How are you making over $200k a year and only have $6k in savings and $19k in retirement?! Also get that debt under control.

Honestly taxes aren't that hard. If you say you're a simple employee, then you can figure it out yourself in maybe 20 minutes and talk to your HR department to make sure enough is being taken out.

They publish the tax brackets. They publish the standard deduction. You know approximately how much you'll earn in a year.

-- If you estimate earning $50k.
-- Google standard deduction and you find out it's $13,850.
-- Take $50k minus $13,850 is $36,150. You will pay tax on that amount of money.
-- Google tax brackets. You see that up to $10,275 you pay 10%.
-- So 10% of $10,275 is $1,027.50 in tax so far.
-- $36,150 minus $10,275 is $25,875.
-- Look at the next tax bracket $10,276 to $41,775 pays 12% tax.
-- 12% of $25,875 is $3,105
-- Add $1,027.50 and $3,105 and you get $4,132.50

Taxes done. Now you divide $4,132.5 by however many paychecks you get, most people it's 26. Make sure $159 per paycheck is going to federal taxes and you're fine. If less is, figure out how much extra needs held and talk to your HR about it. Figure state taxes out the same, or move to a state without an income tax.

If you have 401k, health care, or any other before tax deduction, you just minus the amount you pay towards that from your total pay and then calculate your taxes. It gets more complex if you have a couple kids and stuff, but really not rocket science. Most people that just go to a standard job every day don't need a tax "professional."

You don't. Something doesn't add up.

As long as he had a somewhat decent job he should be able to get a loan for $7k, even if it's like 20% interest... which would be cheaper than yours.

If he's that large of a risk to a lender (like doesn't have a job, is $100k in debt already on $50k income, etc) don't loan him the money. Also stay out of it if he's doing something illegal, like selling drugs which is why you know he'll be able to pay you back, but a bank or other lender wouldn't approve that...

Something doesn't add up, and you're charging him WAY to much.

Also nice to see you're willing to screw everyone over in your low cost of living area by coming in with your huge remote pay and buying whatever the hell house you want for whatever cost it is.

I'm glad companies are finally starting to adjust pay based on location. Maybe we'll stop seeing everyone run away from Seattle and the $700k homes to take their $200k salary to a place three hours away with $300k homes and then offer $100k over asking because the house is cute.

You want a fancy high paying job, go live in your fancy expensive city.

I don't believe you can sell blood or platelets. You can certainly donate those though. Both are often in short supply and are life saving.

Plasma I believe you can sell because it's then sold to pharmaceuticals that use it to make treatments and medications which are then sold back... they are also often extremely expensive.

Most locations will advertise $500 or $700 or more the first month, usually 6 to 8 collections or something in a five week period. After that it usually drops to about $15 to $30 a collection... sometimes like $15 and then if you complete another collection in the same week the second one is $30, etc.

You usually can't donate more than I think 8 times a month or something, so maybe $150 to $200/mo extra for 8 visits. Honestly when I dug into it... it didn't seem worth the 25 minute drive (and 25 minute back) eight times a month.

Edit: https://www.statnews.com/2016/01/22/paid-plasma-not-blood/ I'll be damned, much different than I thought. Still, you likely won't find somewhere paying for blood. I would be curious about the platelets though, you certainly don't want disease increasing, but as someone who has a mother suffering from acute myeloid leukemia and has probably had close to a hundred units of platelets over the last year and MANY times been told they are in short supply, she can't get them until tomorrow, or she can only have one unit instead of the two the doctor recommended, all because of supply... anything to increase their availability (safely) would be good! Same with the bone marrow!! She had a foreign donation because the registries are so much larger over there. The system is ironed out pretty well, but because of COVID it had to be transported frozen (one day of cancelled international flights could really screw things up) and the cryopreservitive is REALLY unpleasant, almost everyone becomes physically sick, including my mother, twice since it was split across two days. It otherwise is a fairly quick and straight forward process and would have been a lot less of a crappy day if she could have had that fresh. I'm surprised they don't pay $1000 or something in America for it and just spend time testing up front. The donor has to go through some processing for a few days before anyway, I would think most assays on blood work could be done in that time.

