for one thing he says " Finally, three caveats. Mortgages are good hedges against inflation. If prices rise, we get to pay off our mortgage in watered-down dollars. The Fed is printing lots of money these days. If it keeps doing so, it's possible that we could move from very low inflation to substantial inflation. If you pay off your mortgage, you lose that hedge. "
this is not correct .... what we buy is the hedge against inflation ... mortgages are neutral .... your house has the same inflation protection with a mortgage or without . if you invested in bonds with the mortgage money and inflation strikes you have zero inflation hedge .......
when we have choices of paying off or taking a mortgage vs using our own money to invest while taking or keeping a mortgae , we are actually borrowing to invest .... it is what we buy that is the hedge not the mortgage
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there are many assumptions in there that have no financial logic to it.
the 401k should be long term money ...there is no financial logic to mitigating short term temporary dips in markets with bonds as a long term investor in a 401k and permanently hurting long term returns . so to compare to treasuries in a 401k i got give a thumbs down ... you certainly can't compare to a down year in the stock market either and make a strategy out of it ...... unless i was not going to be very high equity levels in my 401k i fail to see any financial logic in this . bonds in a portfolio that is ear marked for the long term makes sense only as a mental thing not a financial thing .
bonds are for when you have time constraints on the money or are gun shy . they are not for when you have decades to go in your accumulation stage in my opinion .
the author is well know for social security advice ... unfortunately i think he should stay in that segment and not try to write articles in other areas ....
https://www.kitces.com/blog/why-a-mortg ... -that-are/