Interesting suggestion. Am I remembering correctly from earlier posts that you work in the electricity market in some capacity? If so, any companies/products that you recommend? What's the rough math look like when outfitting a house?
I personally went with a local installer who had been in business for several years and had a lot of good references. They did a good job and have been responsive for several years now. If you go with a national operator I'd stay away from Tesla and look toward Sunrun or Sunpower instead. The math is pretty simple. On the minus side is your original installation cost. On the plus side is your investment tax credit, any state and county incentives, and the cost of your power. In most states you can net meter, so you get to subtract away your entire electricity cost per MWH. Many incentives come upfront or near upfront so those basically subtract from your original cost. Plug it all into Excel and you'll get an IRR. But that doesn't actually reflect your true IRR unless you're a nonprofit, because keep in mind that while you owe tax on any return from an investment, this is saving you after-tax dollars. So technically you should actually calculate your pretax electricity cost, i.e. if you pay $100 per MWH for electricity and your marginal state+federal tax rate is 40%, you actually need to earn $167 to be able to pay that $100 per MWH bill. If you're doing an apples to apples comparison with another investment, you need to consider that in your calculation given that you generally have to pay tax on your returns from that investment. You also want to calculate the risks, which are pretty minimal compared to say, investing in ATT. The biggest risk is that your electricity prices go down significantly. That's unlikely because half your bill is simply the distribution costs so even if electricity was entirely free your bill would still be at least half of what it is today. The other risk is that your system fails somehow. Most systems have 15+ year panel and inverter warranties, although the companies offering them obviously need to stay in business for that to be worth anything. On the plus side, over the past 20 years any failures have been pretty apparent pretty soon after install and once you make it past a year you're usually good to 20+. Prices have been steadily going down for equipment, by literally orders of magnitude over the past decade, so be sure you're using an up to date quote. The big variables are your electricity costs and incentives available to you. But even if you have no incentives and dirt cheap electricity, if you're looking at comparable risk corporate yields it still generally makes sense now.
Good insight. Appreciate you taking the time to type it up. I'll give those companies a look. We just renovated and put all natgas mechanicals in...kind of regret it now.
I bet if some of these private business had a ticker they’d be 75% plus down on their stock. Some of these guys will have to puke the bottom. Good luck searching.
To answer the OP's question - I would buy blue-chip residential real estate and rent it out, ideally in an area where you have several overlapping layers of guaranteed demand from high-quality tenants. E.g. a prime downtown area, ideally with historic preservation or other restrictions on development, with strong ties to the eds-and-meds economy e.g. universities, hospitals, and state/federal government. Yields are low (3-5% before management fees) but the risk-adjusted return is IMO higher than pretty much any other "safe" asset, you get a fair degree of inflation protection, and you can blissfully ignore the crazy roller-coaster ride of even "safe" listed alternatives, like dividend shares or REITs. The downside is illiquidity, so you'd want to own at least 3-5 separate properties, geographically spread out somewhat, and as always maintain a year of personal living expenses plus a liquidity buffer to cover unexpected property costs.
All depends what your private business is. If it's a restaurant, yeah. If it's making parts used in respirators, you're probably doing great. Anyone who had a largely remote service company is actually doing pretty well at the moment as long as their clients are "essential businesses"
I agree with you in part. Depends on where price is based on past 9 years, last nearly 3 years been a seller on Index futures and hedging stocks when retracement tops formed, model sees selling puts as too risky before the collapse, and until a base shows up, too risky to sell puts. But once base is clearly trending up, then selling puts and less of covered calls.
Depends on your timing; mid March you could get BMO and TD at minimal long term risk with a yield between 6 and 7%.
I live in a college town. How about a newer townhouse 1/2 mile from the university? No outside maintenance. Have a property management company find the tenant (as I grow older), since I am DONE with managing rental properties!!