We are homeowners with a pretty sizeable mortgage but we also accumulated a nice retirement nest egg, which is actually many times larger than our mortgage. Even our taxable investments are several times larger than the mortgage. Still, we don’t pay off the mortgage because we like the benefit of leverage. We have a liability with a low-interest rate and assets with a much higher expected rate of return, so our overall expected rate of return is higher than without a mortgage. Our friend FinanciaLibre (now a defunct site) did some nice number crunching on this topic recently and we agree wholeheartedly.
Moreover, if you follow our blog you’ll also remember that we take a pretty dim view on bonds:
- The Great Bond Diversification Myth
- When bonds are riskier than stocks
- Have bonds lost their diversification potential?
So, personally, we skip the bond allocation altogether. Others have written about this, too, check Physician on Fire’s 2-part guest post here and here. In light of all of this, here’s one question that occurred to us:
Why would anybody have a 30-year mortgage at about 3.50% and a bond portfolio currently paying around 1.8 to maybe 2.5% interest for safe government bonds?
Leverage works only when the asset has a higher expected return than the liability!
So, just to get everybody on the same page on where we’re going with this post, let’s look at the diagram below: Our blogging friend FinanciaLibre (site is now defunct, unfortunately) showed that if you have a stomach for volatility, you’re better off not paying down your mortgage any faster than you have to. Use the leverage to get higher expected returns in an equity portfolio! (And don’t forget that stretching out the mortgage also reduces Sequence of Return Risk. Also, check out the discussion on this topic in our ChooseFI podcast appearance and the Friday Roundup.) In the diagram: Allocation 1, an all-equity portfolio plus a mortgage, is better than allocation 2, which is also an all-equity portfolio but smaller in size because we just paid off our mortgage.
Today, we want to make the case that the inferior portfolio 2 is still not as bad as portfolio 3 with the same equity allocation but both a mortgage and a bond portfolio. If you want to merge the insights from FinanciaLibre and our ERN blog it would mean that bonds are just not very attractive. Even less attractive than we initially thought.
Side note: in more than one way a mortgage is very different from a bond. A mortgage has amortization (principal is paid down over time) while a bond normally pays only interest and then the principal at maturity. In that sense, a bond is more appropriately comparable with an interest-only mortgage. Moreover, most mortgages can be prepaid without a penalty (at least in the U.S.) while Treasury bonds can’t be retired before maturity. Corporate bonds, however often do have a prepayment option. We will talk more about the mortgage prepay/refinance option below. It’s actually one pretty tangible reason to hold both bonds and a mortgage at the same time.
But let’s keep an open mind here. What would be the reasons to still own bonds and keep the mortgage? We can split the reasons into three categories:
- One clearly legitimate reason to have both a mortgage and a bond portfolio.
- “Reasons” to have a mortgage and a bond portfolio, though they are bad reasons.
- Reasons to have a mortgage, though they are independent of holding a bond portfolio. They work just as well to rationalize picking allocation 1 over allocation 2.
1: One good reason to have a mortgage and a bond portfolio: The prepayment option
As indicated above, a mortgage isn’t like a bond. You have the option to prepay your mortgage and refinance into a lower rate loan if the market interest rate were to drop. The U.S. Treasury cannot. So, imagine you hold a bond portfolio and a mortgage and they both have the same principal amount and the same duration/interest rate sensitivity. (Side Note: intriguingly, a 30-year mortgage has an interest rate sensitivity more in line with a 14 to 15-year bond, rather than a 30-year bond, due to the amortization schedule). If the prevailing interest rate goes up your bond portfolio value goes down. How about the mortgage? The principal value may have stayed the same but the future cash flow of mortgage payments amounts to a lower present value at that higher interest rate. It’s a wash.
But if interest rates were to go down your bond portfolio appreciates and you can lock in a lower mortgage interest rate. The best of both worlds! Having a mortgage and the bond portfolio is essentially a put option on the interest rate. Could it be useful to suffer a little bit of negative carry? You bet!
