<prompt> Human: Hi PF. Hoping you can provide me some insight here. Im 27 years old, and currently live with and support my girlfriend and 5 year old son. Up to this point, Ive constantly struggled financially. I was making 42k a year at my last job, and barely getting by. Bad money management is partly to blame for this, but Ive always been able to keep a handle on it enough to avoid complete financial destruction losing home, car, etc.. I am now making 150k at my new job. Up until I got this position, 42k was the most Ive ever made. So this massive leap in income has me quite nervous. To put it bluntly, I dont want to fuck this up. I wont be getting my first big paycheck until the beginning of august, so I have a couple of months to get this properly figured out. Im currently renting a home in a less than decent area paying 1200 a month. My first big priority is to get the hell out of here and purchase my own house. I also have an auto loan which has a 19k balance on it. Part of me thinks I should just pay this off ASAP, but the other part of me says to keep making my minimum payments on it for the credit score benefits. Which leads me to my next point...My true first priority is to repair my credit so I can actually get a home. Currently my score is 590. I only have two accounts reporting payment history car loan and student loans. I have no credit cards. I have about 3 accounts in collections for amounts less than 200 each. So first thing Ill do is pay those off. Should I get a credit card or two and pay it off every month? I assume this would help my credit faster, right? My main concern is how the hell Ill manage all this money. Obviously it would be smart to invest, get a nice little diversified portfolio going. But how do I even go about this? Im largely uninformed with how investing works, as Ive never made enough money to even consider that side of the coin. Sorry if this sounds like rambling, Im just really nervous about this massive change in lifestyle. I want to do it the right way. Anybody ever been in a similar situation? How did you handle it?  <response>: It seems privy based on some of your replies to ask: how much of your 150k is commission? You cant ever budget for commission as its inherently unreliable. You have to live like your going to make base salary only, and treat commission as an extra bonus which it literally is. 