Home & Big Purchases

The $697,544 mortgage number that tells you almost nothing. Discounted at the loan's own rate, every term's payments are worth exactly what you borrowed.

No research supports a universal vacation percentage. Three tests decide it: cash flow, liquidity, and FI impact, where $1,000 a year of travel adds $25,000 at 4%.

Low birth rates and slowing household growth are a haircut to home-price appreciation, not a crash. What the evidence says and how DIY investors should plan, with a calculator.

Index funds are the better default for most DIY investors; a rental is a leveraged local business that must clear a hurdle. How demographics, leverage, and taxes decide it.

A 50-year mortgage cuts the payment ~10% but adds ~87% more interest and builds almost no equity. Why a lower payment is not affordability, and what actually lowers prices. With a calculator.

Buying is not always better, and leasing is not always a rip-off. The deciding factor is how long you keep the car. The present-value math, the academic evidence, and a calculator.

A $550K household qualifies for a $3.6M mortgage but comfortably carries closer to $2M. See how the lender, White Coat Investor, and balance-sheet lenses disagree by over a million dollars.

A home bought for $225K in 2002 is worth $500K today. The price return was 3.4% a year. Whether buying beat renting comes down to one number: 6.1%.

No, you do not need a paid-off home to retire, but you need durable, flexible cash flow. How a mortgage affects sequence risk, taxes, and FIRE math, with a keep-vs-payoff calculator.

Where the down-payment cash comes from changes the tax and liquidity cost more than the monthly payment. Compare selling appreciated stock, a family gift, and a family loan for a high-income tech buyer.

Most home affordability calculators ask if you can make the payment. This one asks if you'll still be solvent if your RSUs drop 40% and a repair hits.

A 30-year fixed mortgage can hedge inflation, but only conditionally. Here's the math, Bernstein's four deep risks, and when the framing breaks down.

Points are a prepayment of interest, not a rate hack. Learn the CFPB break-even framework, who should and shouldn't buy points, and why shopping lenders beats chasing a headline rate. Includes an interactive decision calculator.

Your mortgage payment is not your cost of ownership. Learn the three views (cash, economic, exit) used by HUD and CFPB, see the real categories most buyers underestimate, and use the interactive calculator to compute your own numbers.

Depreciation is usually the largest cost of car ownership, and most buyers never see it. Learn the AAA/Edmunds TCO framework, see how gas, hybrid, and EV costs compare, and use the interactive calculator to find your real cost per mile.

Stop optimizing for total interest paid. The right down payment depends on cash to close, post-close reserves, PMI thresholds, and loan-bucket boundaries. Includes a calculator for tech workers with RSUs.

The monthly payment comparison is misleading. Learn how opportunity cost, transaction fees, tax benefits, and investment returns change the rent vs. buy math, and why hold period is the key variable.