But there are still some limitations:
- Transaction costs. For the refi to be worthwhile the rate would probably have to fall by at least 0.25% to make this whole refi exercise profitable
- In the U.S., interest rates are on the way up. True, we could have another recession soon and the Federal Reserve can go bananas again with more rounds of quantitative easing. But my baseline forecast is that the mortgage refi party will be on hold for at least a number of years. Why pay that negative carry without any likely benefits for years?
2: Bad reasons for simultaneously having a mortgage and bond portfolio
Now let’s head over to the second category: Reasons that are actually bad reasons:
2a: Tax arbitrage
Comparing raw interest rates between bonds and mortgages is not 100% fair. Mortgage interest is tax-deductible. Though, bond interest income is taxable at our personal ordinary income tax rate, too, if held in a taxable account. Thus, the only way to push the needle in favor of a bond portfolio is to assume your bonds are held in a tax-advantaged account (IRA, Roth, 401(k), etc.) and you get a nice mortgage interest deduction.
Even the mortgage deduction is not a 100% slam dunk. If you have an income high enough to put you deep into the alternative minimum tax (AMT) zone, then congratulations: Potentially, your entire mortgage interest cost is effectively deductible at your high marginal tax rate. That could be 35% federal (28% AMT plus 7% for the phase-out) and another, say, 7% for the state rate. Your 3.5% mortgage just became a 2.03% mortgage.
Of course, if you don’t fall into the AMT, recall that you get a $12,600 tax deduction for free (2016 federal standard deduction, see here). Unless you have a lot of other tax deductions your mortgage may not have any effective tax advantage at all. Especially if your mortgage principal is “only” in the low six figures. See our post Good and Bad Reasons to Love the Mortgage Interest Deduction!
But it gets worse. I personally don’t buy the argument that the bond portfolio in scenario 3 can be entirely tax-free either. First, if bonds are held in a tax-deferred account (401(k), regular IRA, etc.) you will only defer income taxes, rather than completely avoid them. In the chart, the middle bar is the after-tax return if we assume we compound and defer the bond interest for 10 years and then pay 15% marginal on the gain: Yd=(1+((1+Y)^10-1)*0.85)^0.1-1.
With the 10-year Treasury bonds yield right below that number (around 1.8% lately), there is no money to be made from tax arbitrage. Going with longer maturity safe bonds (10-20-year) we’re still underwater. If we could hold the 20+Y bond Treasury Bond ETF in a tax-free account and get the full mortgage tax-writeoff, we do get about 0.50% in positive carry (but see the limitation below).
How about putting the bonds into a Roth IRA where we can get the entire yield tax-free? There is still a cost. You crowd out your equity holdings that would have otherwise enjoyed the Roth treatment, see chart below. Why does that matter? If you are currently in a high enough tax bracket you pay taxes on dividends. Lots of them! 15-20% federal, 3.8% Obamacare and state taxes as well for a total of more than 25% marginal in the ERN household. Thus, the bond interest may be tax-free, but the side effect is a 0.50% p.a. tax bill from holding more equities in a taxable account (given a 2% dividend yield in the S&P500)! That will likely wipe out any tax arbitrage for us! One way around this issue with the “limited space” in the Roth: Do the Synthetic Roth IRA through futures trading as we described before, but that’s only if you have the appetite for some serious financial hacking!
And, needless to say, once we’re retired all tax arbitrage will be gone: We will no longer itemize deductions on our federal return and use the generous standard deduction for married couples instead. So, for us personally, there is no tax arbitrage for holding bonds and a mortgage at the same time. We might as well pay down the mortgage and forego the bond portfolio (allocation 2) or just go the FinaniaLibre route and invest in equities (allocation 1). We currently do the latter.
