What about the ratings make you want to move and give up the interest rate? Or are there other reasons and you’re trying to justify. A vs. A+ is negligible and likely to change in the next 3-4 years and certainly by the time your child graduates.

I have no clue what they use to evaluate their specific categories, but in general public school districts are going to trail administration and sports. If I had a newborn I’d rather live in a district with A+ admin and sports and a C overall rating than an A+ rating with C admin and sports (likely not possible but you get the point).

Diversity obviously isn’t going to trail any of the other categories so read into that category independently.

You don’t need a financial advisor, at this point there advice will (at best) be the same information you can find in the wiki.

You seem to be a bit misinformed on some things (you’re likely maxing your 401k match, the max contribution is more than you can afford on 45k), but reading the wiki here and Google searches will clear up most details relatively quickly.

Get rid of the debt asap and then focus on getting your income up. 45k for full time work isn’t great especially if you’re single income, and it’s certainly going to make buying a house difficult.

Roth if you’re under 30. Give it a few years to make the call on whether or not you’ll make more in retirement and then switch to traditional if appropriate. Plus it allows you to contribute “more” since you paid the taxes already (6500 post tax>6500 pre tax).

Employers do set the limits for 401a plans so looks like I was wrong and you won’t be able to adjust the contribution. Start with an IRA (through any financial company) and contribute as much there as you can (up to 6500/yr).

I’m not actually sure if you’d be able to contribute to retirement beyond the IRA through tax advantaged accounts, that’s a question for HR or somebody with more financial literacy than myself.

Looks like you’re understanding is correct.

The DC most likely is a 401k (or 403b or 457 but they’re all more or less the same). You most likely can adjust the DC contribution even if it’s not immediately obvious, at the very least you should be able to adjust upwards (until you hit that accounts maximum contribution).

The DB is the more confusing part but there’s zero work to do on your end if you work with the state until retirement. That is what you’re contributing to a pension fund that all public employees in your state are paying into and will receive benefits from when you retire.

The 8% you are paying is really only relevant if you stop working for the state before retirement, as that’s the amount that they’d refund you (plus interest earned) if you withdrew your funds.

On your state’s retirement website there should be a formula that breaks down your pension calculation. It will likely involve your years of service and your highest average salary and some pre determined factor to give you a monthly payment that you’ll receive from retirement until you die. Usually you have to work for ~30 years to get this immediately when you retire. Typically that payment will amount to slightly less than your average pay (at 80k mine would be 72k).

So, when you retire, you’d have two streams of income, the pension (determined by your states formula), and your DC account (determined by your investments and their performance). Combined these should amount to comfortable living as is, but it’s never a bad idea to save more (either through an IRA or by increasing your contributions to the DC if it’s possible like I’m assuming it is).

The DC part can and will pretty easily be able to rollover to your next company plan should you stop working for the state before retirement. The DB part can get messy and I’m not person to give insight there.

Max. 6% of 300k is 18k, that additional 4.5k shouldn’t be making a difference with your salary and (relatively) modest goal of 75k in 2 years.

2k just mortgage or PITI? Either way it’s high but if it’s just mortgage it’s way too high.

Your aunt got ripped off because she’s 70 years old and elderly people are easy targets. Get rid of the car, buy something older and cheaper. No shot she’s gonna be driving enough over the next 7+ years to justify a brand new car, and clearly she doesn’t have the love of cars or financial means to justify it.