The Investment Thread (stocks, bonds, real estate, retirement, just not gold)

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$200 k for a condo sounds reasonable. I would prefer a country that is clean and speaks English like Singapore.
I dont know if one can find a condo anywhere in Singapore for 200k...

Malaysia might be a good place if you are looking to spend time somewhere that is cheap and somewhat developed and English is widely spoken. You can live like a king there on a 50k/yr budget

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Y'all were right, the market has gone straight up since June. Crazy.
I have been watching the housing market closely as I am 5 years away from retirement and may be downsizing. Bought my house in 2007, at the top of the market for $850K, now worth about $1.3Mil. Timing the market works if you are selling and getting out for good. For the other 99%, you have to buy something (eventually) and can't wait for a downturn or expect one after you sell. Now, if only my wife would agree with my idea of living in an RV!
 
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Clean, cheap, and lots of people speak English?

Talinn, Vilnius, Porto...lots of places...

Many seem to rave about Turkey as well. Their depreciating currency makes goods and services relatively inexpensive.
 
Can't read due to paywall. Is the appraisal for insurance? Isn't that based off the sale price?
 
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Many seem to rave about Turkey as well. Their depreciating currency makes goods and services relatively inexpensive.
Definitely to visit. Beautiful country with likely the most interesting history in the world.

I don't know about buying, though. History has taught me that Byzantine/Ottoman/Turkey geographical area trends to be unstable.
 
@KCAB how do capital gains taxes work for a rental unit? Say you put down 25% and rent costs 2,000 but the mortgage is 1500. Do you pay taxes on the extra 500/mo? Do you include property tax and insurance when calculating capital gains?
 
I don’t pay tax on the extra rent money because I get to depreciate the house, not land, over 27.5 years. Of course when you sell the rental then you have to put back the depreciation. However, you can avoid this by doing a 1031 exchange and you can reset the 27.5 years of depreciation.

You can then leave the rental to your children when you passed away and as long as it is below a certain inheritance amount then they don’t need to pay any tax. They can literally sell the rental the day they inherited the it and pay zero tax on the 30 years of appreciation.

Most likely you are underestimating the true cost. Have you taken into consideration the long term cost like roof replacement? You are also not going to get 12 months of rent every year.

I was just going to start small with a condo. So the roof would be included with HOA fees. I need to learn about depreciation, no idea how that works.
 
I was just going to start small with a condo. So the roof would be included with HOA fees. I need to learn about depreciation, no idea how that works.
Your accountant will do it for you when you file your taxes ...
 
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Your accountant will do it for you when you file your taxes ...

Is it difficult to do with TurboTax? I've always done my own taxes with software, but maybe it's worth hiring someone if I'm a landlord.
 
Is it difficult to do with TurboTax? I've always done my own taxes with software, but maybe it's worth hiring someone if I'm a landlord.


Probably not. However, I have never filed my own taxes. I prefer to pay an accountant $250-350 dollars to do it.
 
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Biden is canceling 10 k in student loans if you make $125,000 or less

Wonder what this impact will have on the economy. More inflation? Greater demand for certain goods and services?

We have downward pressure inflation via interest rate hikes. Now we have upward pressure via the student loan forgiveness and reform.
 
Definitely more inflation. It also encourages current students to borrow more than they need and graduates to not pay off the remaining balance or just pay the minimum.

You would look like a fool if you busted your butt working hard and paying off loans and then the government end up forgiving them.

The government will eat up this debt. There is no way the government can pay off another $200b. It will need to print money out of thin air to service this debt. Inflation is a certainty.

I suppose that we can strategize predicting:

1) the sector(s) that benefit most from the student loan reform - I am guessing the higher education industry + real estate around college towns would be one

2) the next ‘winner’ that the government will choose in the next ‘crisis’ (whether real or imagined) via a mass bailout
 
So why have stocks been pumping for 2 months? Bear market rally? Inflation = stocks priced higher but worth the same amount as before? I don't get it.
 
Anyone actually do megabackdoor Roth instead of taxable after maxing 401k/Roth/hsa. Is it worth? Keep hearing about it but just as confused. Seems like huge hassle.
 
Anyone actually do megabackdoor Roth instead of taxable after maxing 401k/Roth/hsa. Is it worth? Keep hearing about it but just as confused. Seems like huge hassle.
I didn't have enough cashflow to comfortably do it until I paid off my mortgage. But after that, I've been putting in $35k/yr through mega backdoor Roth. The advantage of MBD Roth over taxable is of course that all gains in the Roth are tax free. So I've been trying to make the most of that by buying all my individual growth stocks like AMZN, MSFT, GOOG, TSLA, NVDA, etc in my Roth. And you can actually withdraw your contributions to a Roth at any time if you need to, tax free and penalty free. But the ordering rules are a bit complicated so you need to keep good records, and also you're giving up the tax free compounded returns, so I'd rather not make withdrawals.
 
