{"items": [{"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232", "anchor": "fb-805846899232", "service": "fb", "text": "Accounting nerd mode: to assess house expenses, maybe you could<br>- estimate how much value the structure would lose monthly if you didn't do any work on it<br>- count all house-related spending, mortgage interest, and estimated depreciation as \"house expenses\"<br>- count all rental income or appreciation (from doing work on the house) as \"house income\"<br>- and report the net as your cost of housing?", "timestamp": "1471455154"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805846984062", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805846984062", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;And report the rest as saving?", "timestamp": "1471455287"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805846989052", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805846989052", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Yeah. (\"The rest\" being the down payment/principal on your mortgage, right?)", "timestamp": "1471455301"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805847023982", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805847023982", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;How would you count the house becoming more or less valuable over time as the market changed?", "timestamp": "1471455349"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805847118792", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805847118792", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Also house income. (Presumably you'd need to track taxability of house income/expenses also, since rental income is taxable but appreciation due to improvements/market movements is not)", "timestamp": "1471455404"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805847478072", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805847478072", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Hmm, I guess you might want separate notions for liquid vs illiquid income in that case, so that your donation target doesn't suddenly increase if the housing market spikes", "timestamp": "1471455631"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805847977072", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805847977072", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;For donation target calculation I just use federal tax accounting, which handles appreciation in illiquid value as realized when you liquidate it.", "timestamp": "1471455931"}, {"author": "Alexander", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805855227542", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805855227542", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Does the framework of 'what happens to the value of the house if you do no work on it' also account for the housing market in your area moving up/down?", "timestamp": "1471459301"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805860786402", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805860786402", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Sort of. Presumably the appreciation happens to the land, whereas the depreciation happens to the structure. And the depreciation is tax deductible (at least the fraction of it for rental property) whereas the appreciation is not taxable until it becomes liquid. So you still want to think about them separately.", "timestamp": "1471462288"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805861145682", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805861145682", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;@Ben: The structure value can fluctuate too, no?  Say you have a 2BR unit on some land, and people start valuing 2BRs much less and 3+BRs much more.  Or people start strongly preferring super modern cube houses and your structure is a boring old victorian.", "timestamp": "1471462549"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805861899172", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805861899172", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Yeah, I guess that could happen. Is it actually a big effect in practice? It would be kind of annoying to try to mark your house to market all the time...", "timestamp": "1471462896"}, {"author": "Alexander", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805861998972", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805861998972", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;I generally agree about those land/structure patterns (though Jeff raises some credible exceptions), but assuming Jeff plans to sell the land and structure together just like he bought them together I'm not sure the separation matters.<br><br>Fair point about the differing tax treatments though, I missed that because it happens not to apply to my situation.", "timestamp": "1471463000"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805862168632", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805862168632", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Yes, I think there's not actually any need to separate land value and structure value, except for tax purposes.<br><br>(There I can depreciate the value of the structure over 29.5 years, for the portion of the structure I rent out, and count that against rental income.  For this, though, all that matters is what price I bought at, and what fraction of the property value the town assessor considers structure.)", "timestamp": "1471463212"}, {"author": "Alexander", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=805866205542", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_805866205542", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;When I was actually looking at house prices several months ago it was pretty straightforward to work out what house prices had approximately done in this area of London over the past 6 months/12 months/2 years/etc., where this area means something like 'within half a mile to a mile'. I can imagine this failing if you live in a rural area or your house/flat is unusual for the area though.", "timestamp": "1471465843"}, {"author": "Richard", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805846899232&reply_comment_id=811165595522", "anchor": "fb-805846899232_811165595522", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman Not only can you depreciate the portion of the house that you rent, I believe you have to do so. The Federal Govt will assume that you have been taking the depreciation deduction, and if/when you sell the house you will pay capital gains taxes starting from the depreciated basis of the house.", "timestamp": "1473727472"}, {"author": "Neela", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805887577712", "anchor": "fb-805887577712", "service": "fb", "text": "Wow, this is awesome, thanks for sharing. I remember coming up to you at EA Global and saying it would be a cool thing to do. I am stunned though with how disciplined you guys are - no vacations, no eating out, travel is $55, no cellphones. Something to learn. Thank you.", "timestamp": "1471475168"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805887577712&reply_comment_id=805889239382", "anchor": "fb-805887577712_805889239382", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;We do vacations and eating out from our personal budgets; $45/week each is $4.5k/year. This lets us do some!", "timestamp": "1471476015"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805887577712&reply_comment_id=805889503852", "anchor": "fb-805887577712_805889503852", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;And writing this I realized that I (again) confused weeks and months. What I put as $90/month is $90/week. Updating...", "timestamp": "1471476077"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805887577712&reply_comment_id=805890786282", "anchor": "fb-805887577712_805890786282", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Updated post and chart!", "timestamp": "1471476448"}, {"author": "Neela", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805887577712&reply_comment_id=805891020812", "anchor": "fb-805887577712_805891020812", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;Oh, thanks for that! I am going to benchmark our spending to yours although I know ours is waaay more wasteful.", "timestamp": "1471476557"}, {"author": "Jeff&nbsp;Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=805887577712&reply_comment_id=805892572702", "anchor": "fb-805887577712_805892572702", "service": "fb", "text": "&rarr;&nbsp;(your coming up at eag was what prompted me to write this!)", "timestamp": "1471477660"}, {"author": "Philip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/805832562962?comment_id=806743232972", "anchor": "fb-806743232972", "service": "fb", "text": "Does EA support the idea of rich nations having fewer children to help improve climate change?  How can I quantify how much help I am giving to climate change by having fewer children?<br><br>http://www.npr.org/.../should-we-be-having-kids-in-the...", "timestamp": "1471890711"}]}