ELI5 Breakdown of metro systems in various European cities Hello! I am leaving for a month in Europe starting in about 10 days. I’m trying to consolidate how I’m going to get around various cities. For reference, I live in Washington, D.C. You get a plastic metro card, put money on it, and you just swipe to enter the metro and swipe to leave, and it charges you by distance. You can add money as you need…

ELI5: How does SGOV work? Do I need to sell and rebuy this at the end of each month to get the 5.26% yield? submitted by /u/PolarPlouc

ELI5: Are my parents getting screwed over in their mortgage? I’m not financially literate when it comes to anything remotely related to mortgages. Please explain to me how these numbers make any sense. My mother told me she refinanced her home loan for $319,000 in California and made a $10,000 down payment for 30 years that would make the loan $318,000. She pays the following: Principal $642.86 Interest:…

ELI5 request: How to retroactively collect medical expense receipts and properly store them for future (30yr) reimbursement with HSA? There was a good thread on HSA usage in /r/bogleheads recently, and personally found out that you can retroactively reimburse yourself with your HSA funds for your medical expenses if you keep your receipts. My questions are: Are there “official”, “documented” digital receipts that are accepted? How would I, for example, go about obtaining the…

ELI5 Backdoor Roth IRA Can someone explain to me if I should be doing a Backdoor Roth IRA each year and how I would go about doing that? I am 43 and have a 401K at work (I contribute close to the max each year and get full company match with a current 110K balance), an IRA at Fidelity (250K balance which was funded from the 401K balances of previous jobs), a taxable i…

ELI5 Roth + Higher Tax Rate in Retirement I know the argument about the value of Roth accounts: better to pay taxes on the money now than in retirement (where the income will presumably be taxed at a higher rate) but I don’t understand the argument. If I am in my highest earning phase of my career and if I only expect to make 80% of my current income in retirement (a valid expectation, …

Can someone ELI5 529s for me? Just had a kid & want to prepare for her future/college. submitted by /u/_CakeFartz_