Just keep in mind you can make up to $104,800 in long term capital gain and pay zero income tax for a married couple.

You get to deduct $24,800 as a standard deduction. You don’t pay tax on any long term capital gain less than $80,000

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yah this is important to know. Roths are worth doing but important to keep it in context.
 
Feel bad for those who have recently retired or will retire soon….401 k is not so pretty right now.

Aren't you supposed to move your investments away from stocks as you get closer to retirement? We saw this in 2008 too.
 
Yeah you should move more to bonds. With 9% inflation, you are still losing money with bonds. I have a feeling a lot of retirees didn’t move to bonds since stocks have been going up and up.

I have a sick feeling that things are to tank by the end of this year. There are too many uncertainties from inflation to Russia to China.

Besides ESPP, I have only contributed to retirement funds this year. I have not been buying individual stocks.

Nothing sick about it. Bear markets usually take years to recover.
 
And there are pharmacists who are slaving away for $50/hour without benefits.

All the pharmacy techs who make close to minimum wage will just work fast food and make more.
 
Things are going to get bad after election in November. Politicians don’t need to kiss your butt anymore.

Probably starting with a stock market crash in a few weeks before the election.

In 2008-2009 the real pain wasn’t felt by Main Street until well after Obama won the election.
 
Hope you guys are right. Bought some SPY puts yesterday, getting rekt so far.
 
Ukranian counteroffense now going full tilt. Took back 1000 sq km over the last week or so. If they can encircle Izyum and cut off Russian logistics, it's going to be a massive victory. Some US military are predicting they may retake Crimea. Those HIMARS really turned the tide of the war.

 

UFA counteroffensive took back 3,000 sq km in about 96 hours. That's an area the size of Delaware.

This is leading up to a very important decision for Putin. Does he double down and call for a general mobilization and risk infuriating the regular Moscovites and ethnic Russians? Does he just retreat entirely? Because he's just going to slowly lose this war with the remaining troops he got from all the rural Oblasts and Chechnya. He'll need to do something drastic.
 

UFA counteroffensive took back 3,000 sq km in about 96 hours. That's an area the size of Delaware.

This is leading up to a very important decision for Putin. Does he double down and call for a general mobilization and risk infuriating the regular Moscovites and ethnic Russians? Does he just retreat entirely? Because he's just going to slowly lose this war with the remaining troops he got from all the rural Oblasts and Chechnya. He'll need to do something drastic.

Is this why the stock market has been pumping again?
 
Fuel went down as expected since fuel price usually peak in the summer. Food, shelter, medical all jumped and offset the drop in fuel price.

We’re drawing down on the strategic petroleum reserve to reduce fuel prices. Post midterm election there is a chance that prices will go back up if we don’t reach a full blown recession.
 
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You won’t get the same bang for your return. If inflation is 9% and your return is also 9% then you have not made any money. But it is still a lot better than holding on to cash.

High inflation also brings other problems like negatively affecting productivity, high crimes, more poverty, even wars. It is something that is unavoidable at this point. Too much debt had tied the Fed’s hands. The Fed can no longer increase rate to 20% like in the early 80s to fight inflation. Point of no return.
the big 7+% yoy cpi numbers didnt hit until late summer 2021. soon we will need to start lapping ourselves and the yoy could fall off a cliff, especially with lowered gas prices and time for that to impact shipping costs in a meaningful way
 
So what's everyone's plan? Stay the course? Continue to DCA into SPY/VTI?
 
You won’t get the same bang for your return. If inflation is 9% and your return is also 9% then you have not made any money. But it is still a lot better than holding on to cash.

High inflation also brings other problems like negatively affecting productivity, high crimes, more poverty, even wars. It is something that is unavoidable at this point. Too much debt had tied the Fed’s hands. The Fed can no longer increase rate to 20% like in the early 80s to fight inflation. Point of no return.
I am sure there were people saying the same thing in the 80s. It’s different this time, just like it is every time. In that sense it’s always the same. ;)
 
You should look at debt vs gdp in the 80s and now. Big difference.

This is just the natural progression of every superpower. They borrow and borrow because it is the easy thing to do. There are economic consequences to borrowing and printing money. If not then why not borrow and print another $31T?
And no doubt there was a big difference between the 80s and the 40s.

I do not say that you are wrong, only that you can count on people to predict negative economic outcomes and point to how this time is totally different. Of course they are sometimes right but oddly they never point out how often they are wrong or what the timeframe was for them to be right.
 
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