Reformatted:

Hi guys,

First of all I'd like to acknowledge if a lot of you hate me because I know there's a lot of financial hardship and I've def gotten really lucky. That being said, I'm still really ignorant about financial planning.

Here's the situation:

I'm making about 88K/year with my new job starting in July + a 8k signing bonus(in illinois)

I have about 22k in debt with less than 5% interest(mom paid most of college). I have about 20k in stocks saved up from working full time in high school.

Here are some of my questions:
1. I put in my numbers in some kind of tax calculator(88+5.5k avg bonus) and it turns out I'll have around 45.5k after taxes. How accurate do you guys estimate this is?
2. Given this, is 12k/yr a practical estimate of living expenses in your opinion?(food, insurance, utilities, entertainment)
3. I fell in love with an apartment costing $1500/month. Is this reasonable?
4. I'll probably need a new car soon, my current one is going to die. What cars would you recommend me look at with my leftover budget.
5. I know I'm supposed to max out my 401k but if I where to take this money out and not have it be considered an emergency(or my kid's future college education), how much of a penalty would I have to pay?

My 4k maxed out is a total of 8k from my salary, 4k matched 100% and 4K matched 60%.

So I end up saving/investing maybe another 4k a year + whatever money I make from my investments which I guess could go towards a new car when I end up buying one.

What do you guys thing? Am I not considering some things? Any other tips for my plan? Thanks for any advice.

edit: I forgot to mention, I'm guessing paying the loans off slowly and investing my money into something like a mutual fund which pays an average of 10%/yr(better than >5% interest) is a better strategy

Clarifying he will be making $88K/year in Illinois. Pretty decent amount for just starting.