2b: Loading up on credit risk (intentionally or unintentionally)
I already hear one objection to our analysis: Why not invest in higher yielding bonds? The more adventurous we become the more yield we can generate. With some of the bond funds, you can actually go above the raw mortgage rate of 3.5% and most of them beat the after-tax mortgage rate of 2.03 if held in a tax-deferred or tax-free account. Just a sample of bond ETF yields from iShares (as of October 28):
But it’s not arbitrage. Any asset with higher yield and more risk than U.S. Treasury bonds is not really generating arbitrage, but rather it’s piling on risk. Unless our mortgage lender confirms (in writing!) that they will give us a break with the mortgage in case our bond portfolio blows up this is not the money making machine we thought it is. You may generate positive carry but at the cost of substantial risk.
2c: Mental accounting/Peace of mind
Mental accounting is a behavioral bias that makes you compartmentalize your economic decisions. This always leads to sub-optimal outcomes as we described here. Nevertheless, mental accounting would be a reason for folks to simultaneously hold a mortgage and a bond portfolio. It’s a bad reason, but it’s still a reason.
So someone who holds a stock plus bonds portfolio and a mortgage at the same time may not make the connection between the bond portfolio and the highly correlated short bond position in form of the mortgage. You may think that the bond portfolio in allocation 3 hedges your equity risk. But in the end, the bond and mortgage risk cancel each other out in the realm of pure economic/financial risk factors. Then all you’re left with is a negative carry from the interest rate differential with no true risk mitigation.
3: Reasons to have a mortgage, completely independent of the bond portfolio
And finally, here’s the third category. Legitimately good reasons for having a mortgage, though they don’t necessarily mean you should hold bonds. They work just as well as a rationale to hold equities and we’re back to the Allocation 1 vs. 2 in the FinanciaLibre exercise.
3a: Protection against lawsuits
We live in a dangerous world; as affluent Americans, we have a huge target painted on our backs. Personal injury lawyers would be just too eager to slap us with a frivolous lawsuit and a mortgage-free house in our name would be the grand prize for the ambulance-chasers. On the other hand, a hefty mortgage could be just the legal poison pill that makes going after my primary residence quite unattractive. (One exception to the rule: Florida exempts your primary residence from creditors’ access in bankruptcy. So you don’t need the help of a mortgage for asset protection in that case!)
3b: In some states, a mortgage is a put option on your home value
If you own a house outright your maximum loss is the value of the house. With a mortgage, you can lose only your home equity if you live in a so-called “non-recourse” state (there are 12 of them, according to FinancialSamurai). You can default on your mortgage, hand in the keys to the bank and walk away from your house. The bank cannot go after your other assets (it has no recourse, after all). If you’re really nasty you stop making payments to the bank and live in the house for free until the foreclosure process goes through, which can last anywhere from months to years.
Ripping off your creditors like that may sound morally and ethically suspect but this sort of default risk is already baked into your mortgage rate. You pay extra for this risk and you might as well make use of this option when the time arises. Of course, this method only works in states that have the “non-recourse” provision. If the bank can go after your other assets then this entire argument is moot.
Wow!! Some serious shouts goin’ on up in here! I’m not worthy…I’m not worthy…!
Very honored to be mentioned, ERN. This is a beautiful analysis. And I can’t add anything to it. But I will say I especially like your discussion of the lawsuit risk and “poison pill” concept. I hadn’t really considered that side of things, but there hardly seems to be enough someone can do to insulate from the costs and risks of litigation in the U.S. these days. If mortgage debt is even a weak deterrent, that might justify any interest expense right there…even if the levered value is held entirely in cash or something really stupid like gold or even stupider like an attorney retainer!
Thanks for adding much to the discussion on the mortgage topic. Your analysis takes it to the next level. I think we can now be fully satisfied the question of mortgages has been laid to rest. Great work, and thanks for the shout!
Thanks FL! That’s a great compliment! Glad you enjoyed the post. Actually, I have some more analysis about mortgages and home ownership. Coming up in a few weeks. Inspired by some of your work! 🙂
Cheers!
ERN
Some great points. If your not earning as much as your paying then the debt should go. I still hold bonds but the performance has been on par with my mortgage. I have been thinking to lower my allocation though, and this is a good reason.
Thanks! This might be a good time to get out of bonds. The Fed will raise rates again in December, it seems.
Cheers!
