Hi friends. Just posting while I sip on my coffee and watch the clock tick closer to end of shift. Every day is groundhog day at work.
Is the coffee at least good?
Any of you all planning a bond tent closer to retirement?
The thought of buying bonds hurts my soul. I’ve been so anti-bonds since I started investing 10 years ago. But if all goes well I may approach my FIRE number in 7-8 years, so at some point I’ll need to figure out a plan.
We’ve got a fixed percentage of bonds in investment accounts, but we’ve also been accumulating i bonds for the last 7 years, so I suppose we have been (slowly) building a mini i bond tent (or maybe sleeping bag).
Yup. I’m getting close as well, so like 10 years give or take depending on what the market does.
I’m planning on a glide path like ERN describes in his SWR series. Basically, I’ll start buying bonds about 5 years from retirement, then move back to equities during the first 10 years of retirement. Or maybe I’ll do it over 20 years, i haven’t decided. I’ll basically be going somewhere between 20-40% bonds depending on how close I am to me FI number, the closer I’m cutting it, the higher my bond allocation will be.
That said, bonds are looking pretty attractive right now. T-bills are around 5-6%, and they seem to be stabilizing, so longer term bond yields will likely be going to unless we have a recession. I’ve been switching my efund to t-bills, and if longer term bond yields go up, I might start my bond tent a little earlier than planned.
I thought I saved up enough to buy a modest place for myself but looking at the prices… I was so wrong. My landlord will be happy.
That’s a bummer. Prices do seem like they are dropping a bit (at least in my area). Hopefully you can find a good deal sooner, rather than later.
I’m not even sure how to estimate it properly. Redfin and Zillow have a wide range, like 20% off from each other. And Realtor puts it at like 5-10% above Zillow.
My read is that house prices have gone up a little in the last year since the average is a bit higher (like 5%, give or take) than around this point last year. I have been seeing houses stay on the market longer (cousin recently sold and it took ~2 months), but there’s still not a ton of inventory. So I think prices have stabilized, but not gone down much, at least in my area.
Housing market is nuts and I’m thankful we bought when we did. My house has (supposedly) gone up in value ~50% since I bought it four years ago despite mortgage rates being ~150% higher — how are people making those numbers work?
