<prompt> Human: I will try my best not to make this too long. To start with a brief backstory, Im a 29 year old Software Engineer. Grew up in a poor immigrant family, so financial literacymoney management was never exactly something that we discussed or taught. This is most definitely not an excuse though and I take fully responsibility for turning my finances around. I just need some helpinsight from you guys. I am trying to accomplish a couple things1 Save more of my annual salaryIve been working in tech for a few years now, mostly as a contractorconsultant. Ive made enough money to live comfortably, have a few nice things, help my family, and take a few trips over the past couple years. However, I do not have any savings or nest egg so to speak. I need to change this ASAP.2 Learning aboutGet involved in investingIm interested in getting into real estate investment soon, but I need to improve my credit score first. Also open to stock investing, so any insight on the best approach there for a beginner would help.3 Reduce debtMore on this below4 Improve Credit ScoreMore on this belowI started a job at a startup in January and was offered a starting salary of 125,000. We recently started offering 401k to employees, but with no matching. I have not yet enrolled since we recently started doing this about a week or two ago. What is the best way to do this? I believe they offer both a traditional and a Roth 401kHere is a slight breakdown of my spendingincomeIncome3,370 every 2 weeksExpense Rent - 1,500 CableInternet - 180 Phone Bill - 84 Utilities - 90 Apple Music - 10 BarsClub - 100 Buying Alcoholbeers, having friends over etc - 100 Eating out - 200 Groceries - 200 GrubHubUberEats - 80 Gym - 25 Apartment cleaning via HandyZyp - 80 Laundry - 30 Amazon Prime - 10 UbersTaxis - 200 Public Transportation - 45SpendingObviously the most obvious thing I need to do here is reduce my spending, I tracked it for the first time last monthJune and was shocked at just how much I was spending in 30 days. I am working on significantly reducing this for July.DebtI currently have 30k in student loan debt. I was on forbearance for a while but repayment will start again in August. Looking at my statements it looks like it will be about 288 a month.CreditI have a credit score of 545 and I am trying to significantly increase that number. Current credit card debt is at about 2,500 across 4 cards that Ive had for 7 years. My strategy was to pay off these cards and then ask for an increase, but use them extremely sparingly if at all once I get the increase. Is this a good strategy? If I pay off my credit cards, how much can I expect my score to increase? What are the best books that a beginner should pick up regarding personal finance? If you were in my position, what would be some the first changes you made in order to have more cash available?What is the best way that I can put some of this money to work for me? I ran a couple Shopify stores for a few months, and generated good revenue but the profit margins were too small. I was barely pulling in more than my ad spend. Are you guys currently taking part in any sort of onlinee-commerce business like this?I want to ultimately achieve financial freedom, travel, and a launch a software product that brings in that is equal to or greater than my salary. But I know that with my current habits, theres a lot of work to do.Im open to any and all insights and advice! Thank you guys so much for reading.  <response>: So just to touch on some stuff. As for the student debt, if you can find a safe investmentsavings account that has a higher interest rate than the debt, then pay the debt off slow and feed more money into savings.For credit cards, what I do is use my credit card almost exclusively but I make sure to never spend more than I can pay off, completely, at the end of the month. This will get some decent rewards and really help your credit score. Just my 2 cents. 