Oh crap. I hold bonds ( you knew that anyway). I paid off one mortgage and still hold another one. My bond fund is beating out the mortgage rate quite handily but for how long we will see….
Will you still talk to me ? Have you unfollowed me on Twitter? Am I doomed to a life of hell in FIRE? I need answers and quickly!!
As for the litigation issue, another reason to accelerate umbrella insurance purchase……
Jeez, more stuff to do in an otherwise busy period for the PIE’s.
Haha, no worries. There will be no Spanish Inquisition knocking on anybody’s door for holding bonds and a mortgage. But out of curiosity: How did you beat the mortgage interest? With the yield alone or yield plus capital gains? If it’s the latter, I would keep in mind that the interest rate compression can’t go on forever. I would even argue we’re on the way up with interest rates, which means bonds will lose in value.
Good point about umbrella insurance! Very important for high net worth households!
Cheers!
From Morningstar, TTR of 5.0% YTD on the bond fund. Mix of treasury, corporate and securitized.
Mortgage interest rate 2.75%
Thanks! But how much of that was interest income and how much is capital gains? Example: The AGG (iShares ETF) gained 4.15% YTD (to Nov 2). About 5% annualized. But the fund only has a yield of 2.3%. Going forward, only the yield is guaranteed (and even then you get some slippage from defaults on corporate bonds). If interest rates rise again that 2.7% extra return in addition to the yield can easily not just evaporate but turn into a -2.7%. It doesn’t take much to wipe out a yield 2.3%. The AGG has a duration of 5.36, so a rise in the interest rate level by 0.43% and the AGG returns zero over the next year.
Has happened before, remember this:
https://earlyretirementnow.com/2016/05/19/bond-vs-stock-risk/
https://earlyretirementnowdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/bondsriskierthanstocks_022.png?w=809
But: I’m not predicting that rates go up or down, I’m just saying that we shouldn’t bank on permanent capital gains in bonds. In fact, I hope that there won’t be bond market mayhem and instead, interest rates rise only very slowly. Not because I own bonds but because I don’t want the economy to take a hit.
Cheers!
We’re largely in agreement here. A mortgage payment is like your bond allocation. Unless your bond return after taxes sufficiently outweighs your mortgage interest it isn’t worth it to have both in an allocation. I did recently note that one savings bond, EE bonds do exceed the returns of mortgage interest after tax ramifications in which case if the choice is to pay a mortgage or hold the bond then the bond comes ahead. However that’s an exception with a long list of caveats.
I do have one more exception though. Some bonds or bond like holdings are liquid. A mortgage is not. Needless to say that’s situation dependent but they might come out ahead with a near term large purchase.
Liquidity is a major issue. It will take weeks to get the mortgage but only days to get money out of a bond mutual fund. So, I would never argue to pay down the entire mortgage by wiping out the entire taxable investment portfolio. I would always keep some liquidity left in the portfolio. Or even better: Don’t pay down the mortgage but go into equities. Equity funds are just as liquid as bond funds.
Regarding the EE bond: I wonder which one that is. Interest rates for safe government bonds all pay pretty pathetic interest rates:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/
Series EE bonds have an interest rate of 0.1%. But if held 20 years, they are guaranteed to double, so if you hold that long they have an effective rate of 3.5%…
Very interesting. I didn’t know that there was this provision in the EE bonds. I presume that’s only for personal investors, not for hedge funds and banks, right? 🙂
EE are government savings bonds you can purchase via treasury direct. They return only .1 year to year but have a clause where upon holding for 20 yrs they double in value regardless of return. Effectively 3.5 percent. Hold them short of 20 though and they get .1. Also tax free if used for education. I have an upcoming post on them as my masters thesis a decade ago was on savings bonds.
Very cool, thanks for pointing that out. Looking forward to your future post!
But: over the next 20 years, 3.5% return seems pretty awful. I don’t want to retire on that: It’s only 1.5% real return. I would need more than that and probably go with stocks. True there is volatility, but the stock market normally returns more than 1.5% over 20 year windows. So, I’m not saying there isn’t an arbitrage opportunity between the bonds and mortgage, but over a 20 year horizon there is an even greater arbitrage opportunity when keeping the mortgage and investing in stocks.