Your mortgage is too much. You're at over 40% DTI just with the mortgage alone (when you factor in HOA you're at 40.7%). 61% of your take home is going to the mortgage! Your wife probably needs to make at least $30k/year to get into a more healthy range for just the mortgage (32-34% DTI), add in utilities and other stuff and she probably needs to be more like $50k/year.

The only reason I'm really focused on that is because things will be harder after bankruptcy. You won't be able to turn to credit or loans to bridge gaps. If you don't fix the problem, you could very well find yourself right back into the same situation you are now, except without the ability to stretch things out with credit and try to carry as long as possible.

You need to evaluate your son and his medical issues. What costs might still be coming (direct medical bills, items not covered by insurance needed around the house to help him, time off to care for him, etc) and come up with a really good estimate (as best as you can, no one can see the future) to understand what the next months and year or two might have in store for you.

You need to evaluate your wife's earning potential in a couple situations; partial caring for your son, fully recovered and back to work full time, etc. Then you need to come up with a budget and see how your situation could fit.

Look at this whole picture. Look at a couple road maps out of this, even if you pull the bankruptcy lever. You don't want to fall into a trap where 18 months later and you're back in a hole.

Focus on a budget instead. With $100k (pre tax) income, you should be able to knock these down fast with a tight budget. It might suck for a few months, but you can do this without taking a loan. Time is what kills, if it took you a couple years to pay it off, then yes, saving even 5% interest might add up, but if we're taking a year or less and on those amounts, the savings is probably in the hundred of dollars at most, if you're serious and pay it off fast.

Trust me, it'll feel good even if it's a hard few months. Make an aim that you guys hunker down from now until maybe end of July on just being really focused. Cut some streaming plans, cut the eating out, ditch a gym membership or whatever if you can and just go for runs outside etc. This is doable based on your income and willpower.

Your take home is what, at least $3k/month.

Can you pay $1,000 a month right now towards debt if you eat rice and ramen for a few months? (IE cut bills way down).

If so get that 26% loan paid off in three or four months. Then go after the credit card hard core. The car... eh, it's a bad time for loans right now. You'll probably look at 8%+ even with good credit for an unsecured personal loan and that doesn't really save much on the car. Maybe check local credit unions on refinancing the car rate, but used auto rates probably aren't much better, maybe 6 or 7% if you get lucky.

How much is "making more money than we ever thought possible" ?

Likely the car loan will be near or lower interest rate than the personal loan. I would think with that score your personal loan would be 10% to 16%. If you factor the car out of it right now, then you have $6,100 in debt.

How much can you pay? Can you pay $1,000 a month now based on your income? If so you would have that paid off in like six months.

Just pay down the cards fast and then go after the car payment. Paying off the cards will likely greatly improve the credit score and then you could revisit the loan to pay off the auto loan, but again, even with great credit scores the personal loans seem to be like 8-9% or higher right now and there might not be much savings compared to the auto loan rate.

Really for someone at your income, that's probably enough. Get some savings set up incase you need to access the money, use automatic transfers for that too.

Then dump as much as you can into that 401k, even if you have to adjust things down later on.

Honestly there's not a lot of "fancy" things for you to do, and the ADHD isn't really an excuse. Set the 401k to max the match your company gives you, and if you can afford it, maybe 7% to 10% total. (Max is like $22k/year so I doubt you're actually maxing it).

Then set up with your bank that $100/mo, or a week, or whatever you can afford goes from your checking account directly into your savings account. Probably can do that online in five minutes.

I'll just add that I would add between 25% and 50% to whatever number they give you and probably 6 months extra time. Supply chain still is kinda weird and while inflation is cooling off, things have really shot up in the last year and I suspect we'll still see pretty big increases for awhile...

The house was the big purchase. Go for a cheap ring and at your five year or something go upgrade rings if it really bugs her. I wouldn’t use a credit card unless you can pay it off, otherwise it’s just more expensive.

Weddings are expensive. Homes are expensive. Don’t let this turn into something huge too.