand of cereal goes on sale, do you stop buying it?

with how frequently banks are changing rates lately (my HYSA has updated its rates probably 6 or 7 times this year, I lost count), chasing rates becomes even less fruitful, as now you arent comparing 12 months of interest at one vs 12 months of interest at another, you are comparing 6-8 weeks of interest at one vs 6-8 weeks of interest at another.