This only applies to paper EE bonds last sold in 2011.
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/ebonds/res_e_bonds_eeratesandterms.htm
Great analysis! I feel the same way about my car loan. The interest is less than 1.5%, so it’s a very cheap way to get some leverage 🙂
Awesome! 1.5% (even if it’s not tax deductible) is a great way to get leverage!
No bonds here- I take the money that would be for safe allocation (i.e about 20%) and make sure it goes to student debt. Once that is gone, then I can work on paying off that peaky mortgage as I see fit. First I gotta build that nest egg that can hatch into a beautiful hen and make more eggs for me.
Excellent choice and thanks for sharing. Yes, paying down high-interest student loan debt is the real smart “bond investment”
Cheers!
Late to the party here, but curious if the math works the same for mortgages on investment property? I have always viewed conservative debt like 50% ltv on rentals to be a way to juice returns with minimal additional risk.
Totally agree! On a rental I would probably never go above 65%.
In the IRR analysis I assume 80% LTV because that’s what most folks do. Also homeownership means renting to/from myself. So I have less risk of a deadbeat tenant. 🙂
Hi ERN
Great article – I have bonds in my portfolio and a mortgage. I suspect the situation in the UK is slightly different than in the US.
My mortgage is fixed at around 1.8% for the next 5 years, whereas the bonds in my portfolio have yields of between 2-3%. In fact, It’s possible to get yields on cash savings above the rate of interest on my mortgage.
In this situation I think perhaps it makes sense to keep some bonds, what do you think?
In that situation you got a positive carry, so you’re good to go. But make sure you’re comparing after-tax yields for both mortgage and bonds…
Cheers!
Thank you for providing so much information. Been reading through the blog for past several weeks; hands down one of the best blogs I’ve read. What are your current thoughts on keeping bonds now that rates have been lowered a few times? Ugh I also have 8% REITS and just read your pros and cons on that today too.
ERN, I can see how having both a mortgage and bond investments don’t make sense. BUT . . . once the mortgage is paid off, is there now a need (for those who believe in holding bonds) to almost immediately the bond portion of the portfolio back up to, say, a 20% level per someone’s asset allocation? Or should someone slowly segue back into bonds as the mortgage is paid off, so the bond portion of the portfolio is “back up to normal” by the time the mortgage is finally paid off? I hope my question makes sense.
That will be part of the discussion in an upcoming post next week. Glidepaths pre-retirement! 🙂
The reason I hold it: back testing, in the style of the Trinity study, shows it increases the safe withdrawal rate. I simulated a 3% 10/1 ARM at the start of retirement, paid off in 10 years when we downsize. SWR was higher, even though that scenario still had lots of bonds.
And it makes sense: the worst times to retire are just before significant inflation. The mortgage is a good inflation hedge. My parents took out a 30 year fixed home loan in 1969. By the time they paid it off in 1999, the mortgage payments were peanuts by the standards of the day.
So mortgage + non-rolling bond ladder, bought at the same time, is bad. Mortgage + ITT or TBM is actually good, if interest rates are low when you retire, like now.
While the 30-year loans worked out well for your parents who were working, the math is a lot different in retirement where your assets don’t always keep up with inflation. If they used your strategy of taking a 10/1 ARM loan out and use their investments to make the initial 10 years of payments, their investments would be worth much less than the remaining balance on their loan assuming they had something like a 75% equities/25% bonds portfolio.
For instance take the example of the loan your parents took out in 1969, using typical mortgage rates at the time ~7%, they would’ve had to withdraw 8% of their initial portfolio that they are holding against the loan to cover the mortgage payments and after 10 years of doing this from 1969-1979, a 75/25 portfolio would be worth only about 40-45% of what they started with, yet they’d still owe 85% of their starting loan amount since you don’t pay off much principal the first 10 years of a 30-year amortized loan.
