I've written before about the ways homeownership in the United States is heavily subsidized by the federal government, at the expense of current and future taxpayers: preferential tax treatment of capital gains on primary residences, with $250,000 or $500,000 (depending on filing status) of a home's appreciated value being completely tax free; the tax deductibility of … [Read more...] about Idiosyncratic bets on real estate: homeownership or mutual funds?
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Should you use the Vanguard 529 Plan?
State-sponsored 529 savings plans are tax-advantaged estate planning tools that can also be used to save for "higher education" expenses, a category which was recently expanded to include private and religious K-12 tuition. I've had an account with the Utah Educational Savings Plan, which was recently rebranded as My529, for years and have been very satisfied with their … [Read more...] about Should you use the Vanguard 529 Plan?
What is a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage?
The title of this post may sound like a rhetorical question, but I assure you I don't mean it that way. It's a question I've been pondering for a while as I come across weird datapoints from the history of home financing around the world. A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is maybe best defined by what it is not: it's not a one-year floating-rate mortgage. What would a one-year … [Read more...] about What is a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage?
What’s the optimal amount of home-country (currency) bias?
I have the view, which I consider fairly obvious but not always clearly articulated, that virtually all low-enough-cost, adequately-diversified investments will yield positive nominal returns over the appropriate investment time horizon. If you own yen-denominated Japanese bonds, you should expect to receive a positive yen-denominated return over the term structure of the … [Read more...] about What’s the optimal amount of home-country (currency) bias?
On the dryness of powder
I sometimes come across a moderately sophisticated intuition, and find that while I don't strictly speaking agree or disagree with it, I do find it basically meaningless without additional context. This intuition says, "anything that can be done in an urgent situation can and should be done before the situation becomes urgent." So, for example, if you would need to tap your … [Read more...] about On the dryness of powder