Of course he does. Irritating, obviously slimy salesmen make no sales.

The problem isn’t the risk (100% loss) but the average. On average, day traders lose money. 80-90% of them do. Of those who come out ahead, for all the effort the majority still don’t keep even with boring S&P 500 investing. You would be spending time and effort and taking on risk in order to, in most cases, lose, and in better cases still lose compared to just not.

No one can read insurances’ minds. Somehow they think you’re such high risk that they won’t even offer expensive policies. Class 2 obesity and diabetes might do it, and an abscess won’t help.

Whole life’s value depends on the plan but when you really just want death benefit it’s a wasteful, expensive option. You might consider self-insuring: save what could go to premiums as inheritance for dependents. It takes time to amount to much and you have to assess your risk tolerance, but that’s self-whole-life.

You should only lend money you have, you should be willing to have it become a gift, and you should charge fair rates. Right now that’s in the $400-500 range, not $3,000.

What “insurance issues” change your taxes? Your insurance premiums are paid to insurance companies and have nothing to do with April tax time.

You probably need a new accountant. Try plugging it into FreeTaxUSA or TurboTax yourself.

An AutoMod reply to posts about “best” “bank/HYSA” could cut this down. Maybe.

Money grows tax free in a Roth, but you don’t pay taxes to begin with on a traditional IRA or 401k. One isn’t definitely better, and traditional is better for most people as long as you take the money you save on taxes and invest that too.

The government will get taxes on one end or the other. You just pick whether it’s at the beginning or the end.

https://www.doctorofcredit.com/high-interest-savings-to-get/

You usually can’t roll a current job 401k into IRA and combining traditional and Roth IRAs is usually worse for taxes than leaving alone. It’s fine to have them have similar contents but they should still be separate accounts.

The better option is to go over your budget and find more money to throw at the cards until the debt is gone. One more transfer can buy time but you need to use the time well.

If you absolutely have to stop contributing to 401k to pay this, that’s an option, but seriously figure out your money situation. Even in SF >100k should let you pay off your debts, and 1k per month should still mean it’s gone in under two years even if you do nothing else.

You rebuild credit by paying your debts on time. That’s the biggest part, and it makes sense because the score is about how safe you are to lend to. Lenders want to get paid back.

Paying off your credit cards frees you from crippling interest on debt. That doesn’t help your credit directly, but it’s important to do. But also speak to your loan lenders and make sure to do what you can to get back into their good graces. Being behind and then catching up with a payment plan is better than debt sent to collections.

Credit score is also a weird fixation. Unless you plan to buy a house or a car or need a new home lease and have an obnoxious landlord, it really has no effect on your life. If you have a newish cad, a solid place to live, and no plans for the next seven years, your credit score basically doesn’t matter and will fix itself with time and reasonably good financial behavior.

Yes, that sometimes happens. This is about averages. On average, if every year you DCA, there are more years that you’ll feel like you missed out than years that you’ll kick yourself.

Yes, but most of the time we don’t have lump sums. We earn X dollars, and we can afford to invest Y of that. So every two weeks or month, we should invest Y.

It still looks like a steady trickle, but DCA is doing that on purpose, and “continuous lump sum” is because there’s only so much money at any time, but it gets invested immediately.

With closing costs, taxes, and repairs you’re likely to lose money compared to renting.

Your parents could collectively buy a house. Now all of them have to align on rental property decisions.

The only reason to invest is if you think the market will, eventually, go up. That’s been the trend, so that’s the thinking.

No one is any good at figuring out when it will go up or down in the short term. If this is the low point, of course you should buy! If it’s going to drop further, you should wait! But nobody knows.

Because the market on average tends to go up; at any given time investing now on average means you’ll capture more of that growth, and waiting means on average you’ll miss out out growth. Not always, like you saw over the last year, but usually.

The biggest mistake with a lot of investing is being too nervous. Missing the gains and only investing afterwards is also a way to at least lose in opportunity cost.

That’s fair, but it’s not the smartest.

If the market on average goes up, or goes up on average at any given time. DCA means on average missing out on some growth. The optimal thing is to invest as much as you can afford as soon as you have the money. If you have a big lump, invest it now.

It’s not a huge difference and DCA can feel safer, but in plain math it loses out.

>20% APR debt is an emergency. Pay it off. Pay it off yesterday! You are hemorrhaging money and you don’t have to.

For reasonable amounts of money to have in a savings account, the difference between the best account and a good account will be too small to spend lots of time on. If you can go up by more than 1% APY, sure, but I wouldn’t check obsessively and I wouldn’t keep jumping from account to account. But definitely don’t stay in some 1% account, you’re just giving the bank a free loan. And absolutely don’t stay at a Chase/BoA/Wells Fargo account giving fractions of a percent.

Want to maximize potential profit? Gamble. There’s no maximum on potential. Of course the expected gain is negative. In case this isn’t clear, don’t actually gamble. Your potential losses are 100% and more likely than gains.

Advice on what I’d do? That depends entirely on why you are trying to wring money out of a specific bankroll in a specific short timeframe. Without that problem, depending on the situation, I would pay off debts, then put money in the bank or in an investment. Those pay in months and years, not days.

It’s not optimal, but it’s okay.

I think it’s easy to have extra cash-strapped stress during the year because of having that money locked up in future refund. If there is no stress, it’s relatively unlikely that the “windfall” of the refund will be a meaningful difference. If you enjoy the gift to yourself later, sure, enjoy it.

I think a financial planner probably isn’t much help unless you have enough money that you’ve maxed out normal money things and need more exotic places to put it or you’re unable to read books or Reddit and need someone to tell you how to cover the basics.

You don’t have much to lose if you have access to free fiduciary advising. Otherwise I doubt you’ll get much, but hey, I’m not a financial advisor.

Oh, and unless you can pay off credit cards immediately, stop paying into 401k until you have. No investment and no match will come close to matching not paying off crushing interest rates.

Why is the time horizon 5 years?

If they need this money in 5 years, 100% bonds is the safe option. Generally, in the short term, if not having enough money for something is a concern, that money should be in a savings account, treasuries, or something else that might earn less but won’t lose value.

That’s almost always a better strategy anyway. Picking stocks on average loses to investing in the whole market even for expert, full-time investors.

You don’t need to know everything for the next five years. If you expect to spend money, it makes sense to save it. If you have unexpected emergencies, that’s what an emergency fund is for. If you have an unexpected change in priorities, it’s not the end of the world to cash out investments. That’s the point of them! There’s just more short-term volatility so it might make you loads of money but also might lose money.

There is no ratio. That's the wrong approach. Rather than a ratio, have what you need in savings left in savings and invest the rest.

You need an emergency fund in savings and you need any money you're saving for some next-five-years purpose in savings or similar.

Your investments may change with age as you approach retirement into something with less risk, like bonds/treasuries. In your late twenties I think that's too conservative.

Doctors and dentists are known for going from being very indebted and poor to middle class and then suddenly exploding into the top 5% of salaries with no knowledge.

Don’t do anything sudden with sudden wealth. Lenders and companies know you are likely not to be expert with it and you’re an easy mark. Review the basics. If you do seek an advisor, make sure it’s a fiduciary acting in your interests and not working on commission to sell you financial stuff you don’t need. Watch out for whole life insurance hucksters!

The wiki here gives a good starting point. White Cost Investor has good advice for your position too if you resist the stuff they couldn’t resist trying to sell you.