Good point, the 1969 loan is a bad example. It’s more about the 3% or lower loans available now. Having a loan like that allows a larger portfolio, as you say. And during the stagflation from Jan 1966 to Dec 1975, it ends up being better to borrow at 3% and invest.
It’s certainly not a great idea all the time. A 7% rate is very different than the 3% rate, and that definitely changes to calculus.
The point is, the Trinity style back tests reveal that the killer for retirement is both bonds and stocks struggling, in real terms, during the first 10 years of retirement. Bonds struggle most during unexpected inflation, which is why the three worst years to start retirement are 1906, 1937 and 1966. Borrowing at < 3%, then investing during those periods, leads to higher WR.
If you’re going to back-test historical investment returns, you have to use realistic historical borrowing rates or else your results will be rosier than reality. Of course, if you could’ve somehow borrowed at a lower interest rate (<3%) than the U.S. government could borrow at the time (6-7%), you'd take out as big of a loan as possible and put it all in treasuries to collect the arbitrage between the two rates and "juice" up your SWR but you couldn't have done that at the time.
There are people today who have just retired, or are retiring in the next year, that have mortgages with rates of 3% or less.
Trinity style studies show the biggest possibility of running out of money in retirement comes from high inflation, say double digits, in the first decade of retirement.
Having a mortgage with a rate of 3% or less, and investing the money in an appropriate mix of stocks and bonds, gives you more money to spend in real terms in retirement. In real terms, your mortgage payments reduce more, the higher the inflation.
If you don’t have stagflation in your first decade of retirement, the mortgage is probably a drag in your investments. But in that case, you’re not at risk of running out of money, so you van afford the drag.
This same dynamic — doing what minimized the impact of the worst case, even if if hurts the average case — is behind the rising equity glide path as well.
Excellent point. When still working with COLA to your salary, you can make it through the recession. But when withdrawing money it would have been more of a headache.
But granted: the mortgage and the fixed nominal payments are eroded away by inflation. The 1930s scenario would have been more of a concern!
The two worst case scenarios: 1970s (high inflation) and 1930s (deflation). In the former case you would have done OK with the mortgage, in the latter case not so much.
I was shocked to see that in this little example of borrowing on a 10/1 ARM at the start of 70’s and paying it off at the end that you’d likely run out of money to cover the make the lump sum at the end if you borrowed at 4% and it would’ve even been dicey borrowing at 3% especially if you had to pay any kind of taxes on the gains if it was held in a non-Roth account. That was truly a terrible time to retire!
Yes, that’s right. It’s not that the stock market was particularly bad, like 1929, but the event lasted so long!
ERN, I’m a bit confused about the relationship between having a mortgage in retirement and its impact on SORR. You mention in this article, “Use the leverage to get higher expected returns in an equity portfolio! (And don’t forget that stretching out the mortgage also reduces Sequence of Return Risk.” But in SWR series #21 (“Why we will not have a mortgage in early retirement”), you write, “Having a mortgage in retirement will exacerbate your sequence of return risk because you are frontloading your withdrawals early on during retirement to pay for the mortgage; not just interest but also principal payments.” I’m trying to rationalize the two viewpoints. Moreover, from the current article above, I would have expected you to be a fan of having a mortgage during retirement, but I was then surprised to see the SWR series #21. Is there an easy way to clarify how these two articles coexist? Thanks so much, I appreciate your help!
The difference: Before retirement you can use 100% equities and a mortgage as leverage. SoRR works in opposite ways for savers and retirees (see SWR parts 14, 15). As a young investor you want to get your equity portfolio up as quickly as possible.
In retirement, 100% equities or even 100% equities plus a mortgage is way too risky. You need some diversifying assets in retirement. And that’s another reason to get rid of the mortgage. A mortgage is (almost) equal to a negative bond. Why have a mortgage and pay a higher interest rate than what you earn in the bond portfolio?
Outstanding, that makes sense. I didn’t mentally divvy these two articles each into their own “pre-retirement” and “post-retirement” categories. I appreciate your explanation — thanks!
