I'm a little confused. 3 weeks notice to work from the office? Have you been living too far to commute? Is the 1391 rent place too far to commute to the office?

My rule of thumb I heard way back in the dark ages was no more than 1/4 of gross salary for rent. 1/4 of 6.4k = 1.6k.

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Stop 401k until you get expenses/liabilities in check.

Saving doesn’t just happen. You have to force yourself. Set up direct deposit of 10% of your take home pay to a savings account. That’s about $400/ month.

How much do you owe on SL?

they gave us 3 weeks to return to the office. yeah I was almost 2 hours from the office. The 1391 is the place I moved to that's close to my office.

>My rule of thumb I heard way back in the dark ages was no more than 1/4 of gross salary for rent. 1/4 of 6.4k = 1.6k.

makes sense, but why gross and not net?

Yeah that makes sense. I just don't like making decisions with money without knowing exact numbers. Google utilities give a range all over the place.

Right now I do 6% 401k just for the company match. I do 100 dollars a paycheck to savings account.

i have 52k in student loans.

Ah, I've done 2-hour commutes before.
Granted it was via public transportation (and something that only would have been around 40 minutes otherwise), but still, it's not like you're in Kazakhstan or something.

25% tax, 25% savings/retirement, 25% housing, 25% living expenses.

The idea of the rule-of-thumb is to use as a guide - as an upper bound. Lower, of course, is better.

I personally would not move, and either pay back the bonus, or sort out the commute if possible. But, if you’re stuck and unable to pay it back you’re kind of in a tough spot if you want to quit.

A lot of companies are doing this, shocking, but they also are working with people. Could you ask if you could come in 2-3 days / week until you found housing? If you like your job, and it’s just an issue of distance I feel like there’s a pretty easy path forward if they will work with you on moving closer in.

You should be fine. Might not be super free with money until the loans are knocked out, butt you should be living decently.

If you don't have it already, make sure you get your emergency fund of three months of expenses set up before you go ham on the loans. That way, you won't be scrambling when your car inevitably breaks down or you get laid off etc. Once you have that minimal amount of emergency fund, then you can go ham on the loans and get them knocked out.

Stop paying federal student loans since the pause has been extended. You could save several thousands or more before you have to start paying again.

So what I'm hearing is worse case at the moment is you can't pay stuff off as fast as you would like while there is no interest. On top of thst you are contributing to your retirement (401k) amd a HSA.

Step back a minute and realize youre in a good place. This isn't a problem, unless I missed something.

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I’m in Northern VA (M-HCOLA) in a 2B/1b and our utilities average $60 for water/sewer/gas/trash (more in winter for heat), $50 for electricity (more in summer for AC), and $40 for internet. I consider these very manageable!

Call the utility companies. They can give you the average for the last 12 months.