Have a mortgage (at low enough rates only, of course) even in retirement, keep the optionally, but have your SORR hedge against equities be gold, not bonds.
Then you have your cake and eat it, too, unless you worry about Great Depression-style deflation. But “Helicopter Ben” Fed policy will IMO ensure that sustained deflation ain’t happening ever again; deflation is the one risk the Fed absolutely understands how to prevent.
Hi ERN, the math is looking a lot more favorable now! I have a 2.375% 30yr fixed mortgage so i can profit by having bonds and a mortgage.
You mentioned that a 30yr fixed has the interest rate sensitivity of a 15 year bond. Wouldn’t it be closer to a 20yr, since most of the principal is paid off in the latter half?
If my mortgage has 20 years remaining and I wanted to “arbitrage” and hedge it by holding an equivalent amount of bonds without risking a capital loss if rates go up more, what duration bonds should I aim for?
Duration is just the time weighted average of cash flows.
In the example of a fixed rate mortage where all of the payments are equal, the duration is half of the time remaining on the loan. Sometimes it’s easier to think about it from the lender’s point of view who is holding your loan.
You can still technically lose money if you say bought a 11-12 year treasury bond with the same duration to your loan since the cash flows of the bonds don’t perfectly line up with your payments since the treasury bond pays the principal at the end. For example, to cover your mortgage this year you are still required to make payments of 4.66% of the remaining balance so just the bond fund interest alone wouldn’t cover this and you’d have to dig into your principal. So if bond yields kept rapidly climbing and bond prices tanked, you’d have to sell some of your bonds low and not get the full yield to maturity.
You’d have to find a special bond that has the principal stripped that only pays the coupons to better match up to your cash flows if you wanted something closer to a true “arbitrage”. But either way, you’re obviously in a good position. Have you looked at the I-Bonds that are paying 9.6%?
Thanks FIguy, that makes sense! That’s a good point about how bonds pay at maturity. One could create a latter but it’s probably best to just accept a little risk.
And yes, I would max out I bonds before touching treasuries! You’d have to be crazy to pay off your mortgage early if I bonds are paying 9%.
We have to compare apples to apples. For example, when you got your mortgage at 2.375% and the 30Y bond yielded less than 1.2%, did you think the mortgage plus bonds was a good idea? Look at your portfolio holding TLT today (down 30+%)
Or today: at 5% rate and the 30-year bond at 3%, do you think that’s a good idea?
I was referring to the bond duration. A 30-year bond has probably a 20-25y duration, depending on the interest rate. A zero-coupon has a 30y duration by definition.
A mortgage has a duration significantly below that because you pay down the balance over time.
Thanks ERN! Agreed, I’m 100% stocks for now since I’m still working. But if rates stay high I’ll be happy to have my mortgage!
Good! 100% stocks while working is the way to go. Worked well for me! 😉
With 30 year mortgage rates around 7.7%, is it fair to say that a second home purchase should be funded by selling short-term bonds and stable value funds rather than taking on a mortgage?
Yeah, mostly agree. But it’s hard to make general statements. Some folks might argue that you keep long-term bond funds now and hope that they enjoy the duration effect. And refinance the mortgage after 2-3 years.
Thanks. Is it a different answer if one were to sell equities or a mix of equities and fixed assets, vs. only fixed assets? Is the comparison between what you believe you can achieve as a ROR vs. the mortgage rate (still assuming federal standard tax deduction).
I don’t recommend having a 100% portfolio of equities. So, once you have at least a portion of fixed-income assets, one should compare the yields of the FI and the mortgage.
That said, there is also the optionality of the mortgage refi vs. the duration effect of bonds if rates come down. It’s an important issue to consider.
Nice content overall, but the below sentence is total nonsense and reveals some sort of chamber-of-commerce indoctrination that’s unbecoming.
“Personal injury lawyers would be just too eager to slap us with a frivolous lawsuit and a mortgage-free house in our name would be the grand prize for the ambulance-chasers. “
Nice visitor comment overall, but your comment is total nonsense and reveals some sort of American Bar Association indoctrination that’s unbecoming.